Project Details
Projekt
Multiple Competition from a Field Perspective: Structural Equivalence and its Consequences
Applicant
Professor Dr. Achim Oberg
Subject Area
Sociological Theory
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447967785
The theory of organizational fields hypothesizes that competition emerges when two organizations have connections to similar partners. Under such conditions of structural equivalence, these partners could replace the organizations with each other. Then, the two organizations recognize this substitutability and react with competitive behavior in order to reduce this pressure. Although this is seldom tested empirically, it is highly plausible in fields where outputs can be standardized and where organizations can be replaced relatively easily. In the field of science, which favors the pursuit of societal contributions and thus mutualism, structural equivalence could have other consequences: organizations such as universities or research institutes could collaborate or form alliances. As organizations in the field of science are embedded in several layers of relationships - collaborative relationships for research, public endorsements of other field members, and recognition from international partners - they can combine competitive and cooperative behaviors on each of these layers differently. This leads to different degrees of multiple competition. To study which consequences structural equivalence has under such conditions, the project focuses on three questions: (a) How does structural equivalence emerge in the network of research collaborations? (b) Do research organizations react publicly with competitive or collaborative behavior to structural equivalence? (c) To what extent do international partners recognize structural equivalence within a national field? To answer these questions empirically, three network layers - co-publications of German research organizations in the field of natural sciences and medicine, their self-representations in the World Wide Web, and their international endorsements - are collected, modelled, and systematically compared. This research contributes to the theory of multiple competition in higher education, institutional field theory, and dynamic network research.
DFG Programme
Research Units
