Complexity Leadership Theory and the Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science

Volume 21, 2018 This paper is one in a Special Series on Transdisciplinary Communication Accepting Editor Gaetano Lotrecchiano │Received: September 29, 2017│ Revised: March 17, March 24, 2018 │ Accepted: April 9, 2018. Cite as: Mäkinen, E. I. (2018). Complexity leadership theory and the leaders of transdisciplinary science. Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 21, 133-155. https://doi.org/10.28945/4009 (CC BY-NC 4.0) This article is licensed to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. When you copy and redistribute this paper in full or in part, you need to provide proper attribution to it to ensure that others can later locate this work (and to ensure that others do not accuse you of plagiarism). You may (and we encourage you to) adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any non-commercial purposes. This license does not permit you to use this material for commercial purposes. COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP THEORY AND THE LEADERS OF TRANSDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE Elina I. Mäkinen University of Tampere, New Social Research Program and Faculty of Management, Tampere, Finland [email protected] ABSTRACT Aim/Purpose Given that leadership has been shown to play a key role in knowledgeproducing organizations, leaders of transdisciplinary science have received surprisingly little empirical attention. This study addresses the research gap by examining leadership in the context of a new transdisciplinary research organization. Background Drawing on complexity leadership theory—a framework developed for identifying behaviors that facilitate creativity, learning, and adaptability in complex adaptive systems—this study examines leadership roles and practices that affect the generation of adaptive dynamics in transdisciplinary science. Methodology The study is based on a longitudinal, qualitative in-depth case study on a newly formed transdisciplinary research center and its leadership team. The data includes ethnographic observations from leadership meetings and interviews with leaders. Contribution This unique empirical case contributes to the study of transdisciplinary science by shedding light on the actions of academic leaders as they try to support transdisciplinary conversation, learning, and collaboration in a new center. Findings The analysis shows that the leaders relied on both enabling and administrative leadership practices in a way that made them the focal point of transdisciplinary knowledge integration and thus jeopardized the creation of adaptive dynamics throughout the organization. Recommendations for Practitioners The study highlights the importance of having knowledge brokers and hybrid scholars in strategic positions at different levels of the transdisciplinary research organization already in its early stages. Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science 134 Recommendation for Researchers Longitudinal qualitative case studies that rely on different types of data provide rich information on how new leadership conceptualizations are implemented in organizations and the complex ways in which they relate to knowledge creation processes and outcomes. Impact on Society Transdisciplinary science has the potential to find cures to complex diseases. Understanding leadership in transdisciplinary science can help in maintaining transdisciplinary research activities in the long run and thus make it more impactful. Future Research The use of leadership roles and practices will be examined at different developmental stages in the transdisciplinary research process. Keywords transdisciplinary science, medicine, collaboration, research center, complexity leadership theory, knowledge integration TRANSDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE AND THE ROLE OF LEADERS Academic institutions, foundations, and governments have been investing in research consortiums that promote the mixing of disciplines (Boix Mansilla, 2006; Jacobs & Frickel, 2009). At first, these research organizations were said to rely on interdisciplinary research approach. More recently, the rhetoric used to describe innovative science has moved from interdisciplinarity to transdisciplinarity. Initially, the notion of transdisciplinary science was related to Mode-2 knowledge production, a term developed by Gibbons et al. (1994). The Mode-2 approach emphasized the applicability and the societal value of scientific findings (Gibbons et al., 1994; Ziman, 1996). Transdisciplinary science, more so than interdisciplinary research, tends to be directed at solving complex problems, which may enhance the practical value of research findings (Maasen & Lieven, 2006). It has been noted that transdisciplinary research efforts can result in a larger synthesis and the formation of a new intellectual community that is focused on an identifiable topic (Stevenson et al., 2013). Transdisciplinary research collaborations have developed at such an increasing rate that researchers interested in how they should be managed have had a difficult time keeping up. This is concerning given that the multidisciplinary, collaborative, and multi-organizational nature of scientific research demands a type of academic leadership that is able to nurture collaboration across different kinds of experts and knowledge boundaries (Shrum, Genuth, & Chompalov, 2007; Sonnenwald, 2007). In the context of nonacademic organizations, leadership researchers have declared that the relationships between leaders and organizational members matter a great deal for how organizations perform (Barge & Musambira, 1992). Moreover, both theoretical and empirical contributions in leadership research have demonstrated that leadership plays a key role in knowledge creation processes in nonacademic organizations (Bryant, 2003; Lakshman, 2007; Politis, 2002; Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006). Yet, the role of leaders in institutions of higher education has attracted little empirical attention (Bryman, 2007). This study addresses the research gap by examining, what kind of leadership roles and practices academic leaders of transdisciplinary science draw on when seeking to promote emerging transdisciplinary collaboration. The study utilizes the framework of complexity