SciTS 2010 Conference: Panels

Collaborative Dynamics of Teams: Content and Connection

The panelists in this session will discuss the processes and collaborative dynamics of interdisciplinary teams across the hierarchy of team-to-institutional connections. Joann Keyton focuses directly on the interdisciplinary team in lab and meeting settings. Using observational and interview data from scientists who work in interdisciplinary teams, she makes distinctions between the task and relational activities that comprise team science. Scott Poole examines the multi-team systems through which science discovery occurs. He explores conditions under which effective multi-team systems are likely to form and conditions that militate against their formation. Linus Dahlander reports on his NSF-supported study that evaluates the impact, effectiveness, and consequences of interdisciplinary centers. He also comments on the differences between interdisciplinary and disciplinary-based research, especially institutional reward structures. Jonathon Cummings takes the broadest view of team science dynamics. Using data from 500 NSF projects, he describes the institutional characteristics that inhibit interdisciplinary collaboration and details the coordinating and inhibiting mechanisms.

Panelists

Joann Keyton
Joann Keyton

Joann Keyton, Ph.D., is the Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University. Her current research examines the process and relational aspects of interdisciplinary teams, the role of training and influence of culture in organizational interventions, and how messages are manipulated in sexual harassment. In addition to publications in scholarly journals and edited collections, she has published three textbooks for courses in group communication, research methods, and organizational culture in addition to co-editing an organizational communication case book. Keyton was editor of the Journal of Applied Communication Research, Volumes 31-33. Currently she is Editor of Communication Currents and Editor of Small Group Research. She is a founder of the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research.

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Jonathon Cummings
Jonathon Cummings

Jonathon Cummings, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. After completing his dissertation and post-doc at Carnegie Mellon University, he spent three years at the MIT Sloan School of Management as an Assistant Professor. His current research focuses on social networks and teams in corporations and science, and the role of knowledge sharing in work distributed across different geographic locations. His publications have appeared in journals ranging from Management Science to Research Policy to MIS Quarterly.

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Linus Dahlander
Linus Dahlander

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Marshall Scott Poole
Marshall Scott Poole

Marshall Scott Poole, Ph.D. is a David and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar, Professor in the Department of Communication, Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Director of the Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Scott has taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and Texas A&M University. His research interests include group and organizational communication, information systems, collaboration technologies, organizational innovation, and theory construction. He is the author of over 120 articles and book chapters. His articles have appeared in Communication Monographs, Human Communication Research, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Research, Small Group Research Management Science, Organization Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and Academy of Management Review, among others. Scott has co-authored or edited ten books including Communication and Group Decision-Making, Theories of Small Groups: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Organizational Change and Innovation Processes: Theory and Methods for Research, and The Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation. Scott has been named a Fellow of the International Communication Association, a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association, and is recipient of the Steven A. Chaffee Career Productivity Award from the International Communication Association. Current research foci include team behavior in massive multiplayer online games, utilization and implementation of communication and information technologies, study of the use of information technology in emergency response, and integrating theories of small groups and social networks in the explanation of large, dynamically changing groups and intergroup networks.

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Question and Answer Session

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