23052: Not All Brokerage Yields Benefits: Brokerage Subtypes and Performance in Scientific Networks (session 26412)

Winner of the OMT Division Best Social Networks & Organizations Paper Award

Designated as a “Best Paper” by OMT
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By bridging otherwise disconnected alters, brokerage positions have been hypothesized to be positively related to performance. Yet, dissenters note that brokerage comes with significant disadvantages in the form of heightened distrust and coordination costs. We contribute to this debate by theorizing about heterogeneity within brokerage positions themselves to contend that the prevailing structural view of brokerage is at best incomplete and potentially misleading. Instead, we argue that structural brokerage needs to be considered along with the (potentially overlapping) group affiliations of both broker and brokered individuals. Using a hand-collected dataset on 2.7 million papers produced by 21,115 U.S-based academic principal investigator (PI) scientists from 1982 to 2018, we find that in aggregate, brokerage positions yield benefits in acquisition of funding and production of impactful research. However, when we decompose brokerage into subtypes through the overlay of academic genealogies, we find that only those brokerage positions comprised of a hybrid of both between- and within-group brokered ties yield benefits. In addition, we provide theory and evidence that heterogeneity in brokerage benefits varies across the scientist career lifecycle. This paper contributes to the literature on networks and organizations by revitalizing the longstanding link between group affiliations, brokerage, and performance in knowledge networks.

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