leadership theory, which has been developed to understand complex adaptive systems. Complex adaptive systems are places for actors to engage in knowledge-intensive cooperation in a collaborative network that has a common goal (e.g., Hazy, 2007; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001; Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey, 2007). Transdisciplinary research organizations can be characterized as complex adaptive systems because they similarly bring together actors from varied backgrounds, promote interdependence among them, and form dynamic collectives with common goals (Cilliers, 1998; Lotrecchiano, 2010; Marion, 1999). Understanding leaders and their actions in complex adaptive systems in academic contexts is important, because Mäkinen 135 leaders can be characterized as the “catalysts that possess the ability to affect organizational learning through social interactions in countless ways” (Lotrecchiano, 2010, p. 56). Importantly, those leading transdisciplinary research in academic contexts face particular challenges. First, cross-disciplinary research units are different from discipline based departments. Biancani, McFarland, and Dahlander (2014) defined interdisciplinary research centers as semiformal organizations that are temporary and fluid, and where participation is voluntary. The authors argued that university departments, in comparison, are formal units where organizational memberships are assigned as a term of employment. These disciplinary and departmental communities offer their members safety, familiarity, and a clear understanding of academic norms (Abbott, 2001). Instead, transdisciplinary collaboration requires that scholars view knowledge creation beyond their disciplinary units and consider the goals of a broader knowledge system (Klein, 1990). Therefore, leaders of transdisciplinary science have to attract scholars from departmental to transdisciplinary units and support their voluntary participation in the shared, transdisciplinary research endeavor. Once leaders of transdisciplinary science have succeeded in attracting talented scholars across departments, they face another leadership challenge: how to motivate scholars to interact across disciplinary boundaries. Some have conceptualized this challenge as one of cognitive incommensurability (Cummings & Kiesler, 2005; Dougherty, 1992; Lamont, 2009; Murray, 2010). Collaborators’ different disciplinary orientations, motivations, and professional interests can come in the way of effective collaboration. These challenges are highlighted in transdisciplinary science, because it tends to bring together not only academics from different disciplines, but also non-academic actors, such as practitioners, policymakers, and industry representatives, who all have their own reasons to participate (Maasen & Lieven, 2006). As a third challenge, after researchers are in place and collaborating in the transdisciplinary research organization, leaders of transdisciplinary science have to manage the tension between the need to innovate and the need to produce (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). In order to survive, complex adaptive systems, such as transdisciplinary research organizations, have to produce innovative knowledge rapidly (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). The creation of innovative outcomes requires risk taking, experimentation, and play (March, 1991). This can create a tension in a transdisciplinary research organization, because the familiar disciplinary research approach may appear as a faster path to productivity. In relation to their work on leadership and organizational adaptability, Uhl-Bien and Arena have noted (2018, p. 11) that it is important not to let “the pressure to produce overwhelm the need to innovate.” Leaders of transdisciplinary science, then, need to make sure that scholars do not fall back on their disciplinary ways of creating knowledge when there is pressure to produce outcomes. This study considers how academic leaders address these challenges and support transdisciplinary collaboration in a unique empirical setting: a newly formed transdisciplinary research organization in the field of medicine. The research center was formed through a partnership between a School of Medicine and a non-profit foundation. It brought together physicians, medical researchers, and scientists from different fields to study a problem—premature birth—that had been researched from different disciplinary perspectives for decades and yet, never solved. Premature birth could be characterized as an adaptive challenge: solving it would require new learning, innovation, and new patterns of behavior (Heifetz, 1994; Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). The data for the study consists of ethnographic observations from leadership meetings collected over the course of three years and interviews with the leaders at two different time points. I draw on this data to develop an in-depth, longitudinal qualitative case study on the work of leaders of transdisciplinary science (Yin, 2009). The findings demonstrate that when it comes to attracting researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds to collaboratively advance knowledge on a single research problem, the leaders of transdisciplinary science rely on different leadership roles and practices present in the complexity leadership framework (Hazy & Uhl-Bien, 2013; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). At first, the leaders drew on Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science 136 practices related to enabling leadership. They brought organizational members’ diverse perspectives together by forming heterogeneous project teams. Next, they modelled transdisciplinary behavior and took on roles as knowledge translators and brokers. While brokering and bridging practices have generally been shown to support innovation, in the context of the center, these activities began to reinforce administrative—instead of enabling—leadership (Lomas, 2007; Ward, House, & Hamer, 2009; Waring, Currie, Crompton, & Bishop, 2013). The leaders decided on promising research ideas, how resources were used, and assigned experts on projects. These administrative practices made the leaders the focal point of transdisciplinary knowledge integration and thus hindered the creation of shared adaptive