Academic structure shapes and reflects institutional behaviors as well as the work done in, and outputs of, higher education organizations (HEOs). Despite this critical role, research on boundaries within academic structure is limited, even in work focusing on the relative presence of core and peripheral disciplines. We thus lack an understanding of the boundaries within academic structures and their implications for the work and outputs of higher education including knowledge creation and legitimation. To address this gap, we analyze a novel dataset on the formal academic structures—colleges, schools, divisions and departments—of 115 Very High Research universities in the U.S. Within these structures we focus on hybrid academic units, which span the core-periphery field boundary, to enhance our understanding of boundaries within academic structures and consider their role in transforming or maintaining the status quo in HEO work and in knowledge creation, legitimation and dissemination. To do so, we evaluate the presence and location of, as well as the fields and disciplines represented by, these boundary spanning units within and across HEOs. We also evaluate the extent to which hybrid academic units reaffirm or challenge the core-periphery boundary via a case study of the structural, programmatic, and leadership features of eight hybrid academic units. Findings reveal that hybrid academic units are present within roughly half of our institutional population and represent a variety of academic fields. Case study results show that hybrid academic units both challenge and reaffirm the core-periphery boundary within these institutions. Institutional and scholarly implications are discussed.

学术结构塑造并反映了机构行为以及在高等教育组织 (HEO) 中所做的工作和产出。尽管有这个关键作用，但对学术结构内边界的研究是有限的，即使在关注核心和外围学科相对存在的工作中也是如此。因此，我们缺乏对学术结构内的界限及其对高等教育工作和产出（包括知识创造和合法化）的影响的理解。为了弥补这一差距，我们分析了美国 115 所非常高的研究型大学的正式学术结构（学院、学校、部门和部门）的新数据集在这些结构中，我们专注于跨越核心-外围领域的混合学术单位边界，加强我们对学术结构内边界的理解，并考虑它们在改变或维持 HEO 工作以及知识创造、合法化和传播现状方面的作用。为此，我们评估 HEO 内部和之间的这些跨边界单元的存在和位置，以及它们所代表的领域和学科。我们还通过对八个混合学术单位的结构、程序和领导特征的案例研究，评估混合学术单位重申或挑战核心-边缘边界的程度。调查结果表明，混合学术单位存在于大约一半的机构人口中，代表了各种学术领域。案例研究结果表明，混合学术单位既挑战又重申了这些机构内的核心-外围边界。讨论了制度和学术影响。