In this article, we analyse how variations in organisational conditions for research affect researchers’ opportunities for changing individual-level or group-level research programmes. We contrast three innovations that were developed in universities and public research institutes in Germany...

The aim of this article is to explain commonalities and differences in the responses of four national educational science communities to the same external stimulus, namely international comparative large scale student assessments that offered vastly improved comparability of national results...

Evolutionary developmental biology is a highly variable scientific innovation because researchers can adapt their involvement in the innovation to the opportunities provided by their environment. On the basis of comparative case studies in four countries, we link epistemic properties of research...

Bose-Einstein condensation is a scientific innovation in experimental physics whose realisation required considerable time and resources. Its diffusion varied considerably between and within five countries that were comparatively studied. Differences between countries can be explained by the...

Die qualitative Inhaltsanalyse beansprucht, zwei einander widersprechende methodologische Prinzipien (Offenheit und theoriegeleitetes Vorgehen) zu synthetisieren und darüber hinaus durch ihr regelgeleitetes Vorgehen die systematische Einbeziehung des gesamten empirischen Materials und eine...

This paper deals with the methodological problem of how to include material influences in comparative studies of research processes. Both Actor-Network-Theory and ‚Mangle-of-Practice‘ confirm convincingly enough that materiality must be taken into account in empirical investigations of...

Social entities create institutional frameworks, i.e. internal systems of rules which govern (but do not control) the actions of their members. Both scientific communities and scientific organisations are social entities whose institutional frameworks include rules promoting internal...