Practice lens of coordination and cooperation: a case study of large scientific collaboration

Large scientific collaborations are pivotal in enabling the discovery of new scientific knowledge and solving grand challenges of today. However, coordination and cooperation in large scientific collaborations can be hard to achieve. Moreover, despite current knowledge in the relationship of coordination and cooperation, it is still unclear how coordination can help to align interests to achieve cooperation and conversely how cooperation can contribute to creating effective coordination mechanisms to align actions. In this case study of the European Spallation Source (ESS), we study the coordination and cooperation of allocating tasks to build 15 different scientific instruments among collaboration partners using a practice lens. In this study, we found how practices of actors in a large scientific collaboration weave cooperation and coordination leading to the successful allocation of tasks. We contribute to extant research by explicating the practice perspective of cooperation and coordination.