Analysts of intraorganizational and occupational networks examine how interpersonal social relations affect status attainment dynamics, careers, and workplace outcomes

Paradoxes of how mentoring, networking, workplace friendships shape the development of personal careers, work team social cohesion, and organizational productivity & performance:

• Better to rely on mentor or disperse ties?

• Are work friends assets and liabilities?

• Teams boost productivity and tyrannize?

INTRAORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS: TEAMS & OCCUPATIONS

Which positions in socioeconomic stratification systems give job-seekers access to information about better employment opportunities?

• Interaction with human capital & experience

• Relative advantages of weak & strong ties

It’s Not What You Know, But …

Sociological status attainment models assume that individual workers who possess human capital skills are competing for jobs in a single labor market. Achieved status (education), not family background, is main factor affecting occupational & income.

Social resources theory explains how people use their education, initial positions, and personal networks to tap into social capital embedded in ego’s alters.

Principal H0: “[S]ocial resources exert an important and significant effect on attained statuses, beyond that accounted for by personal resources.” (Lin 1999)

Two processes that connect networks to status attainment:

• Access to social capital via ego-centric nets

• Mobilization of contacts & resources in job searches

Resource Dependence & CentralityPower within and between organizations originates in economic and social exchanges, under uncertain conditions, as actors try to acquire vital resources while avoiding dependence on others who control the supply those resources (Pfeffer & Salancik 1978)

Organizational power accrues to actors and subunits better able to cope with other actors’ uncertainties, who lack substitutable alternatives. Crozier’s (1964) famous example of French tobacco factory maintenance workers who destroyed repair manuals.

“[N]etwork centrality increases an actor’s knowledge of a system’s power distribution, or the accuracy of his or her assessment of the political landscape. … Those who understand how a system really works can get things done or exercise power within that system”

(Herminia Ibarra 1993:494).

Central positions in intraorganizational networks are key to acquiring power to manage one’s resource dependencies.

Varieties Of Network CentralityPersons & groups occupy different types of central positions in intraorg’l communication and exchange networks, with varied implications for the types of power resources they can wield.

Bureaucratic hierarchies are asymmetric power/authority networks (Weber’s “legitimate power”) based on command-obey and report-to vertical relations of superiors and subordinates.

Betweenness centrality (brokering structural holes) is useful strategy for person seeking to be a Machiavellian “player”

Workteams are egalitarian networks based on advice & trust ties that build coworker cohesion/solidarity and boost team performance. As in dancing and horseshoes, closeness counts!

Central location reflects ego’s high demand from others (high prestige as a target of popular choices) & greater reach (access to information, economic & political resources).

Formal org’l structure affects which type of centrality is most useful for playing the game.

Teams – Worker Autonomy or Tyranny?Self-managing teams take joint responsibility for job tasks, thus erase mind/hand separation of Marxian worker alienation

Because team members strongly identify with co-workers and internalize the team’s self-enforcing work norms, everyone is locked inside an iron cage of peer-pressured authority and discipline (“concertive control”).

James Barker’s (1993, 1999) ethnography of ISE Communications restructured teams showed how members self-monitored their performances & punished violators of team norms; e.g., peer pressures to change persistent tardiness.

Networks of interdependence among the team members allegedly foster more empowerment, participation in creative problem-solving, higher commitment and morale; result is greater production efficiency & higher corporate profits

But, are teams merely a management tool for indirect control, worker coercion & cost-cutting?

GETTING BY with a LITTLE HELP from FRIENDS?

Paradox that friendship can be both asset and liability

Commercial bankers relied on trusted strong-tie colleagues for advice and support when trying to close uncertain deals with corporate customers. However, they were more likely to close successful deals by relying on their relatively sparser, nonhierarchical approval networks (Mizruchi & Stearns 2001).

Low perceived conflict related to out-group friendships, but negative relations overwhelm the positive effects from having friends in other departments (Labianca et al. 1998).

Friends who verbalize high job dissatisfaction can drag down employee morale. McDonalds workers grew happier after their disgruntled buddies quit (Krackhardt & Porter 1985).

Ties That Torture

Occupancy of central positions in multiplex workplace networks – advice/help, authority, communication, conflict, enmity, friendship, trust … – may help to explain individual, group, and organizational outcomes such as performance, productivity, employee morale

David Krackhardt analyzed networks of advice and friendship among 36 Silicon Systems employees. He identified roles and role constraints based on ordinary dyadic ties, especially “Simmelian” ties to multiple cliques (see next slide Figures ).

After Krackhardt collected the network data, a subsequent union drive flip-flopped from pro to anti. He located this change of heart in friendship cross-pressures on Chris. Unable to satisfy the norms of two opposing cliques, Chris abandoned the union organizing campaign to supporters with fewer persuasive ties.

The “Bow Tie”

Burt and Krackhardt propose different theories about how ties among the alters put structural constraints on ego.

What does SH theory assume about the norms (preferences) held by the ego’s alters?

What assumption does Simmelian Tie theory make about those norms?

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

Simmelian tie – dyad of strongly & reciprocally tied pair with identical ties to one or more third actors (i.e., a clique)

When two or more cliques share a node, the common actor may be required to satisfy two sets of divergent norms. Conflicting normative expectations can generate stressful cross-pressures:

Husbands & wives keep their friendship circles separate because the two groups have differing interests and values

Adolescents dress and behave one way when at home, and completely different when involved in peer group activities

Did you ever withdraw from a group because … ?

Next figure, a blockmodel-MDS reanalysis of social distances across both Silicon Systems networks, is consistent with Krackhardt’s story about the co-clique cleavages among pro/anti-union employees.

Fig 6.6. Social Distances in Advice and Friendship Networks of Silicon Systems (based on Krackhardt 1999) SOURCE: Knoke Changing Organizations (2001:227)

ReferencesBarker, James R. 1993. “Tightening the Iron Cage: Concertive Control in Self-Managing Teams.” Administrative Science Quarterly 38:408-37. Barker, James R. 1999. The Discipline of Teamwork: Participation and Concertive Control. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Crozier, Michel. 1964. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ibarra, Herminia. 1993. “Network Centrality, Power and Innovation Involvement: Determinants of Technical and Administrative Roles.” Academy of Management Journal 36:471-501.

Krackhardt, David. 1999. “Ties That Torture: Simmelian Tie Analysis in Organizations.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 16:183-210.

Krackhardt, David and Lyman W. Porter. 1985. “When Friends Leave: A Structural Analysis of the Relationship Between Turnover and Stayers’ Attitudes.” Administrative Science Quarterly 30:242-261.

Labianca, Giuseppe, Daniel J. Brass, and Barbara Gray. 1998. “Social Networks and Perceptions of Intergroup Conflict: The Role of Negative Relationships and Third Parties.” Academy of Management Journal 41:55-67.

Lin, Nan. 1999. “Social Networks and Status Attainment.” Annual Review of Sociology 25:467-487.

Mizruchi, Mark S. and Linda Brewster Stearns. 2001. “Getting Deals Done: The Use of Social Networks in Bank Decision-Making.” American Sociological Review 66:647-671.