Adaptation of Young Staff in Academic Teams

The changes that have occured in recent decades in both global science and Russian science have made it relevant to study the activities of scientific teams and the adaptation of new participants in them. Sociology of small groups allows us to problematise the process of adaptation of young staff in Russian scientific teams, contrasting individual and collective intentions. With the help of this approach researchers are able focus on the interaction, conditions of stability and effectiveness of collectives. The present study attempts to combine these two approaches by examining both the collective structure of scientific teams and the adaptation of specific participants - young scientists. The present study aims to identify how the adaptation process of young staff in Russian scientific teams is carried out. 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of 5 research teams (3 people each) from both SSH and STEM fields. The sample included representatives from three organisations: National Research University Higher School of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Conversation with three participants from each collective (separately) allowed the reconstruction of the collective reality. Data were analysed and collected using a grounded theory approach in the version of B. Glaeser and A. Stross. It is shown that the adaptation of young staff in Russian scientific teams consists in finding their place, realising and demonstrating what exactly they can bring to the activities of the team and how exactly they can be useful. Young scientists were subdivided into ‘internal’ and ‘external’ depending on the mechanisms of getting into a scientific team, and further analysed depending on this, how they are embedded in the collective reality, interact in it with supervisors and other participants, and realise individual goals. ‘Internal’ participants at the stage of entering the collective realise who they are going to and why. ‘External’ do not always know what kind of project they can get involved in, they need to make some effort to find their niche. Accordingly, expectations do not always correlate with reality: if a person is external, he does not always manage to find a use for his abilities, he may engage in tasks that do not fully suit him. In the process of activity in a scientific team, ‘internal’ participants are able to explain the reasons why certain practices and conditions have been formed, while ‘external’ participants cannot do so. Understanding the collective reality helps to overcome difficulties and explain them, to come to terms with them, to develop strategies to mitigate the impact of these difficulties on one's own activities. This paper provides further directions for research into the organisation of activities in scientific teams from the perspective of other actors (e.g. managers or those who have dropped out of these teams), as well as using methods of network analysis.