dynamics. The paper is organized as follows. Next, I describe the main aspects of complexity leadership theory as it frames the analysis of leadership roles and practices in the new transdisciplinary research center. Then I describe the empirical setting, data collection, and data analysis. The empirical analysis covers the different roles and practices the leaders relied on when mobilizing transdisciplinary collaboration in and outside of meetings. I conclude with a discussion on what complexity leadership theory can add to our understanding of transdisciplinary science and the role of academic leaders. CONCEPTUALIZING LEADERSHIP IN TRANSDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE As organizations have become more knowledge-intensive and as they operate in an increasingly fastpaced environment, the traditional leadership models, often bureaucratic and centralized in nature, have been seen as insufficient (Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001; Schneider & Somers, 2006). Scholars have raised the question, to what extent can traditional leadership models support modern organizations, where the main purpose is to create innovative products by combining the expertise of different individuals? As a result, leadership researchers have begun to consider leadership as practices distributed throughout the organization rather than as actions of a few leaders at the top-level of the organization (Hargadon, 2003; Pearce & Sims, 2000; Yukl, 2005). The new theories emphasize a relational kind of leadership that focuses on dynamic and interactive social processes occurring throughout the organization (Drath, 2001; Uhl-Bien, 2006). Building on this work, scholars have developed new conceptualizations of leadership that are grounded in complexity theory (Hazy, 2007; Lichtenstein et al., 2006; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001; UhlBien et al., 2007). The purpose of this research has been to understand what leadership means in knowledge-intensive complex adaptive systems, where individuals collaborate and share a common goal. In this context, leadership has been seen as dynamically evolving, emergent, and distributed (Bolden, 2011; Dervitsiotis, 2005). COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP THEORY: ROLES AND PRACTICES Complexity leadership theory perceives leadership as an interplay between many forces: administrative, enabling, and adaptive leadership (Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). In order to create effective adaptive dynamics—that is, the generation of creative knowledge that exhibits significance and impact—finding a balance between different leadership roles is seen as important. The first, administrative leadership, resembles the traditional, bureaucratic, and hierarchical type of leadership (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). It is said to include practices such as building vision, implementing strategy, and assigning work responsibilities (Hazy & Uhl-Bien, 2013). While these are often seen as strategies for building stable organizations, complexity leadership theory recognizes their importance for creating managed chaos (Nag, Corley, & Gioia, 2007; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009). After all, the goal is not to spin out of control, but to stimulate innovation and creativity in a way that is in line with organizational goal (Dess & Picken, 2000). In their most recent work on organizational adaptability, Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) have argued that administrative leadership should be relabeled as Mäkinen 137 operational leadership, which focuses on how formal leaders enable the production of results through selection, execution, and efficiency. The second, enabling leadership, operates between administrative and adaptive leadership and it draws attention to the ways in which leaders can structure conditions that are optimal for problemsolving, adaptability, and new learning (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). It involves building an environment where diversity is appreciated and work groups are structured to enable interaction and collaboration. Enabling leaders are individuals who adopt behaviors for enhancing interactive and adaptive dynamics (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). They can, for example, act as brokers who bring individuals, ideas, and resources together and support exchange of information (Arena, Cross, Sims, & Uhl-Bien, 2017; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). They also monitor the organization to better understand the different forces influencing the emerging adaptive dynamics. The third, adaptive leadership, is a complex dynamic rather than a role assigned to a person. It is an interactive type of leadership that underlies emergent change activities. Ultimately, all heterogeneous knowledge-producing organizations should strive for adaptive dynamics and adaptive leadership. As the authors noted: “adaptive change is produced by the clash of existing but (seemingly) incompatible ideas, knowledge, and technologies; it takes the form of new knowledge and creative ideas, learning, or adaptation” (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007, p. 307). However, later Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) argued that a better label for adaptive leadership was entrepreneurial leadership, which emphasizes the creation of new knowledge, skills, products, and processes in order to sustain the organization’s success in the long run. What is unique about the complexity leadership theory is that it does not ignore or deny the influence of traditional and bureaucratic tendencies. Instead, it suggests that by mobilizing enabling leadership, it is possible to find an optimal balance between administrative and adaptive forces. While administrative or operational, enabling, and adaptive or entrepreneurial leadership roles are described in different terms, they are all simultaneously present, entangled, and interdependent when leaders seek to facilitate innovation (Kontopoulos, 1993; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). CONNECTING ACTIVITIES Complexity leadership theory framework highlights the importance of connecting activities that can link ideas, information, people, resources, and technology in ways that scale novelty and innovation (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). Connecting activities are typically associated with enabling leadership. In practice, these activities may include knowledge brokering, joint training opportunities, and shared decision-making. Connecting activities are critical in the facilitation of adaptability and change in knowledge-intensive organizations (Arena et al., 2017; A. Taylor & Helfat, 2009; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). Indeed, knowledge brokering and bridging have been shown to foster learning and innovation in different professional contexts, for instance in healthcare settings (Lomas, 2007; Ward et al., 2009; Waring et al., 2013). While boundary spanning in collaborative knowledge work is known to be important, it has also been shown to be difficult to accomplish (Bechky, 2003; Haas, 2006; Huising, 2014; Kellogg, 2014; Majchrzak, More, & Faraj, 2012). In transdisciplinary contexts, a significant challenge is that the number of different boundaries is relatively high as collaborators come from, for example, academia, industry, and policy sectors. Furthermore, no matter which sector they come from, individuals have varying capabilities to facilitate boundary-crossing (Lotrecchiano, 2010, 2014; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). In relation to these challenges, Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) have noted that in complex adaptive systems connecting will co-occur with conflicting. In other words, conflicts are inevitable, but they can be productive if leaders simultaneously help individuals connect across differences and link up around adaptive responses (Arena et al., 2017). Both adaptive and enabling leadership can play a role in how conflicts are managed. According to Lotrecchiano (2010), adaptive leadership strives to de- Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science 138 velop collaborators’ conflicting ideas and perspectives into resolute outcomes. Enabling leadership, in turn, fosters interactions and interdependency and in this way supports the interactive and adaptive dynamics of complex systems. METHODS This study draws on a longitudinal qualitative research project on a new transdisciplinary research center in the field of medicine. A team of social scientists, which the author was part of, was given access to study the center, because the leaders of the transdisciplinary research organization were convinced that a sociological understanding of the center’s evolution would provide important insights on how the conduct of transdisciplinary science developed over time. The transdisciplinary research center was located in a research university in the United States. The center was formed through a partnership between the university’s School of Medicine and a nonprofit foundation. Senior scholars from the School of Medicine—who later became the center’s leadership team—wrote a research proposal to form a transdisciplinary research center focusing on premature birth. The center’s mission was to create new knowledge about premature birth through a transdisciplinary team science approach. The goal was to study and understand what leads to premature birth and ultimately translate this research into clinical interventions and policy changes. The initial organizational setup included four transdisciplinary research teams, a data collection team, and a leadership team. Each of the transdisciplinary research teams had a methodological focus based on the team leader’s research area and laboratory, but whose participants came from different disciplines. The team of social scientists collected data on the center for almost three years since its formation in the summer of 2011. The team observed and recorded all of the meetings the center organized during this time for different teams: four transdisciplinary research teams, data collection team, and leadership team. This study focuses on observations from the leadership meetings and interviews with the leaders, but the analysis is also influenced by the author’s broader understanding of the center’s transdisciplinary work and how it evolved over time (Mäkinen, 2015). FOUR TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH TEAMS AND A DATA COLLECTION TEAM The center had four transdisciplinary research teams: placenta team, premature birth pattern team, bioinformatics team, and microbiome team. Table 1 characterizes the four teams according to their focus, core research fields, and types of data the scientists worked with. First, the placenta team studied the role of placental cells in premature birth and focused on cases of placental failure. The team leader was a geneticist and her main collaborators (four women) came from the fields of genetics, OB-GYN, and pathology. During the data collection period, the team organized only four meetings and each of them lasted about 90 minutes. Funding for the project was cut after the first year and the reasons for these outcomes are analyzed in a separate study. Second, the premature birth pattern team identified geographical and temporal premature birth trends in the United States birth record dataset by using cluster analysis approaches. The team was led by a computer scientist and the team members (six men and one woman) included statisticians, epidemiologists, and clinicians and medical researchers from OB-GYN, neonatology, and pediatrics. During the data collection period, the team organized 28 meetings, which lasted about 90 minutes each. Third, the bioinformatics team studied which biological markers were associated with pregnancy related diseases. The team was led by a bioinformatician and most of the project’s analytical work was done by bioinformaticians (two men and one woman). However, there were also clinicians and medical researchers from OB-GYN and pediatrics who regularly attended meetings and contributed Mäkinen 139 to the project (three men). During the data collection period, the team organized 12 meetings, each meeting lasting about 90 minutes. Fourth, the microbiome team explored how changes in the mothers’ microbial communities over the course of pregnancy contributed to premature birth. The team was led by a microbiologist and its members included scientists from microbiology, immunology, and epidemiology (four men and one woman). During the data collection period, the team organized five meetings, which lasted 90 