Abstract
Despite the consensus on the “double-edged sword” effect of knowledge diversification on individual performance, little is known about the internal mechanism behind this relationship. Our study distinguishes between two dimensions of knowledge diversification (knowledge variety and knowledge dissimilarity) and two types of key audiences (the reviewers and the readers). Drawing on the optimal distinctiveness theory, we highlight the tension between the innovative benefits and the illegitimate penalties. Analyses of 37046 articles published in the 2002-2021 period by 16400 management scholars reveal that knowledge variety has a positive effect on scholars’ performance through innovation mechanism, and that knowledge dissimilarity plays positive and negative roles through both innovation and legitimacy mechanism, eliciting an inverted U-shaped effect. In addition, we disentangle the intertwined effects of the two, finding that combining both knowledge variety and dissimilarity is not conducive to boosting the publication counts, but can synergistically contribute to the citation counts. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.
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