The performance of researchers in multidisciplinary research groups: does social capital matter?
| Author | Fernando Martín-Alcázar,Gonzalo Sánchez-Gardey,Marta Ruiz-Martínez |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852320919487 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The performance
of researchers in
multidisciplinary
research groups: does
social capital matter?
Fernando Mart
ın-Alca
´zar
University of Ca
´diz, Spain
Marta Ruiz-Mart
ınez
University of Ca
´diz, Spain
Gonzalo Sa
´nchez-Gardey
University of Ca
´diz, Spain
Abstract
The aim of this article is to discuss the relationship between disciplinary diversity
(multidisciplinarity) and the performance of researchers, exploring the moderating
role of social capital. The article contributes to the literature explaining the internal
processes of multidisciplinary research units and how they affect the scientific perfor-
mance of researchers. Furthermore, the article explores the potential moderating role
of social capital and how relational dynamics can mitigate the potential problems
associated with multidisciplinarity. To test the hypotheses proposed, we performed a
quantitative study based on a sample of 155 researchers in the field of academic man-
agement. Multiple regression analysis was used in the empirical analysis. The findings
suggest that a positive relationship between researchers’ performance and multidisci-
plinarity exists (an inverted U-shaped relationship). Estimations also show that internal
social capital moderates this curvilinear relationship, making it possible to achieve
higher research performance at higher levels of multidisciplinarity.
Corresponding author:
Marta Ruiz-Mart
ınez, Facultad de Ciencias Econ
omicas y Empresariales (Universidad de Ca
´diz), C/Enrique
Villegas V
elez, 2, 11002 Ca
´diz, Spain.
Email: marta.ruiz@uca.es
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320919487
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2022, Vol. 88(2) 337–354
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Points for practitioners
•Research and development managers at supranational, national and university levels
should consider promoting the formation of multidisciplinary research groups. Our
results provide evidence that multidisciplinary research groups support higher research
performance, at least to some extent.
•The research performance of multidisciplinary groups is assisted by the social capital of
the research groups. Therefore, leaders of research groups should promote initiatives
that allow collaboration and the exchange of ideas, knowledge and information among
researchers, thus creating trust and increasing the internal social capital of the groups.
Keywords
diversity, multidisciplinarity, research, researchers’ performance, social capital
Introduction
In the organizational and management literature, there is a growing interest in
determining whether groups composed of members who are heterogeneous with
regard to relational-related and/or job-related attributes obtain better results than
groups that are more homogeneous (Van Dijk and Van Engen, 2013). There are
two opposing points of view that rely on social categorization and information/
decision-making theories (Van Knippenberg et al., 2004) and that can lead to
contradictory results. While the former viewpoint suggests that homogeneous
groups should perform better with regard to mainly relational-related attributes,
the latter suggests that diverse groups have higher performance in relation to job-
related attributes (Van Knippenberg et al., 2004; Williams and O’Reilly, 1998).
In today’s knowledge-based societies, research is largely carried out by groups
of researchers (Bozeman et al., 2013). Much scientific research is produced by
collaborations among scientists from diverse scientific fields working together
towards a common goal (Bozeman et al., 2013; Cummings and Kiesler, 2014).
Previous studies have shown that scientific collaboration increases productivity
and the impact of research (Bozeman et al., 2013; Lee and Bozeman, 2005), facil-
itating knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer (Inkpen and Tsang, 2005). In
academic research, multidisciplinary groups perform better than less diverse disci-
plinary groups (Cummings and Kiesler, 2005), at least up to a certain level of
multidisciplinarity. A key issue is to know how the performance of researchers is
affected by belonging to a multidisciplinary research group – an issue on which
empirical evidence is quite scarce.
The social capital (SC) literature suggests that the SC embedded in social net-
works influences the knowledge resources available to group members, thus affect-
ing performance (Chung and Jackson, 2012; Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). In the
academic context, some studies emphasize the role of social networks in researcher
338 International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(2)
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