Understanding Workplace Relationships: An Examination of the Antecedents and Outcomes

ISBN-13: 9783031166396 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 438 str.

Alexandra Gerbasi; Cecile Emery; Andrew Parker

Opis

Workplace relationships are critical to how work gets done in organizations. While current research gives rigorous theoretical and empirical insights regarding workplace relationships, and what are often known as social networks, there are only limited details of the practical applications of workplace relations. This edited collection provides readers with cutting edge theoretical and practical insights from the latest research at the intersection of social networks and workplace relationships.This volume has a dual focus. First, it examines the outcomes of workplace relationships, such as individual performance and how social network relationships affect attitudes and behaviours. Second, it examines how workplace relationships are formed and their implications with regard to friendship, trust and collegiality.Drawing on innovative research on social networks, the authors examine the importance of workplace relationships across a broad selection of institutional settings. Featuring practical applied examples, this collection brings together insights from leading scholars in a practical and accessible format for academics and students.

Spis treści

Introduction (Alexandra Gerbasi, Cécile Emery, & Andrew Parker)

Section 1: The effect of network relationships on individual performance in organizations

Chapter 1: Unpacking the link between intrinsic motivational orientation and innovative performance: A social network perspective (Gianluca Carnabuci, Vojkan Nedkovski, & Marco Guerci)

Chapter 2: Brokering one’s way to trust and success: Trust, helping, and network brokerage in organizations (Andrew Parker, Don Ferrin, & Kurt Dirks)

Chapter 3: Women alone in the middle: Gender differences in the occupation and leverage of social network brokerage roles (Inga Carboni)

Section 1 Abstracts:

Chapter 1: Existing research has found a positive relationship between intrinsic motivational orientation and employee innovative performance. Whereas prior studies have emphasized psychological explanations for this relationship, we draw from social network theory and posit a network-structural explanation. We hypothesize that employees with an intrinsic motivational orientation tend to become more central within the organization’s informal advice network, which in turn aids their innovative performance. We test and find support for this mediation argument in two distinct organizations which, while similar in terms of size and geographical location, vary markedly in terms of organizational culture, structure and task environment. Our findings demonstrate that intrinsically motivated employees are more innovative because – and insofar as – they tend to acquire a central position in their organization’s informal advice network. In addition to establishing a fruitful integration between motivation and network theories, this finding bears practical implications for managers and firms aiming to enhance employees’ innovative performance. We conclude by proposing practical levers to help intrinsically motivated employees express their full innovative potential by gaining central positions in the organization’s informal advice network.

Chapter 2: A substantial body of research over the last two decades has examined the determinants and outcomes of interpersonal trust within organizations. However, little of this research has considered how the social network that surrounds an interpersonal relationship might influence the interpersonal trust within that relationship and ultimately the effectiveness and success of individuals within an organization. We address this gap by examining the role of helping behaviors and brokerage in organizational networks. Utilizing a social exchange framework, we propose that brokers have the opportunity to identify individuals who are in need of information and other resources, act to satisfy those needs by performing organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBIs) toward those individuals, and by doing so, earn others’ trust. And it is this trust that enables brokers to gain performance advantages by maximizing the resource benefits of their structural position. Network data from two empirical studies provide substantial support for our hypotheses that helping others mediates the brokerage-trust relationship and trust mediates the brokerage-performance relationship. We conclude with managerial implications and avenues for future research.

Chapter 3: For decades, researchers have known that professional networks that are characterized by brokerage―connections to otherwise unconnected subnetworks within the organization―provide important advantages. People who occupy the powerful brokerage role reap significant career rewards, including faster rates of promotion, larger bonuses, more involvement in innovation, and greater likelihood of being identified as top talent. However, recent evidence has emerged to suggest that women are less likely than men to occupy the brokerage position and, even when they do occupy it, are less likely to leverage it for career success. Several mechanisms have been advanced to explain these findings, including women’s need for legitimacy, structural constraints caused by systemic discrimination, and gender role congruity. This chapter reviews the research on gender and brokerage, and posits that a gendered socio-emotional experience of the brokerage role may also contribute to systematic disadvantage for women. Organizations can apply these ideas to further the career success of women through training and restructuring activities that reframe the brokerage experience, provide concrete tools for strategic network development, and reduce barriers to effective network development.

