Strategic organization of scientific research teams in response to a crisis

Strategy and organizational scholarship has long been interested in how scientific research is organized and managed to face strategic challenges. This issue has gained particular importance in light of the recent global Covid-19 pandemic. In this study, we examine how the collaborative structure of scientific research teams change over time at different stages of the pandemic. More specifically, we argue that during the early stages of the pandemic smaller research teams with fewer researchers spanning fewer organizations and countries respond more efficiently to the pandemic. However, at later stages of the pandemic the need for larger teams with more researchers spanning more organizations and countries respond more effectively to the pandemic. Using publication data culled from the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s foremost authority on medical research, during the first half of 2020 (the period corresponding to the global emergence and first peak of the Covid-19 pandemic) our results reveal that relative to the research teams of non-Covid-19 related publications, the research teams of Covid-19 publications spanned fewer organizations and fewer countries but had a similar number of researchers. Additionally, our results showed that over time the research teams of Covid-19 publications relative to non-Covid-19 publications spanned more countries but continued to span fewer organizations and had a similar number of authors.