Science leadership: Is it what you know, who you know or who you are?

This paper examines the factors associated with the attainment of leadership positions of men and women academic scientists. Based on the literature, we develop hypotheses for three determinants of leadership: social relationships, reputation, and gender. Social relationships concern the importance of the network connections; reputation recognizes the importance of science ability; characteristics include individual traits such as gender. We test the resulting model on the likelihood of attaining three different types of academic science leadership - center leadership, university administrative leadership, and discipline leadership. Regression analysis uses data from a National Science Foundation funded survey of scientists in which social network, attitudinal and behavior data were collected to understand how social networks affect career trajectories of men and women. Findings show that while science reputation is strongly associated with center and discipline leadership, it is less strongly associated with administrative leadership. Also, large dense collaboration networks are important for center leadership, but the opposite is true for administrative leadership. Women are more likely to be in discipline leadership positions and less likely to be a leader of a research center or have an administrative university leadership position. Finally, having more women in the network reduces the likelihood of attaining discipline or center leadership positions. Conclusions interpret findings for policy and theory.