A multi-institution research program may begin as a group of scientists with a common scientific objective, but once it acquires substantial funding, employees, subawards, educational programs and shared infrastructure, it becomes something more. It has many of the characteristics of a distributed organization.

That distinction matters. Scientific collaboration tends naturally toward discussion and consensus. Organizational management cannot operate entirely that way. People need to know who is accountable for decisions, who must be consulted, what requires formal approval and what authority has already been delegated.

Ambiguity may remain harmless while everyone agrees. It becomes dangerous when there is disagreement.

Governance documents matter least when everybody agrees—and most when they do not.

Collaborative science benefits enormously from discussion, criticism and collective judgment. But that does not mean that every administrative or financial action should require a vote.

A center should distinguish strategic governance from operational management.

The Steering Committee should establish scientific direction, consider major changes in resource allocation, evaluate Center-wide performance and advise on decisions that materially affect participating institutions.

The Director and management team should then have sufficient delegated authority to implement the agreed program. Routine expenditures, personnel administration and implementation of previously approved activities should not repeatedly return to a large committee unless a predefined threshold has been crossed.

There must also be a mechanism for exceptional decisions. Major reallocation of funds, termination or creation of substantial activities, significant changes in institutional commitments, conflicts involving senior leadership, or matters requiring sponsor approval should trigger additional review.

The important point is not where any particular threshold is placed. The important point is that the threshold is written down before somebody needs to invoke it.

Consensus is a valuable way to set direction. It is a poor mechanism for purchasing a box of laboratory supplies.

I would now recommend for almost every large distributed research center the creation of a Finance and Resource Committee at the beginning of the award—not in response to a dispute.

Its purpose should not be to run the Center or substitute itself for the Director or Steering Committee. Its purpose should be to make financial information routinely visible, understandable and independently reviewable.

The committee should review budget performance, major variances, institutional allocations, personnel commitments, subaward changes, projected carryover and proposed material reallocations. It should also provide a defined route for consideration of financial matters involving potential conflicts of interest.

Routine decisions already contained within an approved budget should remain delegated unless they cross agreed thresholds..

Financial transparency should be routine enough to be boring

A suggested charter for a financial committee

• Membership should include financial/grants expertise, appropriate institutional representation and enough independence that it cannot become an informal faction of the scientific leadership.
• The committee should receive a regular dashboard containing approved budget, expenditures, commitments, projected year-end balance, major personnel effort, subaward status and material variances.
• Dollar and percentage thresholds for additional review should be established in advance.
• Recusal procedures should apply whenever a committee member's institution, laboratory or personal interests are directly affected.
• Minutes should document decisions and reasons, without trying to recreate every discussion.
• The committee advises or approves only those matters explicitly assigned to it; it should not gradually acquire undefined executive authority.
• Formal financial compliance remains with the responsible institutions and awardee.

Strong financial oversight is valuable even when nothing improper has occurred, because it protects the Center as well as the people running it.

A common reaction to concerns about governance is to demand that more decisions be brought to more people. That can increase visibility, but beyond a point it reduces accountability rather than improving it.

A system in which ten people nominally make every decision can become a system in which no individual is clearly responsible for any decision.

A better model combines high transparency with explicit delegation.

Budgets can be visible without being collectively administered. Decisions can be documented without requiring unanimous consent. Committees can question decisions without assuming executive authority. Directors can have operational discretion without having unlimited authority.

Good governance therefore asks two different questions:

Who should know about this? and Who has authority to decide it?

Those answers need not be the same.

Large collaborations almost inevitably create overlapping roles. A Director may simultaneously be a professor, an institutional leader, an investigator and the representative of one participating institution. Steering Committee members may make decisions affecting funding for their own laboratories. Institutional administrators may simultaneously serve the interests of the Center and their employer.

Those overlaps do not necessarily imply improper conduct. They do, however, create actual or perceived conflicts that should be addressed prospectively.

Simply stating or filing a conflict disclosure is not enough. The organization needs a mechanism to determine whether the disclosed relationship requires recusal, independent review, monitoring or some other management plan.

A conflict disclosed but not managed remains a governance problem.

Financial governance tends to receive attention because the rules are explicit. Scientific resource allocation can be harder.

Successful centers accumulate projects, themes, committees and commitments. Some continue to produce important science. Others reach their natural conclusion. Still others may have been excellent ideas when the proposal was written but become less compelling as technology, competition or scientific opportunity changes.

Stopping an activity is difficult because scientific programs acquire constituencies. People, students, collaborations and professional identities become associated with them.

For that reason, scientific review should be built into the organization rather than occurring only when resources become scarce.