 

Section 2: The effect of network relationships on individual attitudes and behaviors

Chapter 4: Satisfied in the outgroup: How co-worker relational energy compensate for low-LMX relationships (Alexandra Gerbasi, Cécile Emery, Kristin Cullen-Lester, & Michelle Mahdon)

Chapter 5: Degree of relations: The effect of hot and cool relations on organizational identification (Francesca Pallotti, Eleonora Zanotti, & Alessandro Lomi)

Chapter 6: Embeddedness and institutionalisation of new work practices in heath service organisations (Emily Rowe & Leroy White)

Chapter 7: Business before pleasure? Bringing pleasure back into work (Christine Moser, Dirk Deichmann, & Mariel Jurriens)

Section 2 Abstracts:

Chapter 4: Past research suggests that employees who established a high-quality Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) relationship with their supervisor are more likely to feel energized and are also more satisfied at work. We propose that relational energy – that is, the heightened level of psychological resourcefulness generated from interpersonal interactions that enhances one’s capacity to do work – is a mediating link between LMX and employee job satisfaction. Furthermore, we examine whether low-LMX employees, who receive lower levels of relational energy from their supervisor compared to high-LMX employees, can be satisfied at work depending on their embeddedness in a larger network of energizing relationships with co-workers. In other words, we empirically test a second-stage moderated-mediation model examining relational energy as a mediator between LMX and job satisfaction and relational energy from co-workers as a boundary condition. Results using a sample of 211 employees support our prediction and hence highlight the valuable source of relational energy that co-work represent.

Chapter 5: What connect individuals to their organizations? In this paper, we examine the effect of “hot” and “cool” relations on the strength of members’ identification with the organization. Building on the classic distinction originally proposed by McLuhan, we consider “hot” relations those involving a lower level of ambiguity and a relatively well-defined object of exchange: hot relations involve a lower degree of participation. Examples of hot relations within organizations include task-advice and reporting. “Cool” relations, on the other hand, are those involving a higher level of ambiguity about the object of exchange: to be sustained, cool relations require the active engagement of connected parties. Examples of cool relations include hanging-out and friendship. We hypothesize that networks of cool relations are more strongly connected with organizational identification. We expect this to be the case because of the greater emotional involvement that cool relations generate and sustain. We test this hypothesis using data we have collected in the Community of San Patrignano, the largest community in Europe catering to individuals suffering from drug addiction and marginalization. We discuss the general implications of our novel conceptualization of social relation for managing identification in organizational settings.  

Chapter 6: This study examines the relationship between professional networks structure and the adoption of new management practices in a health service setting. Collecting survey data from 250 professionals on workplace advice and trust relations from two UK hospital trust, we used theories on institutional practices and social networks to investigate the role of structural embeddedness in professionals adopting and institutionalizing new practices for health service improvements. Specifically, our study challenges the prevailing view that professional actors are subject to institutional norms without question and are not seen as purposive agents who can question and re-evaluate institutional rules and practices. Instead, we view that adopting practices depends on social structures or the interplay between workplace relations that allow actors to generate shared understandings of new ways of working. Applying social network analysis, specifically, ERGMs, our study found that while each trust had the same change-oriented resources, training and funding, varying patterns of workplace interactions among professional actors had contrasting implications for institutionalizing new practices. The overall picture is one of network structure interplaying with individual actors' characteristics in shaping the dynamics of professional interactions.

Chapter 7: In many different ways, organizational scholars have engaged with the pleasures of work. Play, passion, commitment, enjoyment, and meaningfulness are only a few examples of how work can be beneficial for people. In this chapter, we will shortly review these different strands of literature to provide an overview of topics that have been associated with the pleasures of work, particularly those that emerge from workplace interactions. We then move on to claim that these different literatures have largely neglected the very essence of pleasure; that is, pleasure as an end in itself. Having neglected our human need for pleasure and interaction, we suggest, leads to an impoverished and incomplete understanding of work – primarily focused on rationality, effectiveness and efficiency – that all but helped achieve other ends. Instead, and grounding our argumentation in the tradition of ethical hedonism, we believe that organizations should commit to pleasure and relationships in the workplace and, most importantly, decouple pleasure from outcomes thereof. We conclude with an actionable plan for interventions that will help managers bring pleasure back into work and allow them to seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

Section 3: Knowledge relationships in organizations

Chapter 8: Multiple identities and multiple relationships: A dynamic study of the ephemeral network of freelancers (Paola Zappa & Stefano Tasselli)

Chapter 9: In the mind of the beholder: (Mis)alignment of perceptions of dyadic knowledge transfer in organizations (Robert Kaše & Eric Quintane)

Chapter 10: The effect of performance and network structural equivalence on perceptions of knowledge sharing (Andrew Parker, Alexandra Gerbasi, & Kristin Cullen-Lester)

Section 3 Abstracts:

Chapter 8: Innovative and creative organizations are becoming increasingly boundaryless and relying on external workers – mostly freelancers who work temporarily in an organization on a project basis. Because freelancers navigate the work environment as independent workers, also their opportunities to build and manage work-related relationships are typically different from conventional, full-time employees. Yet, little is known about how freelancers forge, maintain and shape the networks of contacts that they exploit for informal collaboration and knowledge sharing.

