Hierarchical power dynamics in authorship conflicts: Evidence from German academia

Authorship conflicts in academia are typically framed as ethical failures requiring clearer guidelines or training. This study challenges this individualist perspective by conceptualizing authorship conflicts as sociologically structured phenomena shaped by institutional power asymmetries and epistemic cultures. Drawing on Lukes’s (2005) three views of power, it analyzes the mechanisms through which such conflicts arise and vary across disciplinary contexts. Using survey data from 1,640 research staff at German professorships in four disciplines (business administration, biology, mechanical engineering, and sociology), 22.0% reported experiencing authorship conflicts. Among these, 302 respondents provided narrative accounts of 338 conflict instances, which were analyzed using template analysis to distinguish power-based mechanisms from a distinct category of legitimate disagreement. Results show that power-based mechanisms dominate authorship conflicts—hierarchical enforcement (49.6%), normalized power (14.9%), tribute systems (10.1%), and systemic appropriation (6.5%)—alongside legitimate disagreement (37.5%). Clear disciplinary differences emerge, with mechanical engineering showing the highest levels of hierarchical enforcement and normalized power, while biology exhibits the highest share of legitimate disagreement, reflecting methodological diversity and genuine ambiguity in contribution assessment. The findings indicate that addressing authorship conflicts requires moving beyond ethics training toward mechanism-specific institutional interventions.