Publication database

Despite the popularity of experimental approaches in management and related fields, the adoption of experimental research designs—laboratory, natural, or field experiments—has been slow in organizational network analysis. In recent years, there has been a growing call for more research that pays attention to experimental designs and causal inference in network analysis. This is important not only to ensure knowledge accumulation, but also because of the practical and policy implications of network research. However, relational theories, data, and methods possess peculiarities that need to be accounted for when conducting experiments. In this panel symposium, we bring together a number of leading academic experts, who have contributed to causal network research, to discuss these topics and share their experience on publishing network experiments in leading management outlets.

In an attempt to the literature on the gender glass ceiling, this working paper presents initial analyses based on the German linked employer-employee data (LIAB) social security records.

Although the topic of social networks has received substantial attention from researchers in the field of management, most work on networks at the individual level of analysis has focused on examining specific characteristics of employee networks (e.g., network structure, network centrality, etc.), often from a static perspective. In contrast, relatively little work has directly focused on the behaviors employees engage in to build and manage their social networks. As a result, there is still much to be learned about when and why employees enact networking behavior. The papers in this symposium aim to address this imbalance by directly examining the antecedents and outcomes of professional networking behavior. While the research designs and theoretical lenses of the papers in this symposium vary, the papers are united in their shared focus on various aspects of networking behavior. Two papers focus directly on factors that impact the extent to which employees engage in network building, one takes a temporal approach by examining the factors that influence the speed by which network relationships are formed, and one paper examines how daily fluctuations in networking behavior influence performance outcomes. The end result is a collection of papers that provide a comprehensive look at a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that has begun to attract an increasing amount of research attention among management scholars.

Acquiring tacit knowledge is critical at work and often requires interactions, strong ties, and trust. However, it is unclear how the advent of virtual collaboration influences this process. Integrating research on virtual work, tacit knowledge, social learning, and vicarious learning, we propose that relative to face-to-face collaboration, virtual collaboration hinders the acquisition of tacit knowledge, mainly by reducing people’s observation of others’ behaviors but not the storytelling from others. We found evidence for our theory in a survey study and a critical incident study. According to the experiences from a range of professions requiring on-the-job-learning, virtual collaboration indeed hampers tacit knowledge acquisition via the reduction in observation. However, virtual collaboration is as effective as face-to-face collaboration in facilitating the acquisition of tacit knowledge via storytelling. Additionally, we find that whenever the tacit knowledge being transferred is task-based, virtual collaboration is a more effective conduit than face-to-face collaboration. When the tacit knowledge is more contextualized or embodied, such as interpersonal skills, personal development, and socialization, virtual collaboration becomes a less effective conduit than face-to-face collaboration. Our research unravels how and what people learn from others as tacit knowledge in virtual collaboration compared to face-to-face collaboration, which has important theoretical and practical implications.

With permission of the Academy of Management

A well-stablished tenet among organizational network scholars is that it is harder for women to broker structural holes because the brokerage process requires stereotypically masculine behaviors such as self-promotion, instrumental exchanges, and strategic networking. Yet, this perspective overlooks the possibility that women may become successful brokers by leveraging stereotypically female relational strategies based on interpersonal caring and warmth. Rather than defining brokerage as an inherently masculine strategy, we conducted a field experiment in which the “treatment” (a quasi-random assignment of managers to office desks) generated exogenous brokerage opportunities that are more congruent with feminine than masculine role stereotypes. The field experiment yielded three key insights. First, female managers were more effective than their male peers at forming new bridging relations. Second, these bridging relationships were based on friendship; hence, they were defined by interpersonal caring and warmth rather than by instrumental motives as is typical of masculine brokerage strategies. Third, though based on friendship, these bridging relationships yielded sizeable instrumental returns as measured by salary increases x number of months after the treatment. By highlighting the understudied role of feminine brokerage strategies, these results caution against the widespread tendency to define brokerage as inherently masculine, they advance our theoretical understanding of the relation between gender and brokerage effectiveness, and they offer practical insights on how to improve gender equality within organizations.

With permission of the Academy of Management