ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to develop theory about the relationships between the scope of business research programs, the kinds of collaboration enacted in them and the scholarly impact of the research such programs produce. Managers can alter scope so that a few or many departments engage in active research programs. Program managers can encourage and facilitate extramural collaboration. It suggests that extramural collaboration hinders the efficiency of research, while enhancing impact. J. A. Espinosa, S. A. Slaughter, R. E. Kraut and J. D. Herbsleb report similar results for geographically distributed software development teams. Program scope is defined operationally as the extent to which publications by a university are dispersed among the different business research areas, weighted for the relatedness of areas. Understanding why a broad research program and multidisciplinarity are independent is likely to require data from primary sources, in order to understand the details of collaborative choices.
