Knowledge production process, diversity type and group interaction as moderators of the diversity-performance link: An analysis of university research groups

In our paper, we explore the diversity-performance link in knowledge production and argue it to be the result of two countervailing effects (resource vs. process perspective). Theoretically, we show that the relative strength of the two effects crucially depends on moderating factors that relate to specificities of the knowledge production process, the type of diversity and group interaction. We empirically test our hypotheses based on an original data set of 45 university research groups from different disciplinary fields which are by nature expected to produce new knowledge and are faced with complex tasks. Employing traditional OLS regressions as well as non-parametric LOWESS analyses, our hypotheses are largely born out by the data. In particular, we find a U-shaped relation between cultural diversity and performance in research groups from the humanities & social sciences and a negative link between functional diversity and per-formance in research groups from the natural sciences. As the disciplinary fields proxy different underlying knowledge production processes, the implications of our study can be generalized to other settings and help derive general conclusions for the management of diversity and future competitiveness strategies in knowledge intensive economies

Do research training groups operate at optimal size?

In this paper, we analyze whether structured PhD programs operate at optimal size and whether there are differences between different disciplinary fields. Theoretically, we postulate that the relation between the size of a PhD program and program performance is hump shaped. For our empirical analysis, we use hand-collected data on 86 Research Training Groups (RTGs) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). As performance indicators, we use (a) the number of completed PhDs and (b) the number of publications by RTG students (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers). Applying DEA with constant and variable returns to scale, we find that the optimal team size varies between 10 and 16 RTG students in the humanities and social sciences. In contrast, our empirical analysis does not uncover a systematic relation between size and performance for RTGs in the natural and life sciences

Composition and performance of research training groups

This chapter analyzes how one particular governance mechanism affects the performance of research teams. We look at an external requirement for interdisciplinarity and internationality of Research Training Groups (RTGs) and study how their performance is affected. We expect to observe two countervailing effects with changes in interdisciplinarity and/or internatio-nality: first, increased performance due to an increase in productive resources and a second, decreased performance due to increased team problems (communication, conflicts etc). Since both effects are expected to vary with the disciplinary field of research, we separate our analysis for the Humanities & Social Sciences in comparison to the Natural & Life Sciences and indeed find different effects in the different disciplinary fields. Furthermore, we separately analyze the effects of interdisciplinarity on the one hand and internationality on the other hand. We conclude that the effectiveness of a particular governance mechanism varies substantially between the disciplinary fields and for the type of heterogeneity under consideration. Therefore governance of research should be either precisely engineered to a particular disciplinary field and a given type of heterogeneity or it should offer a menu of options that allows research teams to choose from according to their specific needs