The aim of this article is to discuss the relationship between disciplinary diversity (multidisciplinarity) and the performance of researchers, exploring the moderating role of social capital. The article contributes to the literature explaining the internal processes of multidisciplinary research units and how they affect the scientific performance of researchers. Furthermore, the article explores the potential moderating role of social capital and how relational dynamics can mitigate the potential problems associated with multidisciplinarity. To test the hypotheses proposed, we performed a quantitative study based on a sample of 155 researchers in the field of academic management. Multiple regression analysis was used in the empirical analysis. The findings suggest that a positive relationship between researchers’ performance and multidisciplinarity exists (an inverted U-shaped relationship). Estimations also show that internal social capital moderates this curvilinear relationship, making it possible to achieve higher research performance at higher levels of multidisciplinarity.
Points for practitioners
• Research and development managers at supranational, national and university levels should consider promoting the formation of multidisciplinary research groups. Our results provide evidence that multidisciplinary research groups support higher research performance, at least to some extent.
• The research performance of multidisciplinary groups is assisted by the social capital of the research groups. Therefore, leaders of research groups should promote initiatives that allow collaboration and the exchange of ideas, knowledge and information among researchers, thus creating trust and increasing the internal social capital of the groups.
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