Sociological Innovation through Subfield Integration
Sociological Innovation through Subfield Integration
复制标题
通过子领域整合进行社会学创新
DOI：
10.1177/2329496514540131
复制
发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
J. Moody
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
E. Leahey;J. Moody
跨域是否有益？它能促进创新吗？关于重组创新的经典研究表明，跨领域促进了不同信息的积累，因此可以成为新想法的跳板--其中大部分来自不同领域的现有想法的合并。但跨领域的制作和评估也是具有挑战性的。这里，感兴趣的域是子域。我们专注于社会学中的子场跨度，这是一个主题多样化的领域，其不同的子场仍然具有相当的渗透性。为此，我们引入了两种子场积分的度量，其中一种独特地解释了子场组合的新颖性。我们发现(在可观察到的数据范围内)成本很低，但回报很大：一旦发表，整合了子领域(特别是很少跨越的子领域)的社会学文章获得了更多的引用。我们讨论了这些结果如何照亮社会学学科的趋势，并为重组创新理论提供信息。
Is domain-spanning beneficial? Can it promote innovation? Classic research on recombinant innovation suggests that domain-spanning fosters the accumulation of diverse information and can thus be a springboard for fresh ideas—most of which emanate from the merger of extant ideas from distinct realms. But domain-spanning is also challenging to produce and to evaluate. Here, the domains of interest are subfields. We focus on subfield spanning in sociology, a topically diverse field whose distinct subfields are still reasonably permeable. To do so, we introduce two measures of subfield integration, one of which uniquely accounts for the novelty of subfield combinations. We find (within the limits of observable data) the costs to be minimal but the rewards substantial: Once published, sociology articles that integrate subfields (especially rarely spanned subfields) garner more citations. We discuss how these results illuminate trends in the discipline of sociology and inform theories of recombinant innovation.