This research, supported by the Science, Technology & Society program at NSF, examines a long-term scientific collaboration. Collaboration is a topic of continuing interest in studies of science and in science policy. This research focuses on the organization of collaborative work, in an attempt to understand how the details of work organization enable and constrain joint efforts among scientists. Collaborations articulate multiple tasks and participants in negotiating agreements about technical choices, scheduling of tasks and staff, ensuring access to materials, establishing co-authorship and publication rights, and coordinating details of the work. Collaborations must also accommodate the obligations imposed by the organizations in which they participate. Technical and administrative requirements interact in complex ways.
This research project investigates a collaboration that studies the anatomy, endocrinology, and development of the external genitalia of female Spotted Hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), together with hyena behavior, social organization, and ecology. Female hyenas are bigger and more aggressive than males, and the females and cubs in a clan dominate the males. For more than 20 years, the collaboration being studied has centered on a unique colony of hyenas at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, collaborators at Michigan State University are continuing 30 years of field observation of a single clan of hyenas in southern Kenya. Collaborators come from biological psychology, zoology, animal behavior, developmental biology, anatomy, endocrinology, human and veterinary medicine, neurobiology, molecular biology, and other specialties. The exceptional disciplinary breadth and longevity of the project make it an especially interesting case.
The collaboration is being studied via participant observation, interviewing, and archival research. The research will reconstruct the broad history of the hyena collaboration, identify and describe the mechanisms used to build, modify, and maintain the collaboration, and lay the foundation of an analytical model of the collaboration process. The research project will provide insights into the ways that coordination mechanisms bridge the technical efforts of scientists and the expectations of research managers despite the absence of a central mechanism of control. More broadly, by improving understanding of the complexities of the research process, the project will aid science policy analysts and research administrators in identifying ways to improve effective collaboration.
