AbstractFour aspects of uniformity (discipline, institution, type of research and sponsorship) are identified as decisive in the organization and management of large‐scale research programmes: difficulties increase with increasing non‐unifornmty in any of the aspects. Environmental research is an example of a research area in which one has to overcome all of these problems, and this paper describes the authors’ experiences in managing just such a programme. Aspects covered include: the organizational framework chosen and its operation in practice, the selection of research goals, methods of data collection, and manpower and social problems in interdisciplinary research. The degree of generalizability of the observations in the paper is left open for discu