The Scientist: Secretive, Selfish or Reticent? A Social Network Analysis

The central question of this paper is what influences collaborators in electronic work environments to decide what knowledge to exchange, how much to exchange, and under what circumstances. Are scientists motivated by purely selfish economic considerations, or is there a role for social relations to influence behavior? This paper develops an empirically-based theoretical framework based on Mark Granovetter’s (1985) theory of social embeddedness that helps to explain the conditions for knowledge exchange in Grid environments. This is an early analysis based on interviews with a small population of researchers in molecular microbiology, molecular biology, and cell signaling in the United Kingdom. We conducted a small, preliminary social network analysis of this group to determine what they exchange, with whom, and under what conditions. By identifying the role that social embeddedness plays in motivating scientists, we not only begin to understand the contours of knowledge and information exchange in e-science, but we can also develop reasonable expectations of knowledge-sharing patterns across individual scientists and laboratories.