minutes each. As for the first 18 months into the project the team had to focus on collecting microbiome samples from pregnant women, most of their research activities were discussed in the data collection meetings. These meetings were organized 31 times and each meeting lasted about 90 minutes. Table 1: Overview of the transdisciplinary teams. Placenta Team Premature Birth Pattern Team Bioinformatics Team Microbiome Team Focus Studying the role of placenta in premature birth Identifying geographical and temporal premature birth trends in the United States Examining biological markers associated with pregnancy related diseases Investigating the relationship between pregnant woman’s bacterial communities and birth outcomes Core Fields Genetics; Obstetrics-Gynecology; Pathology Statistics; Computer science; ObstetricsGynecology; Pediatrics; Epidemiology; Neonatology Bioinformatics; ObstetricsGynecology; Pediatrics Microbiology; Immunology; Epidemiology Data Stored placental tissue samples The United States birth record dataset Publicly available biological sample repositories Weekly sampling of women’s body sites Because the transdisciplinary research center did not have its own building, the meetings became an important strategy for supporting collaboration across disciplines. The regularly organized meetings were opportunities for interaction as well as contexts for influencing how researchers should behave as members of the new transdisciplinary research organization (Kunda, 1992; Owen-Smith, 2001). As all the center related meetings were scheduled for Wednesdays, that day became quickly known as “Prematurity Wednesday”. The meetings were also organized in the same seminar room, so the space became associated with center related activities. These features helped create a sense of belonging among the researchers. When observing the meetings, social scientists arrived to the seminar room in a similar manner as the other meeting attendees. Before the meetings began, they found a seat around the oval-shaped table or in a chair located by the walls of the seminar room, depending on how crowded the room was. Like many of the participating researchers, the social scientists used laptops for notetaking. The notetaking practice followed the well-known ethnographic method: systematic jotting down and writing up observations (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). In addition, behaving in this way in the meetings, the social scientists became seen as the usual, although silent, participants who never missed a meeting. Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science 140 Analysis of meeting data The research strategy for analyzing the meeting data was in line with ethnography of communication. Ethnography of communication allows for inductive analysis of the naturally occurring discourse of the organizational scene (B. C. Taylor & Trujillo, 2001). It involves identifying a unit of communication practice for analysis, such as meeting talk, and then generating data about that practice through, for instance, observation, recording, and interviewing. Scholars who study meeting talk often supplement their analysis with ethnographic observation, as was done in this case (Schwartzman, 1989). Furthermore, meeting talk in the context of the four transdisciplinary research teams was analyzed chronologically to capture how transdisciplinary science and the teams’ collaborative processes developed over time. In other words, data on each of the 49 meetings were analyzed in order to capture relations between events, decisions, and actions over the course of the study period (Langley, 1999). LEADERSHIP TEAM As part of this previously described project on the transdisciplinary research center, data was collected also on the leadership team. This data has not been analyzed before the present study, however. The center’s leadership team consisted of five senior academics (all male) and one administrator (female). The academics represented different medical and scientific fields. They were tenured and established scholars in neonatology, pediatrics, OB-GYN, and epidemiology. The leaders had certain objectives for jumpstarting transdisciplinary collaboration in the center. First, it was essential to create a context for transdisciplinary conversations that went beyond the established lines of research that had dominated premature birth investigation for decades. Second, the shared team meetings were seen as the most likely context in which transdisciplinary interactions would take place. These meetings allowed the leaders to monitor how transdisciplinary collaboration was progressing and use different leadership roles and practices to promote the creation of adaptive dynamics. In an effort to exchange ideas and plan the center’s activities, the leaders organized weekly meetings also for their own group. The meetings were always held at the same time and on the same day in the seminar room located at the School of Medicine. In these meetings, the leaders discussed issues relating to the management of the center. In their leader roles, they were responsible for a number of things, such as: - making sure scientific progress was made in each team - identifying and attracting new talents into the teams - mentoring junior researchers - fundraising together with the foundation - preparing annual progress reports - determining annual research budgets While important decisions were discussed among the whole leadership team, certain roles and tasks were given to individual leaders. As there were four transdisciplinary research projects to oversee, the leaders for instance divided the responsibilities of attending different project meetings. Similarly, some leaders worked more closely with the representatives of the foundation than others. Different tasks were divided according to each leader’s interests and capabilities. Observing the leadership meetings Data collection on the leadership meetings started in August 2011 and continued until November 2014. During this time, the author, or sometimes another social scientist, observed 128 leadership meetings in total. Although the plan was to organize meetings each week, during summer and Christmas breaks, meetings were often cancelled. The meetings were always one hour long. Mäkinen 141 The author arrived at the meetings some time before they began and stayed until all the