When bonds become bondage: Escaping the success trap

Carl had finally made it. After years rotating through different trading desks at a global investment bank, he’d carved out an elite role as the go-to quantitative analyst for commodities. Traders relied on his models. Colleagues respected his expertise. He was the kind of person every leader wants on their team – talented, committed, and indispensable.

But years later, that same expertise became his prison. Late-night calls never stopped. Every trader’s question landed on his desk. Carl had become irreplaceable and utterly trapped. What had begun as a career built on mastery hardened into a trap of his own making.

Carl’s story, though fictionalized, is grounded in research by ESMT Berlin Professor Matthew S. Bothner and his co-authors Richard Haynes, Ingo Marquart, Nghi Truong, and Hai Anh Vu. In their paper, “Bonds without Bondage: Escaping Entrapment in Managerial Networks,” the authors examine how managers can lose – and then recover – autonomy within the very relationships that once advanced their careers.

Their insight builds on the late sociologist Harrison C. White’s influential network theories. White argued that people, like firms, seek “shelter from uncertainty” by establishing stable roles. But the same roles that bring predictability also constrain freedom. In other words, our social bonds – the ties that make us effective – can also become our bondage.

The traps we build

The research reveals three patterns of professional entrapment, each disguised as success … until it isn’t.

• Expert entrapment: Like Carl, top performers become irreplaceable in narrow domains. Their deep knowledge makes them the team’s cornerstone and its captive, enduring unrelenting opportunities to disappoint as well as impress.
• Peripheral marginalization: Sam, a domain-agnostic techie on Carl’s team, suffered differently. His technical skills held value but weren’t strongly status-generating. Colleagues joked he “lacked a hunting license.” Lower-status team members get sidelined, their talent overlooked.
• Innovation isolation: Skye, the star scientist running the bank’s elite innovation lab, felt trapped despite her renown. Others monetized her breakthrough models while she remained confined to pure exploration, unable to capture the value she created.

Each trap offers stability at the cost of autonomy.

Three ways out: heat, reach, and rhetoric

Drawing on White’s ideas, Bothner and his colleagues propose three strategies for reclaiming autonomy, each suited to different constraints and status levels.

Annealing: controlled disruption

Borrowed from metallurgy, annealing means heating and cooling a material to strengthen it. In management, it means deliberately injecting uncertainty to force new configurations.

Carl applied this principle literally. In a weekly meeting with traders, he surprised his team: “Tess, you’re no longer our only energy expert. Blake, you can stop ‘hiding’ in agriculture. Starting today, you'll switch roles.” The disruption forced everyone to adapt. Junior analysts stopped coasting. New collaborations emerged across previously rigid boundaries.

But annealing requires calibration. Heat the system enough to break calcified patterns, but not so much that it shatters. When one low-status team member couldn’t adapt and resigned, Carl recognized the limits. By “melting and cooling” his team’s routines, Carl restored not only group performance but his own freedom to innovate.

Network reaching: crossing boundaries

When the heat of Carl’s annealing proved too intense for Sam, he chose a more targeted approach: reaching across organizational boundaries to rebuild his identity.

Sam built new ties: up to Rick, head of the foreign exchange desk; through to Barbara, a colleague with complementary expertise; and down to line-risk analysts who held untapped information. Each move was risky. Juniors didn’t engage seniors without offering substantial value, and Rick, protective of his reputation, worried that associating too closely with juniors might diminish his standing. But Sam had a bridge: their shared San Francisco roots and love of the Golden State Warriors. Casual talk about Steph Curry lightened their conversations and built trust, turning awkward standstills into fresh starts.

Sam’s boundary-crossing broke hierarchy-bound norms but worked, redefining his identity from sidelined coder to front-stage connector and turning aspiration into reality.

Prolepsis: shaping the future through story

For high-status professionals like Skye, persuasion can be more powerful than protest. Prolepsis – projecting a vivid image of the future as if it were already unfolding – allowed her to reimagine her lab’s mission and mobilize allies.

Skye wanted to launch her own cross-functional hedge fund, pairing exploration with market-facing exploitation. But resistance came from multiple directions. Her first attempt failed. She was too self-referential (“My lab's carried this bank’s innovation for years”) and relied on generic buzzwords.

Her breakthrough came when she shifted from “I” to “we” and crafted a mantra with deliberate ambiguity: “We make smart money wise.” Scientists and traders could both see themselves bringing wisdom to the other’s “smart” expertise. Some, with a wink, dubbed themselves “wise guys,” turning a gangster cliché into a badge of team pride. Others took it as a genuine invitation to bridge divides and unite diverse teams behind a common vision.

By presenting her hybrid venture as an active initiative, Skye attracted support for a vision that had seemed unattainable.

Why it matters

Feeling overextended despite high performance? Struggling to gain traction despite solid contributions? Watching others profit from your ideas? Many executives will recognize these tensions. The research reveals that the very systems we build for efficiency can confine us.

Bothner and his co-authors remind us that freedom in organizations comes not just from breaking ties but from reshaping them. Autonomy can be recovered through thoughtful disruption, boundary-crossing relationships, or visionary communication. Each requires courage to reintroduce uncertainty, the very condition organizational life is designed to suppress. Yet uncertainty is both the source of constraint and the resource for renewal.

Carl’s disruption created a more resilient team. Sam’s boundary-crossing solved persistent problems. Skye’s ambidextrous fund connected research to revenue. High performers who feel trapped become flight risks. Peripheral contributors represent wasted potential. Elite innovators confined to narrow roles leave value on the table.

While leadership often prizes control, Bonds without Bondage offers a compelling counterpoint about connection and the capacity to change.

About the research

Bothner, M. S., Haynes, R., Marquart, I., Truong, N., & Vu, H. A. (2025). Bonds without Bondage: Escaping Entrapment in Managerial Networks. Sociologica, 19(2), 31–50. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/21638