Abstract
This is the second of two articles that aim at contributing to the understanding of the development of the nursing discipline in Sweden. This article will describe the development of nursing as a social system. Interviews and written accounts of experiences as nurse researchers representing four generations were transcribed. A qualitative content analysis of the material reveals that discipline of nursing as a social system has both informal and structural dimensions describing patterns of communication, collaboration and power relationships in each of these dimensions. These dimensions interact with each other in the development of nursing as a discipline. Compared to the first generation nurse researcher, the findings indicate that nurse researchers today may be experiencing difficulty in maintaining an informal supportive network that was significant in the early years of development of nursing as a science. The informal collaboration, patterns of communication and hierarchical system seem to be replaced by the formal structuring of nursing research.