Academic research has become increasingly collaborative, not just in the hard sciences and engineering but also in the social sciences. In this paper, we review studies that have documented this increasing collaboration, showing that collaboration, especially in the form of co-authorship, has risen across the board in almost all academic disciplines and across institutions and geographic regions of the world. What accounts for this rise? We identify four potential benefits to collaboration: greater learning opportunities, gains from a more complex division of labor, enhanced motivation and discipline, and reductions in the development cycle of projects. However, four potential pitfalls can hinder the collaborative process: decreased individual productivity, partner opportunism, communication and coordination challenges, and conflicting time horizons. Because we think these problems can ruin a research project, we offer strategies on how to overcome them: clearly defining the scope and logic of the project, agreeing upon responsibilities, enforcing deadlines and giving and receiving timely feedback, and using coordination mechanisms that facilitate the collaborative process. We conclude by discussing the implications our review has not only for aspiring academics but also for the organization of academic enterprises.
This essay focuses on the emerging well-being and satisfaction of collaborative interactions. The authors start by posing the question about the factors that explain the predisposition towards collaboration and the perception of the challenge from the own personal point of view and own well-being. According to a transdisciplinary approach, this essay discusses the results of an empirical analysis made through a survey to a sample of 535 subjects, 488 students from the University of Bergamo and 47 entrepreneuts who participated in an peculiar training course offered in the same University. The research highlights some fundamental aspects of collaborative action, such as the altruistic and instrumental collaborative intervention, the interdependence between collaboration and competition, the positive approach to competition; and their relationship with happiness.
The article reflects on collaborative practices and coordination processes in health care. In the last decades these topics have gained greater importance due to the (at least partial) containment effect that they make possible on the growing fragmentation in the contemporary health care scene. The article focuses on the irreducibility of collaboration to its formal aspects, showing how daily collaborative practices and bottom-up coordination help to reduce the fragmentation generated by the proliferation of professional figures, specialized knowledge, organizational compartments and new actors. We will focus on some emerging forms of interaction that characterize care and assistance in two specific contexts that we believe to be particularly significant in the current health care scene: in the case of health and social care integration, daily informal routines and analogic communicative patterns strengthen interprofessional collaboration that derives from an institutional mandate (topdown); in the case of the patients’ active role in the management of the care network, the emerging and informal forms of coordination (bottom-up) are carried out through the invisible work made by patients and family members.
The introduction of managerial logic in social services has led social workers to have new skills and knowledge in the management field and extended the hierarchy of services. The present paper focuses on the myth of collaboration as a professional principle for social workers in the era of managerialism. Starting from the study «Social professions and changes in the welfare system» funded by the Regional Order of Social Workers of Piedmont, the point of view adopted is the one of the line managers because they work on the production line and on the border between the different professions. Through the analysis of the requests made by the professionals, of the distances that are created between the different professionals and of the crushing of line managers between the staff and senior managers, this work proposes to consider the myth of collaboration as resilient.
A focused scoping review of 53 research articles about foster care placement is presented. The scoping study brought to light a considerable body of research-based suggestions that can guide social workers and their managers in foster care policies and practices. The paper presents suggestions about macthign process among a child and a foster family, social work with birth families, foster families and children, contact and bond among children, their family and their community, contact between the two families, school and family reunification. The suggestions are consistent with each other. Different authors’ suggestions place a common emphasis on children’s, birth families’ and foster families’ participation. Social workers’ support is very important for a successful foster placement, whereby children are supported in having two-family affiliation and are provided opportunities to keep good contacts and relationships between their two families.
Political socialization is here interpreted as the acquisition of a symbolic code, a representation of the political world during a lifelong path. We adopt an interactive model of socialization between generations, with a view to considering plurality of belonging and of value orientations. Through political socialization, individuals familiarize themselves with the political system of their society, form their perception of politics and react to political phenomena. In the context of research on political socialization, «daily political life» appears to be underestimated. The research we present aims at exploring the process of political socialization at the micro-social level, observing in particular the perception of power relations and reaction to the political phenomena of two groups of children, involved in two case studies in Palermo.