We advance knowledge on this topic by proposing a conceptual framework where freelancers are the catalysts of ephemeral networks of evolving relationships that involve colleagues at the (temporary) employer, contacts in work-like environments (i.e. co-working spaces) and personal work-related ties accumulated over time. We discuss how freelancers’ identity – the way they perceive themselves and their role at the workplace – influences their engagement in the different relationships.

We investigate these dynamics using longitudinal data that we have collected in a sample of around 100 freelancers employed in the Irish media industry. In detail, we combine text data that describe how freelancers identify themselves with ego-network data that capture the freelancers’ professional and personal work-related relationships. We derive and discuss the practical implications of our study for both freelancers and organizations.

Chapter 9: The knowledge management literature often assumes that knowledge transfer partners agree on the existence of knowledge exchange between them per se. We challenge this view and argue that perceptions of dyadic transfers of complex knowledge can be misaligned. Building on a dual model of cognitive processing, we propose two factors (familiarity and salience of exchange partners) that lead to alignment (and to less misalignment) in perceptions of dyadic knowledge transfer. Our results suggest that misalignment in perceptions of complex knowledge transfers is a pervasive phenomenon in organizational context. Based on an in-depth sociometric research design and exponential random graph modelling we further find that only one form of familiarity (mutual trust) contributes to alignment of dyadic knowledge transfer perceptions, while salience of exchange partners (in terms of different unit affiliations) can reduce misalignments. We discuss implications of our results for practice, highlighting the implications of misalignment in knowledge transfer in organizations. We also suggest actions that managers can take to diminish the risk of misalignments and facilitate the transfer of complex knowledge in their teams.

Chapter 10: Considerable research has examined the antecedents and benefits of knowledge sharing in organizations. Workplaces, however, are competitive arenas, and it is generally recognized that rivalry between employees occurs as a result of them jostling for resources, opportunities, and promotion. We theorize that rivalry can influence individual perceptions of whether others are willing to share knowledge. We examine if rivalry is based upon the individual performance level of two people in a dyad or if it is based upon the structural equivalence of employees’ networks. We also seek to understand if rivalry operates globally throughout an organization or locally within an employee’s location. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a study of 185 employees in a global IT department of a large global corporation. Using quadratic assignment procedure (QAP) we analyzed 34,040 dyadic relationships. We found that at the global level, individuals with structurally equivalent networks to another colleague are more likely to perceive that individual as unwilling to share knowledge. At the local level, high-performing individuals are more likely to perceive others as unwilling to share knowledge when those individuals are also high-performers.

 

Section 4: Friendship, trust and collegiality in organizations

Chapter 11: Workplace friendships: The interplay between instrumental and affective ties (Natalie David, Julia Brennecke, & James A. Coutinho)

Chapter 12: Opening the black box of homophily: The significance of perceived dissimilarity and similarity for friendship in work organisations (Ajay Mehra & Stephen P. Borgatti)

Chapter 13: Network perspective on interpersonal trust repair (Zuzana Sasovova, Jinhan Jiao, Allard van Riel, & Rick Aalbers)

Chapter 14: Managing the darker sides of top down collegiality and network closure: The case of a Catholic diocese (Emmanuel Lazega & Alexandra Gerbasi)

 

Conclusion (Andrew Parker, Cécile Emery & Alexandra Gerbasi)

 

Section 4 Abstracts:

Chapter 11: Research on intra-organizational networks highlights the frequent occurrence of multiplex workplace friendships – colleagues working together who are friends at the same time. These relationships between co-workers combine affective and task-related, instrumental ties, and have been associated with outcomes such as higher performance and increased job satisfaction, but also emotional exhaustion. Our chapter will first provide an overview of the existing literature on multiplex workplace friendships and their consequences. In addition, we seek to investigate their origins, addressing the question of why and under which conditions instrumental and affective ties – which are based on different norms – overlap and, thereby, mutually shape the social infrastructure of the organization. For an empirical illustration, we investigate the interplay between employees’ instrumental and affective ties, and their convergence into multiplex workplace friendships, based on network data collected among employees in a medium-sized organization, applying exponential random graph modelling for multiplex networks. Our overview of the consequences together with the empirical investigation of the origins of workplace friendships provides practitioners with an understanding of how to leverage resources embedded in multiplex workplace relationships while sidestepping potential negative effects. For example, teams composed of a close network of work friends can be particularly effective at handling stressful situations requiring trust, effective knowledge exchange and mutual support. At the same time, they face tensions that arise from the conflicting norms and expectations associated with the different types of relationships underpinning multiplex workplace friendships.

