The Academic as an Entrepreneur: Real Options and Co-authoring in IS Scholarship

Academics face growing pressure to publish, teach, and serve. Drawing on the Real Option Theory, this article aimed to illustrate the importance of research teams and co-authors in increasing research productivity. Using publication data from nine leading IS journals (1992–2022), we investigated the heterogeneous effects of the individual coauthoring network on research productivity during three different career periods. Additionally, we surveyed 88 tenure track and tenured faculty about their institutional requirements for tenure and how coauthors were involved in developing their publications. Our findings suggest that research productivity benefits from coauthors with substantial publishing experience. Furthermore, co-authors with interdisciplinary research and diversity of domain knowledge contribute positively to research success. However, teams with various methodological skills can reduce the productivity of the publication.