Research Teams as Complex Systems and Implications for Research Governance

The recent increase in research collaboration, coupled with the increase in interdisciplinarity, creates the need to better understand the interaction between individual researchers and the collaborative team. Surprisingly, little theorizing has taken place to understand this interaction. The paper elaborates the conceptualisation of research teams as complex systems which emerge out of the local interactions of individual researchers operating in their local research groups, and which exhibit different dynamics: the local, the global dynamics, and the contextual dynamics. This conceptualisation helps us understand the emergence and development of the team in a dynamic trajectory, and helps us utilise novel methodologies, such as ARIMA modelling. Further, it helps us understand the different governance needs of different types of teams