The Role of Research Strategies and Professional Networks in Management Scholars’ Productivity

We propose a model of knowledge creation, transfer, and adoption based on theories of creativity and social networks. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 119 full professors in management departments at U.S. universities. We examine the effects that two research strategies, coauthoring and working in multiple research fields, have on the number of publications in each of three journal quality tiers during an 8-year period. In addition, we examined the influence that having strong ties and a dense network of professional colleagues each has on the total number of citations garnered by those publications. Results showed a heterogeneous pattern of coauthoring (distributing coauthoring activity evenly across a greater number of coauthors) is positively related to the number of publications in the highest-quality journals for the focal researcher. The heterogeneity of research fields in which a researcher works is also positively related to greater productivity, albeit in second- and third-tier publication outlets. In addition, we found that the number of strong ties in the focal author’s professional support network positively related to his or her total citation count, independent of the number and quality of publications. Implications for the social network theory of creativity, organizational knowledge theory, and models of management scholars’ productivity are explored.