participants had left the room. Therefore, it was possible to observe how leaders talked and interacted in and outside of the meeting context. In the meetings, the leaders were gathered around an oval-shaped table in a seminar room at the School of Medicine. When observing the meetings, the author sat around the same table taking notes, but without participating in the conversations. The author used her laptop to jot down and write up observations from the leaders’ meeting interactions and conversations (Emerson et al., 1995). In addition to note taking, there was permission to record the meeting discussions. These recordings were extremely helpful during the analytical stage as they allowed for double-checking that the content of discussions was understood correctly. Interviews with leaders In addition to the meeting data, the five leaders and the administrator were interviewed at two different time points: when the center was formed and two years after. The first round of interviews was conducted by two researchers: the author and another researcher working on the project at the time. The author conducted the second round of interviews, two years after the formation of the center, alone. On both rounds, the researchers relied on a semi-structured interview protocol, because the purpose was to obtain “descriptions of the life world of the interviewee in order to interpret the meaning of the described phenomena” (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008, p. 3). While each interviewee was asked the same general questions, there was flexibility in how the varied issues and topics they brought up were discussed in more detail. This allowed the different meanings that the interviewees assigned to leadership in the context of transdisciplinary science to surface. In other words, the interviewer asked different kinds of follow-up questions depending on how the informants responded to the planned questions (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). The interview protocol for the first round of interviews focused on how the transdisciplinary research center was planned and formed. The researchers asked questions, such as: - What is your role in the premature birth center? How do you envision enacting this role in the center? - What led you to current research on premature birth? - What are the teams’ and their members’ roles as far as you can tell? What are they expected to do? - Are there things researchers seem to agree on? What do they disagree on? - Can you describe some concrete ways in which the research will get translated into medical practice? The interview protocol for the second round of interviews was concerned with how the center had evolved during the first two years, what kind of scientific progress had been made, what transdisciplinary science looked like in practice, and what challenges the leaders had experienced since the formation of the center. The interview protocol included questions such as: - How have you experienced the past couple of years that you have been part of the center? - How would you describe your current tasks and responsibilities in the center? - How have your responsibilities changed during the past two years? - How has the center changed during the past couple of years? - How and where do you interact with members of the center? - How have you experienced the regularly organized meetings? The length of each interview varied from 1 to 2 hours and they were transcribed by a transcription service. After each interview, the researchers also wrote summaries that helped with reflecting on the main themes covered in the interviews. Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science 148 research ideas to the leadership team. One leader explained that the increased interest in the center’s premature birth grant forced them to deal with an overabundance of promising research ideas: Having funding from a foundation and having restricted funds on the NIH side actually makes it a little bit more likely that investigators that were otherwise perfectly fine and happy, because they had plenty of money, are now headed in this direction to see if they can find money to do work, right? That’s an irony of the circumstance, which actually provides incentive to people to congregate and begin to work on this [transdisciplinary study of premature birth]… The trouble is, we don’t have enough money to incent everybody. They can come and present a great idea, and then the next thing they want is money, and we don’t have enough. [ID-27] The leader was pleased that researchers from different fields were interested in the premature birth research center and proposed ideas for how to study the syndrome. However, there was not enough money to support every project, no matter how promising the research ideas were. Ultimately, the leaders had to decide what was worth funding, which was a great responsibility in a situation where nobody knew what was causing premature birth. Furthermore, while premature birth seemed like a narrow research problem, there were actually multiple different research paths that could have been taken to create new knowledge on the topic. The leaders had to make sure there was a sense of direction for the research effort, otherwise it would be challenging to make progress. Here is how one leader explained it: The biggest problem is that every [research] avenue looks exciting, right? It looks ‘oh my God, it’s so interesting.’ The leadership group, our job is to try and be sure that we keep the train going forward because otherwise we are going to be going like this [gestures a circle]. That’s difficult because everything’s exciting. Everything looks great, but you have to be able to keep focus and try to bring it all together. [ID-7] One strategy for keeping “the train going forward,” as the leader said, was the initial decision to focus on four transdisciplinary research projects. These projects were selected by the leaders already before the center was formed. But as these projects led to discoveries, new research avenues began to emerge. In many ways, this development could be seen as something positive. Multiple interesting research avenues could be signs of intellectual chaos that could lead to more creativity and development (Nonanka & Yamanouchi, 1989). But again, the leaders had to make decisions about which research ideas were worth the limited resources they had. One leader confessed that they had made some mistakes along the way: We have to think about, practically speaking, what are the synergies that we might fund? What are the people that are likely to actually work well together and make choices that reflect that? So far we are doing okay, but we have made some mistakes, too…. It’s selfserving their goals in trying to understand [referring to a project on infection and premature birth], which is what [a scientist] is interested in. It’s just not engaging enough for a lot of the people, so that’s money that we spent that probably is going to go nowhere. Now, it might ultimately get her a grant and it might get him a few papers, but I am not sure it’s going to contribute much to premature birth, to be blunt. [ID-27] The leaders did not want to pick projects only on the basis of what was a promising idea. They wanted to identify researchers who were able to work with others and create collaborative synergies across the center and its projects. They wanted researchers who were “open to new paradigms,” as was noted previously. While the leader said they were “doing okay” in their attempt to support the best possible projects, they had also made some mistakes. One project they had decided to fund was helping the individual scholar and her career, but not necessarily creating knowledge that would contribute to solving the health problem. Mäkinen 149 There was one leader who reflected on the administrative and operational power the leadership team had. He acknowledged that they were not only overseeing transdisciplinary research, but also making decisions about the research direction in a way that was not transparent to the whole community. Although, I think that the leadership committee is not only overseeing the general direction of the projects, but also cutting deals with prospective investigators kind of behind the doors. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know, but it’s probably— it’s not transparent. [ID-8] Administrative leadership can help in assuring that organizationally-prescribed outcomes are effectively achieved (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Yet, when a complex adaptive system relies on administrative leadership too heavily, the relationship between different leadership functions can become unbalanced, which can threaten the creation of adaptive dynamics. Moreover, prior research on organizational knowledge creation has noted that the power to say what is relevant and valuable knowledge should not be given to a few individuals in formal leadership positions (Essers & Schreinemakers, 1997; Gourlay, 2006). In the context of the transdisciplinary research organization, the leadership team was in a position to guide knowledge creation toward directions that they selected based on their knowledge of premature birth research, new discoveries from ongoing projects, and synergies among members of the center. While this behavior may have guaranteed the production of research outcomes, the adaptive dynamics suffered from a lack bottom-up processes, such as experimentation (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). DISCUSSION: ESTABLISHING ENTANGLEMENT AND INTERDEPENDENCY IN A NEW TRANSDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENT Complexity leadership theory provides a useful framework for analyzing how leaders of transdisciplinary science try to mobilize and manage collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. By identifying different kinds of leadership roles and observing how they are implemented in practice, this study was able to provide insights on the role of academic leaders in a newly formed transdisciplinary environment. In this concluding discussion, I reflect on the challenges for establishing entanglement of leadership functions and interdependency among organizational members in a new research center. Furthermore, I discuss how the lack of entanglement and interdependency can be used to explain why the leaders became the focal points of knowledge creation. Complexity leadership theory emphasizes that while administrative or operational, enabling, and adaptive or entrepreneurial leadership roles can be identified as distinct forms of leadership, effectively functioning organizations need them to work together (Hazy & Uhl-Bien, 2013; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Ideally, these different forms of leadership exist in a dynamic relationship—they are entangled together—and in this way support the creation of adaptive dynamics in complex systems. Rather than existing independently, different leadership functions and their interactions become entangled throughout the complex adaptive system (Lottrecchiano, 2010). In the context of the transdisciplinary research organization, it seemed that the different leadership functions were not sufficiently entangled. Instead, they formed a kind of leadership toolbox from where the leaders selected a function and related leadership practices that suited a given situation. In addition to weak entanglement of the different leadership functions, the leaders had a difficult time with fostering interdependency among the members of the transdisciplinary research center. Uhl-Bien et al. (2007, p. 310) noted: “While interaction permits the movement and dynamic interplay of information, interdependency creates pressure to act on information.” The goal of increasing information flow in a complex adaptive system is not enough (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Experts need to develop interdependency among themselves so there is a real incentive to collaborate. The leaders relied on practices that fostered the movement and interplay of different types of expertise in shared Leaders of Transdisciplinary Science 150 meetings, but in the new research organization the researchers were not immediately dependent on each other. The researchers may have had developed interdependency in their more disciplinary projects with their existing collaborators or graduate students. However, in the transdisciplinary research center, where collaborative relationships between people were not yet established, it was not clear where interdependencies could develop or where they were even necessary. The empirical findings reveal how weak entanglement of leadership functions and lack of interdependency among