Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA's Teams

Drawing on a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA's robotic spacecraft teams, Janet Vertesi's book Shaping Science explores how the social organization of a scientific team affects their scientific practices and results. By examining the two teams' formal structures, decision-making techniques, and informal work practices, Vertesi demonstrates how deeply entangled a team's local organizational context is with the knowledge they produce about other worlds. This is the first book to apply organizational studies of work to the laboratory environment to analyze the production of scientific knowledge itself.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 28 November 2023
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

In Shaping Science, Janet Vertesi delves into a decade of immersive ethnography with NASA's robotic spacecraft teams to provide a comparative analysis of two remarkable space missions of the early 2000s. While these missions showcased robotic explorers venturing into the depths of the solar system, their commands originated from millions of miles away, overseen by a highly human team. By examining the formal structures, decision-making techniques, and informal work practices of these teams in the day-to-day process of mission planning, Vertesi unveils the profound interconnectedness between a team's local organizational context and the knowledge they generate about other worlds. This groundbreaking book is the first to apply organizational studies of work to the laboratory environment, offering a unique perspective on the production of scientific knowledge itself. Engaging and meticulously researched, Shaping Science showcases the significant impact that the social organization of a scientific team can have on their practices and the outcomes they achieve.

Dimension: 229 x 152 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226829555