Publication database

Connecting otherwise disconnected individuals and groups - spanning structural holes - can earn social network brokers faster promotions, higher remuneration, and enhanced creativity. Organizations also benefit through improved communication and coordination from these connections between knowledge silos. Neglected in prior research, however, has been theory and evidence concerning the psychological costs to individuals of engaging in brokering activities. We build new theory concerning the extent to which keeping people separated (i.e., tertius separans brokering) relative to bringing people together (i.e., tertius iungens brokering) results in burnout and in abusive behavior toward coworkers. Engagement in tertius separans brokering, relative to tertius iungens brokering, we suggest, burdens people with onerous demands while limiting access to resources necessary to recover. Across three studies, we find that tertius separans leads to abusive behavior of others, mediated by an increased experience of burnout on the part of the broker. First, we conducted a five-month field study of burnout and abusive behavior, with brokering assessed via e-mail exchanges among 1,536 university employees in South America. Second, we examined time-separated data on self-reported brokering behaviors, burnout, and coworker abuse among 242 employees of U.S. organizations. Third, we experimentally investigated the effects of the two types of brokering behaviors on burnout and abusive behavior for 273 employed adults. The results across three studies showed that tertius separans brokering puts the broker at an increased risk of burnout and subsequent abusive behavior toward others in the workplace.

© 2023, INFORMS

Problem Definition: Clients and service providers alike often consider one-on-one service delivery to be ideal, assuming – perhaps unquestioningly – that devoting individualized attention best improves client outcomes. In contrast, in shared service delivery, clients are served in batches and the dynamics of group interaction could lead to increased client engagement – which could improve outcomes. However, the loss of privacy and personal connection might undermine engagement. Practical Relevance: The engagement dynamics in one-on-one and shared delivery models have not been rigorously studied. To the extent that shared delivery may result in comparable or better engagement than one-on-one delivery, service providers in a broad array of contexts may be able to create more value for clients by delivering service in batches. Methodology: We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 1,000 patients who were undergoing glaucoma treatment over a three-year period at a large eye hospital. Using verbatim and behavioral transcripts from over 20,000 minutes of video recorded during our trial, we examine how shared medical appointments (SMAs) – in which patients are served in batches – impact engagement. Results: Patients who experienced SMAs asked 33.33% more questions per minute, made 8.63% more non-question comments per minute, and exhibited higher levels of non-verbal engagement across a wide array of measures (attentiveness, positivity, head wobbling or ‘talai tallattam’ in Tamil – a South Indian gesture to signal agreement or understanding – eye contact and end-of-appointment happiness), relative to patients who attended one-on-one appointments. Managerial Implications: These results shed light on the potential for shared service delivery models to increase client engagement and thus enhance service performance.

© 2023, INFORMS

At the end of 2008, the founder and employees of MEG - an insurance brokerage firm active in the market since 2003 - were looking forward to a promising future. Having achieved sales of €33 million in 2007 and just short of €54 million in 2008, the company was aiming to hit the €100 million mark in the next financial year. Within a very short time, the firm founded by Mehmet E. Göker as “insurance specialists” had established itself as the second-most successful insurance broker in Germany. Its rapid rise to the top was thanks to a business model that consistently identified and supported customers interested in insurance products - and also thanks to a particular corporate culture at MEG.

Key teaching/learning objectives:
- Introduction to corporate culture
- What is a corporate culture?
- How to establish and change corporate culture?

We examine how crisis conditions affect the link between structural holes and organizational performance. Since brokerage offers early access to diverse perspectives and autonomy in exchange relations, the benefits of brokerage should rise when crises erupt. However, evidence on the subject has been inconclusive, raising the question of whether crisis actually imposes a boundary condition on structural hole theory. Using longitudinal data on investment banks, and exploiting the 2000 dot.com crisis as well as the 2008 financial crisis, we explore whether crises moderate the favorable effect of brokerage on performance. Our results reveal that only exclusive, and not shared, structural holes are advantageous for performance, as they facilitate ambidextrous responses to crisis. Implications for brokerage theory and for new research on crisis are discussed.

© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Using unique data from the LEGO Ideas platform and a novel approach of algorithm-based abduction, we combine multiple methods to provide new insights into crowd selection. Through qualitative content-coding, interviews, and prior literature, we derive an initial set of variables. We then use machine learning for feature selection and to identify the most important factors for crowd selection. The findings are used to build theory on crowd selection, which we test on a hold-out sample. Our key finding is that ideator and idea characteristics suggested by prior research can predict crowd selection only at early stages. More specifically, crowds rely on ideator status, prior success, and a carefully crafted idea presentation with many images to weed out bad ideas in early stages. However, these characteristics have little bearing in predicting winners at later stages. We explain this with signaling theory, where these ideator and idea characteristics represent strong, costly signals for idea quality and value only in early stages but fade as new signals (such as social signals of popularity and gaining fact traction) emerge. Our study provides two main contributions to research on crowd selection and idea evaluation. First, our approach enables us to prune explanations for crowd selection and guide attention to the factors which matter most. Second, we extend prior work by considering multi-stage crowd selection and highlighting its dynamic nature.