members of the organization can challenge the creation of adaptive dynamics throughout the organization. Immediately after the center was formed, the leaders were eager to support the creation of adaptive dynamics by relying on enabling leadership practices. They saw value in connecting activities, which are known to be crucial for the facilitation of adaptability and change in complex adaptive systems (Arena et al., 2017; A. Taylor & Helfat, 2009; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). In a new transdisciplinary research organization, knowledge brokering and translation were particularly important, because most of the collaborators were not familiar with each other or the problem of premature birth. Yet, quite quickly, the leaders faced a situation where there was a pressure to produce results. Transdisciplinary research organizations—especially when they are just established and have not yet developed stable knowledge creation processes—can struggle with jumpstarting collaborations that can lead to innovative research outcomes. The risk tends to be that the pressure to produce products comes in the way of the need to innovate (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). In this situation, in order to ensure transdisciplinary research outcomes, the leaders began to rely on an administrative leadership role. These challenges—connecting members in the new center and ensuring that progress was made— and the leaders’ responses to them made the leaders the focal point of transdisciplinary knowledge integration (see Figure 1.). First, when the leaders translated and brokered knowledge in line with enabling leadership, they became knowledgeable of all the expertise present in the center. Second, they used the gained knowledge to broker expertise and people on transdisciplinary research projects. Third, they assessed research ideas and decided which projects to support. Figure 1. Leadership roles, practices, and point of transdisciplinary knowledge integration Leaders becoming the focal point of knowledge integration has consequences for a system’s adaptive dynamics. Lotrecchiano (2010) has stated that successful transdisciplinary environments require knowledge feedback loops that run throughout the organization on multiple levels. If formal leaders act as the focal points of knowledge integration, the knowledge feedback loop is not likely to draw on the expertise of all organizational members in an optimal way. Similarly, in relation to facilitating adaptive processes, Uhl-Bien and Arena (2018) emphasize the importance of both top-down and bottom-up processes, which need to be integrated in a dynamic way. It is important to remember, though, that the empirical context of the present study sheds light on the challenges of building adaptive dynamics in a new transdisciplinary center. Despite the tendency of the leaders to take charge of transdisciplinary knowledge creation in these early stages, the center’s future with regards to transdisciplinary success remains to be seen. In other words, the discussed findings increase our understanding of what goes on in recently established transdisciplinary enviEnabling and administrative leadership functions Knowledge translation and brokering; Management of research projects Leaders as the focal point of transdisciplinary knowledge integration Mäkinen 151 ronments, but they do not presume a long-term outcome for the center. This is reasonable given that the developmental path from basic science to new medical solutions is slow and can take up to fifteen years (Balas & Boren, 2000; Contopoulos-Ioannidis, Alexiou, Gouvias, & Ioannidis, 2008). Although in this empirical setting the leaders became the focal points of knowledge integration, over time with more collaboration experience, familiarity, and trust among all members of the center, transdisciplinary collaboration at all organizational levels is likely to become easier. There is also much to be learned from the present study on how to mobilize transdisciplinary collaboration in a new center. This study suggests that knowledge brokers capable of interacting at knowledge boundaries should be spread throughout the organization in strategic positions. A study on brokering activities in the area of patient safety by Waring et al. (2013) showed that those in more informal roles can be more effective at knowledge brokering, because they rely less on bureaucratic authority and more on professional and relational qualities. The leaders of the transdisciplinary research center could have recruited team leaders who were skillful at knowledge brokering. These individuals would have been in a position to form connections across projects and to generate interdependency more easily than the formal leaders. CONCLUSION Transdisciplinary research organizations are complex adaptive systems in the sense that they bring together actors from varied backgrounds, promote interdependence among them, and form dynamic collectives with common goals (Cilliers, 1998; Lotrecchiano, 2010; Marion, 1999). This study examined what kind of leadership roles and practices academic leaders of transdisciplinary science rely on when they seek to promote adaptive dynamics. The study utilized complexity leadership theory framework, because it provided analytical tools for understanding the role of leaders in emergent collaborative contexts (Hazy & Uhl-Bien, 2013; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). The study revealed that although academic leaders rely on different types of leadership practices, in an emergent collaborative context, finding an optimal balance between them is challenging. When the center was formed, the leaders drew on practices related to enabling leadership. 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Mäkinen is an organizational researcher specializing in innovation, collaboration, and teamwork in the life sciences. A major part of Dr. Mäkinen’s research focuses on understanding the varied challenges for transdisciplinary team science. She received her Ph.D. at Stanford University’s organization studies doctoral program. She has worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Management and at the Institute for Advanced Social Research at University of Tampere, Finland. She was recently appointed as an associate professor in the New Social Research Program at University of Tampere.