Advancing the Science of Organizations: Work and workshops coordinated with the CASBS Summer Institute on Organizations and Their Effectiveness

我们周围到处都是组织：不仅仅是公司、工厂和工作小组，还有医院、学校和政府。鉴于如此广泛的领域，很大一部分经济活动，以及许多政治和社会活动，都是作为有组织的活动进行的。因此，有人可能会认为，学者们会积极地研究组织及其有效性的科学。在某种程度上，这是正确的，但该领域严重分散：不同的学科大多是孤立运作的；许多专业学校只关注他们自己的组织（例如，医院、学校、公共机构、企业）。与此同时，社会科学院系经常将组织科学视为其职权范围之外，然而专业学校的博士培养有时缺乏社会科学院系的深度。为了更好地应对这种情况，该项目召集了一系列研讨会和多学科合作，以推进组织科学并设想其未来方向。这些研讨会将利用由斯坦福大学行为科学高级研究中心（CASBS）的罗伯特·吉本斯（麻省理工学院）和伍迪·鲍威尔（斯坦福大学）共同主持的四个“组织及其有效性”暑期研究所已经形成的网络和专业知识。这个网络包括年轻的、解决问题的学者，他们从广泛的学科（例如，传播学、经济学、教育、管理学、政治学、公共政策、社会心理学和社会学）和非常不同类型的组织（例如，公司、政府机构、医院、法院、教堂、学校、警察局和社会运动）的背景下研究组织效率。这个小组不仅可以帮助想象，而且可以帮助实现组织科学的未来。参与者将被分配到小型的、多学科的团队中，并被提出NSF如何继续推进和资助组织科学的问题。这些团队将讨论组织科学的研究资金生态系统，包括政府机构（如美国国家科学基金会）、主要基金会和慈善机构以及大学中心。在确定有共识和分歧的领域后，与会者将就需要进一步阐述和综合这些建议的战略进行合作。通过这种方式，这些研讨会寻求两个相关的目标：招募年轻专家来设想组织科学的未来；并培养潜在的领导者和合作者来实现这一未来。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Organizations are all around us: not just firms, plants, and work groups, but also hospitals, schools, and governments. Given such a broad domain, a huge fraction of economic activity, as well as much political and social activity, is undertaken as organized activity. One might think, then, that academics would be actively studying the science of organizations and their effectiveness. To some extent, this is true, but the field is badly fragmented: different disciplines operate mostly in isolation; many professional schools focus on only their own kind of organization (e.g., hospitals, schools, public agencies, businesses). Meanwhile, social-science departments often regard the science of organizations as outside their purview, yet doctoral training in professional schools sometimes lacks the depth available in social-science departments. To better respond to this situation, this project convenes a series of workshops and multi-disciplinary collaborations to advance the science of organizations and imagine its future directions. These workshops will engage the network and expertise already shaped by the four Summer Institutes on “Organizations and Their Effectiveness” at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University, co-directed by Robert Gibbons (MIT) and Woody Powell (Stanford University). This network includes young, problem-solving scholars researching organizational effectiveness from a wide range of disciplines (e.g., communications, economics, education, management, political science, public policy, social psychology, and sociology) and in the contexts of very different kinds of organizations (e.g, firms, government agencies, hospitals, courts, churches, schools, police departments, and social movements). This group is well positioned not only to help imagine but also to help implement the future of the science of organizations. Participants will be assigned into small, multi-disciplinary teams and presented with the question of how NSF might continue to advance and fund the science of organization. The teams will discuss the ecosystem of research funding for organizational science, including government agencies such as the NSF, major foundations and philanthropies, and university centers. After identifying areas of consensus and disagreement, participants will collaborate on strategies that warrant further elaboration and synthesize these recommendations. In this way, these workshops seek two related objectives: to enlist young experts in imagining the future of the science of organizations; and to cultivate potential leaders and collaborators in implementing this future.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.