Inter-disciplinary research (IDR) is being promoted by federal agencies and universities nationwide because it presumably spurs transformative, innovative science. In this paper we bring empirical data to assess whether IDR is indeed beneficial, and whether costs accompany potential benefits. Existing research highlights this tension: whereas the innovation literature suggests that spanning disciplines is beneficial because it allows scientists to see connections across fields, the categories literature suggests that spanning disciplines is penalized, because the resulting research may be lower quality or confusing to place. To investigate this, we empirically distinguish production and reception effects and we highlight a new production penalty: cognitive and collaborative challenges associated with IDR may result in slower progress, hurdles during peer review, and lower productivity (though not necessarily lower quality). We compile and analyze data on almost 900 research center-based scientists and their 32,000 published articles. Using an innovative measure of IDR that considers the similarity of the disciplines spanned, we document both penalties (fewer papers published) and benefits (increased visibility) associated with IDR, and show that it is a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. These costs and benefits depend on characteristics of the field and a scientist's place in it. Leahey, Beckman, and Stanko July 2015 3 Prominent but Less Productive: The Impact of Interdisciplinarity on Scientists' ResearchBecause of its expected benefits to science and society (Rhoten and Parker 2004;Sanz, Bordons, and Zulueta 2001), scholars increasingly engage in an interdisciplinary mode of research, which "integrates perspectives, information, data, techniques, tools, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines" Universities are reorganizing to facilitate interdisciplinary research (IDR) by developing crossdisciplinary problem-focused centers and funding cross-department and cross-college research initiatives (Biancani, McFarland, and Dahlander in press;Pray 2002). And since the mid-1980s, the National Science Foundation has supported cross-cutting funding opportunities and interdisciplinary research centers. Scientists laud IDR as a 'progressive' 'hot topic' that is 'running rampant;' arguably one 'must be interdisciplinary to be world-class' (Pray 2002). But evidence in support of this contention is sparse and "relatively little research on many of the underlying issues has been conducted" (Jacobs and Frickel 2009: 44). In particular, systematic investigation of IDR's effects on scientific careers has been neglected. What are the professional costs and benefits of engaging in IDR?To understand the impact of IDR on scientists' careers, we draw on two strands of organizational theory. The first documents the innovative benefits of joining diverse ideas across domains. The core idea can be found in theories of diversity, brokerage, and innovation (Burt 2004;Singh and Fleming 2010): pooling non-redund...

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In this paper, we explore the question of how an employee's family role identification, as driven by family structure (marital and parental status combined), affects their leadership behaviors at work. Using survey data from working professionals and executives pursuing a Master of Business Administration degree, we found that, as expected, those respondents who were both married and had children reported higher levels of family role identification relative to other respondents. Also, we found evidence of an indirect effect of family structure on leadership behaviors such that being married with children was indirectly associated with higher supervisor ratings of the respondents’ leadership behaviors via family role identification and the transfer of resources from the family role to the work role. Further, this indirect effect was stronger for women than for men. Contrary to traditional expectations, and consistent with enrichment theorizing, our findings suggest that investment in the family role can enhance employees’ display of valuable leadership behaviors in the workplace.

T his paper extends the job characteristics model (JCM) to address virtual work design. We argue that the effects of critical job characteristics (task significance, autonomy, and feedback) on psychological states (experienced meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results) differ depending on two important elements of virtuality and their interactions with important social mechanisms: individual experiences of electronic dependence and its interaction with intimacy and the interaction of copresence with identification. Findings across 177 workers from a variety of settings varying in industry, size, and structure supported several moderating effects of virtuality and three-way interactions that included intimacy and identification, suggesting important modifications of the JCM. In addition, effects were not uniformly parallel for both elements of virtuality, emphasizing the need to differentiate between the effects of electronic dependence and copresence. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.