Chapter 12: What explains friendship choice in work organizations? Previous answers have relied overwhelmingly on the homophily principle, which posits that friendships tend to emerge between individuals who are similar. Classic work on homophily assessed similarity in terms of both demographic indicators (e.g. sex) and underlying cognitive perceptions, but organizational researchers have tended to rely instead on a narrower structural interpretation of homophily, one that assumes that perceptions of similarity and dissimilarity can be bypassed because demography is a good proxy for these underlying perceptions. Using data from 116 member high-tech organizations, we submitted this structural assumption to a rare empirical test. There was no support for the structural idea that the relationship between demography and friendship choice was mediated by underlying cognitive perceptions (however, perceptions of similarity and dissimilarity were independently related to friendship choice). We also found that, when it comes to differences in self-monitoring personality orientation, heterophily, not homophily, is the principle that governs the choice of friends in the workplace.

Chapter 13: This chapter focuses on the possibilities to repair interpersonal trust in an organizational context from a social network perspective. Trust violation has been argued to be one of the major difficulties that plague organizational life and challenge effective workplace relationships. It is therefore important and meaningful to investigate how trust can be repaired. Despite a surge of research in the recent years that investigates trust repair from psychological and behavioral perspectives, less is known about how trust repair may be influenced by the social context. Drawing upon a systematic literature review in which we found a set of network-related factors that (potentially) influence trust formation, we apply the findings to build a conceptual framework that summarizes how these factors affect trust repair. Based on this framework we provide a set of recommendations intended for managers and executives navigating the social trenches of the organization.

Chapter 14: Collegiality is usually associated with innovative collective work and capacity for cooperation among peers. Its creativity often requires oppositional solidarity among these peers in bureaucratized contexts, an oppositional solidarity that is measured with cohesion and closure. This combination of collegiality and bureaucracy can manifest in several ways: one possibility is to transform the collegial body itself into a more bureaucratic one; another possibility is to integrate the collegial body as a collegial pocket of a wider bureaucratic organization based on the mechanism of top-down collegiality. Once a collegial body changes in that respect, it is drawn into specific power struggles that can also change the nature of its members' relationships, commitments and cooperation. In this paper, we illustrate these power struggles of top down collegiality and network closure using the example of a Catholic diocese in France. We measure how, and the extent to which, diverse religious orientations, each a collegial pocket with internal network cohesion, coexist, and the top down collegiality used by the Bishop to coopt and silence hostile collegial pockets. We then look at broader managerial dilemmas, strategies and implications of such struggles and decisions in this and other contexts.

O autorze

 Alexandra Gerbasi is Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School, UK, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Business School. Her research focuses on the effects of positive and negative network ties within the workplace, and their effects on performance, leadership, well-being, thriving, affect, and turnover.

Cécile Emery is Senior Lecturer in Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School, UK. Her research uses advanced social network techniques - exponential random graphs and longitudinal network analysis - to study relationships in the workplace and, more precisely, the relationship that leaders develop with their followers.

Andrew Parker is Professor of Leadership at Durham University Business School, UK. His research uses the lens of network theory to understand problem solving processes, knowledge transfer, turnover, performance and well-being within organizations.

Blurb

Workplace relationships are critical to how work gets done in organizations. While current research gives rigorous theoretical and empirical insights regarding workplace relationships, and what are often known as social networks, there are only limited details of the practical applications of workplace relations. This edited collection provides readers with cutting edge theoretical and practical insights from the latest research at the intersection of social networks and workplace relationships.

This volume has a dual focus. First, it examines the outcomes of workplace relationships, such as individual performance and how social network relationships affect attitudes and behaviours. Second, it examines how workplace relationships are formed and their implications with regard to friendship, trust and collegiality.

Drawing on innovative research on social networks, the authors examine the importance of workplace relationships across a broad selection of institutional settings. Featuring practical applied examples, this collection brings together insights from leading scholars in a practical and accessible format for academics and students.

 Alexandra Gerbasi is Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School, UK, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Business School. Her research focuses on the effects of positive and negative network ties within the workplace, and their effects on performance, leadership, well-being, thriving, affect, and turnover.

Cécile Emery is Senior Lecturer in Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School, UK. Her research uses advanced social network techniques - exponential random graphs and longitudinal network analysis - to study relationships in the workplace and, more precisely, the relationship that leaders develop with their followers.

Andrew Parker is Professor of Leadership at Durham University Business School, UK. His research uses the lens of network theory to understand problem solving processes, knowledge transfer, turnover, performance and well-being within organizations.