Academic Duos: How to Build Long-lasting Co-author Relationships

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Hello OMTers,

   As we all know, co-author relationships are an important part of academic life. While they can be both enriching and fun, they can also be incredibly frustrating and challenging. We decided to probe this topic a bit further by asking a longtime academic duo - Bob Hinings and Royston Greenwood - about their experiences working together. 

Bob Hinings is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta and received an honorary degree from the Université de Montréal. Royston Greenwood is the Telus Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Alberta & Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford.

1.       What do you consider to be the advantages of co-authoring (versus working on a solo-authored paper)?

BOB: There are a number of things.  First, one’s ideas are tested against someone else so the outcome is usually a much better product.  My experience, in particular, has been that the give and take of discussion and argument can be heated and strong but if there is an acknowledgement that the purpose is to get to a better outcome then the heat is well worth it in bringing more light. Second, I find a personal joy or satisfaction in working with Royston. I think it is part of my personality that other people are interesting and usually have better ideas than I do so I can build on their contributions and get great satisfaction from the process, even though at times it can be challenging. Royston is always full of ideas and it is a challenge to keep up with him.

ROYSTON: The biggest advantage is that it’s more fun. Bob supports a rubbishy soccer team in England (Notts Forrest), and I enjoyed telling him so. It’s been a bit harder in recent years because my team has not exactly covered itself in glory – but still…Similarly, he has this interest in toy trains (I think he calls them ‘model’ trains) – I ask you?! 

In my case, Bob Hinings was an established scholar when we first met (that’s my way of saying that he is an old man) and thus had considerable experience of how to conduct interesting work, craft papers, and so on. In other words, he guided my development. That is really important when you are first starting out.

Another advantage is that we tended to infect each other with enthusiasm. We did tons of field work together and would get excited about stuff that would come out of interviews etc. We spent much time on British Rail and I can remember how ideas for papers would flow – most of which never saw the light of day, but there was an excitement…(Maybe it was a reaction to the lousy BR coffee)

I like to think that we brought – and still bring - slightly different and yet complementary skills to the table. Bob was a sociologist, whereas I was trained as a political scientist. And Bob is actually quite skilled at quant stuff whereas for me the only interesting numbers are usually at the bottom of the page. Having said that, I’m not sure how important it is to have complementary skills – working together is simply more fun.

2.       What was your first project together? How did you get involved in this project?

BOB: Our first project began in 1973 on the reorganization of British local government that, amongst other things produced the Ranson, Hinings and Greenwood paper in ASQ, the 1988 book, The Dynamics of Strategic Change and was instrumental in the eventual production of the Greenwood and Hinings, 1996 AMR piece.

I got involved because Royston came to see me to ask if he could sit in on my MBA organization theory class to learn some OT.  After about the third session he told me that he and some other people at the University of Birmingham were negotiating a big grant to study local government reorganization but they really needed someone to lead the team who was experienced in organizational research.  At the time I was at the University of Aston.  I eventually said yes and moved back to the University of Birmingham where I had previously been.  The project offered all sorts of interesting possibilities.

ROYSTON: Well, I got this new job with the University of Birmingham. They advertised 12 new positions – those were the days!! – and I was the 12th appointment. Actually, that’s not true; the 12th guy turned it down and I was first reserve. The position was to teach local government officials about organizations about which I knew almost nothing and the Department Head suggested that I go down to Aston where this guy Hinings was giving 12 lectures to engineers. After the first lecture (boring as hell) Bob came and talked about the impending reorganization of the local government system and suggested that we might want to think of it as a research opportunity. We could study how organizations changed as they became larger (he was clearly thinking of testing some of the then emerging ideas of structural contingency theory). So we got a large grant and worked together. Basically, I was his research assistant. 

3.       What do you like about working together? How do you manage the division of labour during the writing and research process?

BOB: We have very complementary skills.  We are quite different in terms of personality and this works well for us.  We share some common interests in English soccer, which enables us to argue about the respective merits of our teams (Royston’s is Leeds United, mine is Nottingham Forest and they are much the better team). I think we have a good understanding of what we are trying to achieve; to make a substantial contribution to theory. Because we have been working together for so long there is an almost innate understanding now of what are relative strengths and weaknesses are.

The division of labour during the writing process is based on who is taking the responsibility for the paper.  Whoever is the senior author is responsible for the first draft and the responsibility of the second author is redrafting and commenting.  All of this involves many face-to-face meetings to work out the rationale for the paper and its structure.

With regard to the research process there is much less division of labour.  We have always both been involved in constructing samples, interview schedules, questionnaires, data collection and data analysis.  Indeed it has always been important to us that we should both be involved in everything so that we have a good understanding of the data.  But I have a deeper interest in the mechanics of data processing and analysis than Royston.

ROYSTON: We don’t have any rules about division of work. We talk, talks some more, and things more or less get going. I suspect that he will say that I boss him around a bit in order to get things done. But it’s not true…

4.       Were there any major challenges that you encountered during your co-authoring projects?

BOB: I think I can say that there have been no major challenges in the sense of problems in our relationship.  That doesn’t mean that we haven’t failed to meet deadlines at time, found that the research project we hoped to do didn’t turn out.  But none of this arise from difficulties between us, but from such things as taken on too many things (especially me), finding that we couldn’t cope with the amount of data we had collected, and so on. My major challenge has been keeping up with Royston’s pace!

ROYSTON: Yes – some silly reviewers.

5.       Do you have any advice for the new generation of academics out there looking to build long-lasting co-author relationships?

BOB: For a co-author relationship to be long-lasting it has to be like any other long-lasting relationship.  You have to enjoy working with your co-author and have a relationship that goes beyond the task in hand. You need a basic agreement on what is important theoretically but with enough disagreement to produce useful discussion. I don’t think a successful long-term co-author relationship can be built on a strong division of labour.  There will, of course, be differences in capabilities, but co-authors need to be able to understand and carry out all the tasks involved in research and writing. We found that spending a lot of time together in the field on every project we have worked on was critical to producing ideas and subsequent papers.

ROYSTON: Do it!