| Too Much of A Good Thing? Social Networks, Influence Behaviors, and Team Performance |
| | Hansen, Morten T. | Harvard U. | mhansen@hbs.edu | (617)-495-5590 |
| | Pfeffer, Jeffrey | Stanford U. | pfeffer_jeffrey@gsb.stanford.edu | (650)-723-2915 |
| | Podolny, Joel | Stanford U. | podolny_joel@gsb.stanford.edu | (650)-725-7356 |
| | Students of social networks and organizational politics have failed to
study the costs of network building and influence activities and seldom
differentiate between individual and organization level outcomes. In this
paper, we used data from 68 new product development teams to empirically
assess the effects of network structure and some dimensions of influencing
behavior on task performance, measured as time to complete a product
development effort. We found that two team-level network variables
-size of the advice network and closeness to senior managers required
for buy-in-shortened project completion time. Three team-level network
building and influencing behaviors-time spent on reciprocal helping,
time spent influencing, and the strength of advice ties--prolonged
project completion time. We also found that individuals differed in
how much network benefit they derived from their network building and
influencing behaviors. Demographic variables including divisional tenure,
age, and education helped to explain these differences. We argue that
research on social networks and organization politics needs to incorporate
the reality that these activities take time and have costs. Research
also needs to recognize that there can be differences between the
consequences for individual careers, salaries, and reputations and
organizational-level outcomes such as the time
and resources required to accomplish tasks. |
| | Keywords: Knowledge sharing; Social networks; Influence behaviors |
| Informal Networks, Social Control, and Third Party Cooperation |
| | Gargiulo, Martin | INSEAD | Martin.Gargiulo@Insead.Fr | (33) 1 60 72 43 23 |
| | Network models of social control suggest that informal ties between managers can have an important role in helping these managers to catalyze cooperation in their task environment. By enhancing the managers' ability to coordinate their behavior towards third parties, networks can help them pose concerted demands on such parties, increasing the social pressure to cooperate for reluctant players and reducing behavioral uncertainty for cooperative ones. An analysis of project teams within the Italian subsidiary of a multinational high-technology firm shows that the intensity of communication among the managers coordinating a team increased the probability and the level of cooperation between managers and other team members, as well as between those team members |
| | Keywords: Networks; Social control; Cooperation |
| Sponsorship: A Blessing and a Curse |
| | Sparrowe, Raymond T. | Cleveland State U. | sparrowe@enteract.com | 216 687-3781 |
| | Liden, Robert C. | U. of Illinois, Chicago | bobliden@uic.edu | (312) 996-4481 |
| | This study examined the interplay of informal social network structure and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) quality in determining
the extent of influence and control over decisions and resources enjoyed by managers. Our focus was on sponsorship, defined as
the incorporation of managers into their leaders' networks of trusted contacts.
We framed hypotheses to address three questions: (1) Is there a relationship between LMX and the extent to which members are embedded
in their leaders' networks of trusted contacts? (2) Do members enjoy greater influence and control over decisions and resources in virtue
of being incorporated into their leaders' networks of trusted contacts? (3) Are the benefits enjoyed by members through incorporation
conditioned on their leaders' own positions within informal networks?
We tested our hypotheses using network data gathered from two sites of a large communications organization.
LMX, network, and incorporation data were gathered six months prior to measuring managers' influence and control over decisions
and resources. Support was found for the hypothesized relationships between LMX and the extent to which members were embedded in
their leaders' networks. Moderating hypotheses also received partial support in these data. Incorporation moderated the relationship
between members' informal network structure and their influence and control over decisions and resources. Leaders' network positions
moderated the relationship between members' embeddedness and their influence and control over decisions and resources.
|
| | Keywords: Social Networks; Leader-Member Exchange; Sponsorship |
| On the Shape of Informal Organizations |
| | Nelson, Reed E. | Southern Illinois U. | renelson@siu.edu | 618-453-7801 |
| | While much work has been done on the effects of informal networks in organizations, little is known about their basic attributes,
particularly their shape. This paper explores regularities in the sociometric structure of diverse organizational hierarchies.
Results indicate that the social networks of the upper echelons of organizations rarely follow a classic hierarchical pattern.
Rather, several different morphologies surface. The most common of these regularities-- the center-periphery pattern-- has been
frequently observed in large human systems including tribal and modern societies, national and international economies,
industries, and political systems, but has not been studied inside of organizations. |
| | Keywords: hierarchy; networks; center-periphery |