The Impact Of The Extended Virtual Organizational Structure On The Performance Of Scientific Research Teams From The Perspective Of Big Data

The key idea of Simon's organizational structure theory is that the organizational structure should be established to meet the decision-making needs,and the centralization and decentralization should be compatible with the decision-making[1].With the advance of human society and technologies,the development of organizational structure theory has gone through three main stages: the real organization structure theory ? the virtual organizational structure theory ? the extended virtual organizational structure theory.Although the first two theories have drawn much attention in the management academy,the last one seems to be ignored.The extended virtual organizational structure not only has the basic features of the virtual organizational structure but also has the typical characteristics of informal organizations.In a word,this organizational structure has the following characteristics.(1)It is unnecessary to be set up in compliance with official regulations or legal procedures;(2)The organizational structure is loose,without rigorous rules;(3)Organization members can be located in different places;(4)The regional separation can be broken via the asynchronous communication between members.The extended virtual organizational structure has a long development history,e.g.,open-source software communities that provide public products and services.Ideology or shared authority is considered as a basis for the effective and continuous operation of this organizational structure.However,how to establish and develop an extended virtual organizational structure and how organizational performance is affected by this organizational structure has been unresolved.Because the scientific research team in university is found a typical extended virtual organization,this kind of team can be considered as the researched object.Besides,the traditional real organizational structure theory and virtual organizational structure theory are thought as the basis for this study.Furthermore,the distributed large-scale data collection,storage,processing,and analysis technology is used to explore how to establish and develop an extended virtual organizational structure and how organizational performance is affected by this organizational structure.This study has three aspects of functions:(1)It is academically significant to expand and enrich the extended virtual organizational structure theory;(2)It is novel to break through the traditional prototype of case analysis,from the perspective of big data;(3)It is practically valuable to provide suggestions and guidance for the management of scientific research teams in universities.In order to achieve the above research goals,the research process is elaborately designed as follows.First,the relevant literature covering organizational structure theory,the performance of scientific research team,and peer effect theory,etc.,is systematically sorted out.Second,a distributed intelligent search engine called Professor Hub is built to collect faculty information and research information from top-200 university's official websites located in the United States.The distributed large-scale data processing technology to create a co-authorship network,determine organizational boundary and structure,and operate feature engineering.Through the data analysis in the early stage,three main findings are demonstrated as follows:(1)There is a race and gender difference in the academy of the United States,for example,white male scholars monopolize the scientific research output in the field of computer and management;(2)Most scientific research teams are a composite of students(especially doctors),and the scientific research output is mainly contributed by students;(3)The organizational structure in most scientific research teams actually evolves throughout mentor-protégémodel ? mentor-team model ? team mainly model.Finally,this study steps into the stage of theoretical analysis,research framework establishment,research hypothesis proposition,and empirical research via big data.The details of the findings from this study are described as follows.(1)The establishment and development of organizational structure is spurred by a combined effect from the organizational environment,leader merits,and member merits.Based on the contingency theory,a framework of “the organizational environment-leader merits-member merits” and 12 hypotheses including intra-team virtuality are proposed.The main conclusions are suggested as follows:(1)The increase in intra-team virtuality can enhance team autonomy,the individual influence of members,which promotes to establish and develop the team-mainly-model organizational structure;(2)The prestigious universities encourage scientific research collaboration,which promotes to establish and develop the team-mainly-model organizational structure;(3)The gender and expertise diversity in scientific research teams can promote to establish and develop the team-mainly-model organizational structure,but race differences cannot;(4)Senior and white team leaders are inclined to adopt a team-mainly-model organizational structure.(2)Inter-team virtuality plays a significant role in mediating the development of the organizational structure of scientific research teams.Based on the start-up development theory,this study designs a framework of developing historical team organization structure and proposes two important research hypotheses.The main conclusions include:(1)The newly incubated teams are likely to inherit organizational structure of corresponding parent teams;(2)When affiliated with a common university,the new teams are more likely to inherit the organizational structure of corresponding parent teams.(3)Intra-team virtuality significantly mediates the impact of organizational structure on scientific research performance.Based on transformational leadership theory,leadership-member exchange theory,team autonomy theory,and interdependence theory,this study constructs a framework of mediating effect of intrateam virtuality and proposes four important research hypothesis.The main conclusions include:(1)The organizational structure of the research team evolves towards a teammainly model,which can spur the increase in the performance of research teams;(2)The effect of the mentor-protégé model on team performance decreases with the increase in the intra-team virtuality or the race difference.(3)Because the increase in intra-team virtuality would enhance the team autonomy,boost the individual influence of team members,The effect of the team-mainly model on team performance increases with the increase in the intra-team virtuality.(4)The organizational structure plays an essential role in mediating the impact of peer effects on individual scientific research performance.Based on the peer effect theory,this paper designs a framework called the mediating role of peer effects and proposes eight important research hypotheses.The main conclusions include:(1)There is a U-shaped relationship between the individual performance of focal members and the ability level of coauthors,which is a counterfactual result;(2)There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the individual performance of focal members and the ability level of coauthors;(3)As scientific research teams evolve toward a team-mainly model,and the competitive atmosphere within the team weakens,the U-shaped relationship shifts to the left;(4)The ability diversity,individual ability level,and intrateam virtuality can boost individual performance,but race differences result in opposite results.Besides,this study further confirms that team members can adopt two strategies to cope with peer effects:(1)Frequent scientific research collaboration with highly competent scholars;(2)Frequent scientific research collaboration with scholars with diverse abilities.Team leaders should adopt member allocation strategies to maximize the performance of a team:(1)Mix members with different ability levels,different ability types,and different genders;(2)Separate members of different races.A scientific research team with typical features of the extended virtual organizational structure is influenced by inter-team virtuality,intra-team virtuality,and team autonomy.For example,(1)As intra-team virtuality can weaken the role of a leader and strengthens the team autonomy,the team-mainly-model structure is easy to be established;(2)Intra-team virtuality can increase the positive impact of a teammainly model on team performance;(3)The reduced inter-team virtuality will enhance the impact of historical teams on the formation and development of the organizational structure of a new team.This study not only expands and enriches the extended virtual organizational structure theory but also provides suggestions and guidance for the management of scientific research teams in universities:(1)Encourage scientific research collaborations across different institutions,different disciplinary and different fields of research;(2)Encourage scientific research collaborations with highly competent scholars.In summary,three aspects of unique contributions of this study are suggested as follows:(1)Expand and enrich the extended virtual organizational structure theory,apply this theory to analyze the performance of scientific research teams in universities,and provide suggestions and guidance for the management of scientific research teams;(2)The extended virtual organizational structure are studied from perspectives of big data.Therefore the traditional prototype is broken through;(3)How to establish and develop an extended virtual organizational structure,and how organizational performance is affected by this organizational structure,is analyzed from different dimensions.