Our university library is currently reviewing Dimensions as a possible subscription, and part of my role in that process has been to test-drive its features under limited access. One I found especially informative is the researcher analytics function, which lets you generate a visual network of your co-authorship connections. Naturally, the first thing I did was run it on myself.

The network diagram confirmed what I already knew about my own career, but seeing it actually prompted this blog post. My network of collaborations has a defined structure – a central node, a small number of noticeably larger nodes, and clusters of researchers positioned at different points around the periphery. The more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of a figure I return to often in my teaching, and one that has shaped how I think about organizational complexity for most of my career.

Global virtual teams (GVTs) have been one of my own research areas for a long time, and I have never treated GVTs as a purely academic interest removed from my own working life. I live it daily. Every one of the collaborations behind this network has, at some point, meant coordinating across time zones, countries, cultures and the various working styles and expectations associated with cultural differences, and sustaining a working relationship with someone I may see in person once every few years, if that! Looking at this network laid out visually for the first time, showed me what thirty years spent doing things I study look like. Beneath the figure are things like sustaining collaborative relationships largely at a distance, across countries and continents, through a variety of evolving technologies, and occasional face-to-face meetings, showing my own long-term participation in distributed, boundary-spanning collaboration. And, it resembles the multinational enterprise!

The MNE as a Network

Anyone who has sat through my classes on the MNE has seen the Ghoshal and Bartlett (1990) figure of the firm as an interorganizational network. It depicts the multinational as a network of differentiated units: some large and central, some small and peripheral, connected by varying densities of exchange, resource flow, and information. The figure allows us to discuss various topics and remember the complexity of the firm as  a web of interdependent nodes of varying size, influence, and embeddedness, that need to be managed and coordinated.

Looking at my own co-authorship network, I found myself reading it the same way.

There is a central node, in my case me, since this is my own network and I am the reference point from which every connection radiates. Around me sit a handful of noticeably larger nodes: these are the sustained, high-strength collaborations or co-authors with whom I have worked often over the years. Then, further out are several  clusters or authors who collaborate with each other as much as they do with me, representing distinct projects, but still distributed all over the world. Some clusters correspond to a single sustained project with a defined group of collaborators. Others reflect looser, geographically concentrated pockets of the field, echoes of conferences attended, visiting positions held, or doctoral students who went on to build their own networks elsewhere. Some of the nodes are led by a single researcher who manages the node, others by smaller groups of researchers, still other nodes may have split over the years or at different times into subgroups of researchers working on different projects.

Just as Ghoshal and Bartlett argued that the MNE’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to manage differentiated relationships, some units tightly integrated and centrally coordinated, others more loosely coupled and locally responsive, a research network of any duration develops in a similar way. Some collaborations are analogous to wholly owned, heavily resourced subsidiary leading to high-strength, high-frequency scholarly output. Others are closer to an arm’s-length alliance: a single joint project, valuable and often ongoing in spirit, but not structurally central to the whole. There are centers of excellence that researchers gravitate towards, and there are also outliers on the periphery.

Thirty Years of Networking

A network built over three decades is not just a record of whom you have published with. It tells a story that you can’t show on your CV. It’s the capacity to build, sustain, and manage scholarly relationships across institutional and national boundaries, repeatedly, over a long period, without those relationships collapsing under the weight of distance, time zones, different institutional requirements, or normal friction of collaborative work. Anyone who has tried to keep a multi-country project moving toward a shared deadline knows this is a genuinely nontrivial managerial achievement, like what MNE scholars call the challenge of coordinating a differentiated network: aligning incentives, maintaining trust, and keeping communication open across units that don’t share reporting lines.

So, the size and strength of the nodes in the network tell a story. The large nodes represent relationships that have survived multiple projects, multiple career transitions on both sides, and, in some cases, multiple decades. They also represent the ability to lead as well as work with and within large groups and subgroups of researchers. The breadth of the clusters represents access, the ability to draw collaborators from a wide geographic and disciplinary base. And keep in mind that this drawing represents only the network of published work. Behind this are many more similar networks of works in progress or works that never got published.

Putting your own network to work for career advancement

Although the analogy of my own network is interesting, I also think that presenting it can be practically advantageous, particularly  for anyone assembling a promotion or tenure case that asks for evidence of international collaboration, research leadership, and sustained impact.

A co-authorship network graph shows something publication lists can’t. Often promotion committees try to understand what kind of collaborator or research leader you have been, not just how much you’ve published. And the network analysis can help to articulate this, in narrative form, and link it to the things that committees  are looking for:

Large, high-strength nodes can be explained as evidence of leadership on major projects. If a particular collaborator represents a large node, tied to a specific funded grant or multi-year research programme, that is an opportunity to describe explicitly whether you initiated the project, held the lead investigator role, or served as a coordinating partner across sites. The node size becomes a visual anchor for what otherwise might just be a line on the CV. It can show more substantial and sustained partnerships in a much larger network.

Distinct geographic or institutional clusters can be mapped directly onto specific international projects, e.g., this group of collaborators reflects a funded cross-national study, that one reflects a standing collaboration with colleagues at institution X. Rather than stating that you have “extensive international collaboration,” the network lets you point to the shape of that claim and then substantiate each cluster with the actual project, funder, and outcome behind it.

The breadth of the network as a whole, the number of distinct collaborators and countries represented, becomes evidence of embeddedness in the international scholarly community. It is otherwise hard to demonstrate except through more lists, of editorial boards, invited talks, other service roles. A wide, well-populated network with real depth in a substantial share of its connections, as opposed to numerous one-off collaborations (breadth + depth), tells a promotion committee that this is a researcher other researchers keep choosing to work with.

A stable, non-fragmenting network over many years speaks to something difficult to measure, but important: the capacity to manage complex, multi-party collaborative relationships over time. Anyone who has coordinated a multi-country data collection, negotiated authorship order across a dozen contributors, or kept a project going through staff (coauthor) turnover, changing institutional expectations, funding availability, and the usual challenges of international collaboration knows that this is a real skill, that requires tenacity, and a long list of skills, leadership and communication being among the top. And, albeit on a different scale, it is analogous to the challenges MNE managers face in coordinating a network of differentiated, often geographically dispersed units.

This also describes what a global virtual team is: a group of people, geographically dispersed and rarely if ever co-located, working toward a shared goal across time zones, cultures, and often disciplines, coordinated mainly through virtual means rather than face-to-face contact. Every cluster here was developed and sustained in this way. Holding a project together under those conditions, whether as lead author, project PI or a collaborator, speaks volumes.

A Closing Thought

I did not expect that reviewing a bibliometric tool would take me back to a thirty-year-old organizational theory figure I show my students or prompt reflection on my own networks and their impact. It has also provided some things to think about for early career researchers or anyone who needs to give a narrative account of their research contribution. This is far more interesting than simply listing achievements. It tells a genuinely richer story about a research career than outputs or citation counts alone.

For anyone wondering how to make an international collaborative record visible and understandable to a committee, I would suggest the same exercise: run the network, find your own large nodes and clusters, and ask what projects and collaborations lie within each node and what research leadership skills and impact each one represents. And if what you find is several global virtual teams sitting inside your own multinational-shaped network, you likely have no difficulty tying them into your institutional priorities, and no shortage of impact stories to tell!

References

Ghoshal, S., & Bartlett, C. A. (1990). The multinational corporation as an interorganizational network. Academy of Management Review, 15(4): 603-625.