Every major scientific activity should periodically be asked:

• What question are we trying to answer now?
• Has the field changed?
• What have we learned?
• What is the next decisive milestone?
• Are we uniquely positioned to do this?
• What are we not doing because we continue doing this?

The purpose is not to punish risky research. A center should be able to support projects that fail scientifically. The danger is supporting projects that no longer have a meaningful test of success.

A successful research center must be able to start promising ideas quickly—and stop yesterday's promising ideas gracefully.

One danger in a mature consortium is that institutional allocations gradually become treated as entitlements. The annual question changes from “What science should we do?” to “How much does each institution receive?”

That reverses the proper order.

The scientific portfolio should first be evaluated on the basis of the scientific opportunity and the Center's objectives. Resources should then follow the selected work.

Where possible, periodic scientific review should include people who do not directly benefit from the funding decision. An External Advisory Committee can be particularly valuable here.

Institutions should not own pieces of a research center. They should contribute to a common scientific mission.

Large collaborations need disagreement. Scientists should be able to challenge scientific priorities, budgets and leadership decisions. But disagreement needs a process.

Concerns about financial compliance should be investigated through established institutional mechanisms. Scientific disagreements should be debated scientifically. Personnel issues should be handled through appropriate employment processes.

When those categories become mixed, disagreements can escalate rapidly and become personal.

Challenge decisions vigorously. Investigate serious allegations independently. Do not confuse either process with personal conflict.

Leadership does not stop at the laboratory door

People do not leave their identities, families, values or personal circumstances behind when they become scientists or administrators. Leadership therefore also requires a culture in which disagreement over personal beliefs does not become professional retaliation or organizational dysfunction.

My own experience reinforced the importance of maintaining clear boundaries between personal values and professional responsibilities, protecting the privacy of family members, and insisting on respect even where individuals hold very different personal views.

A research organization should make expectations concerning nondiscrimination, professional behavior, confidentiality and respectful conduct explicit before a conflict occurs.

These lessons were hard-learned.

BioXFEL was a large NSF-supported Science and Technology Center involving multiple institutions and a distributed scientific and administrative structure. Like many successful collaborations, it developed governance practices while simultaneously conducting ambitious science. In 2021, serious concerns were raised by a former managing director who left the center concerning financial decisions, transparency and the relationship between the Director, Steering Committee and participating institutions.

Those concerns triggered two substantive independent reviews. The reviews did not conclude that every aspect of administration had been ideal. But they refuted the principal allegation that Center funds had improperly been repurposed.

Unfortunately that process took months of auditing, expenditure of over $10,000 from one of the not-for-profit institutes involved for one audit, and a breakdown in trust witin the center while the audit continued. It slowed research, and developed conspirital thoughts. Had the advice presented above been followed this could have been prevented.

An organization does not need wrongdoing before it needs better governance.

Fortunately there exists extensive documentation of discussions of the allegations witin the center membership, and a subset taking advantage of the situation. This serves as a case study for the role of good governance where individual actions may be compromised. Redacted material is available for research purposes, but  not provided from this webpage. These materials distinguish contemporary claims from subsequent findings. They represent different perspectives and viewpoints, expose individual discussions, and show how governance weaknesses can amplify disagreement in a large scientific enterprise. The recommendations given on this page follow from this experience - not one wished upon any center leader.

1. A written governance charter Who decides, who advises, who must be informed.
2. A Finance & Resource Committee- Routine, independent visibility into financial activity.
3. Explicit delegation - Operational authority within agreed limits.
4. Predetermined escalation thresholds - Major changes receive additional review.
5. Active conflict-management plans - Disclosure alone is insufficient.
6. 6 Annual scientific portfolio review - Continue, Expand, Pivot, Complete. Sunset.
7. Independent channels for serious concerns = Allegations are examined professionally rather than politically.
8. Documented decisions - Enough record to reconstruct why important decisions were made.
9. An empowered External Advisory Committee - Independent scientific perspective and periodic strategic challenge.
10. A professional-conduct framework - Scientific disagreement must not become personal warfare.

Design governance for the disagreement you hope never happens, not merely for the collaboration you have today.

The scientific achievements of a large collaboration depend primarily on creative people, important questions and the resources to pursue them. But those ingredients alone are not sufficient.

A center must be capable of making decisions, reallocating resources, resolving disagreement and periodically questioning its own priorities.

Governance should be strong enough to protect public funds without becoming bureaucracy for its own sake. Leadership should have enough authority to act without becoming unaccountable. Scientific programs should receive enough stability to attempt difficult things without acquiring a permanent claim on resources. People should be able to challenge leadership without serious allegations becoming instruments of ordinary scientific disagreement.

The most important lesson I took from managing a large distributed research enterprise is therefore a simple one:

Good governance does not compete with good science. It creates the conditions in which good science can survive disagreement, change and succeed.