The making of homophilic networks in international research collaborations: a global perspective from Chilean and Korean engineering

Abstract

As globalization has expedited mobility of faculty across nations, faculty hiring is taking place at an international level. Institutions and governments often perceive hiring faculty who were trained in different countries as a strategy for reaching the status of world-class universities. The major assumption behind this hiring strategy is that faculty who are educated in prestigious universities in foreign countries will bring cutting edge knowledge and networks that will lead to future research collaborations. Yet, a dearth of research empirically investigated the assumption that institutions that train future foreign faculty and those that hire faculty with foreign degrees will have greater presence in the international networks of research collaboration. Filling this hole, this study examines this assumption from an international perspective, using the case of industrial engineering departments at selective research universities in Chile and Korea. Based on the unique data that document faculty hiring (degree attainment institutions) and research collaboration (co-authorship), and institutional prestige (global ranking positions), we analyzed the relationship between faculty hiring network and research collaboration network, as well as their association with institutional prestige. The results provide strong evidence of the positive relationships between doctoral training and future research collaboration, and the strong presence of institutions with global prestige. These relationships result in homophilic networks that suggest a concern about a reduced diversity in theoretical perspective and research methods within the disciplinary field.