The Two Faces of Control: Network Closure and Individual Performance among Knowledge Workers

By Martin Gargiulo, Gokhan Ertug, Charles Galunic. 2009

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper argues that the effect of dense social ties, or network closure, on a knowledge worker's performance depends on the predominant role this worker plays with his or her exchange partners in the relationships affected by that closure. Using data on informal exchanges among investment bankers in the equities division of a large financial services firm operating in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Americas in 2001, we find that network closure in relationships in which the banker acts as an acquirer of information increases his or her performance, whereas closure in relationships in which the banker acts as a provider of information decreases it. We also find that these effects are moderated by the bankers' ability to employ alternative means (such as formal authority) to induce the cooperation of exchange partners in their acquirer role, as well as by the extent to which the bankers can benefit from being free from the control of exchange partners in their provider role. Our findings highlight the two sides of the normative control associated with network closure: control benefits people when they need to induce exchange partners to behave according to their preferences, but it hurts them when it forces them to behave according to the preferences of those partners.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/41850641b89e3c913652be59f8a286cdeb618f13

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Citations in the corpus

Social Networks, Cognitive Style, and Innovative Performance: A Contingency Perspective (2015, background): “disciplines social action (Gargiulo et al., 2009) and curtails individual creativity (Gargiulo &”
Why a Central Network Position Isn't Enough: The Role of Motivation and Ability for Knowledge Sharing in Employee Networks (2011, background): “In today’s rapidly changing environments and highly dynamic teambased organizational structures, employees have fewer opportunities and less time to build strongly tied networks (Gargiulo et al., 2009).”
Structural Microfoundations of Innovation (2014, background): “(Mehra, Kilduff, & Brass, 2001), socialization (Morrison, 2002), innovative performance (Cross & Cummings, 2004), involvement in innovation (Obstfeld, 2005), and performance bonus (Gargiulo et al., 2009).”
“All for One and One for All?” - Knowledge broker roles in managing tensions of internal coopetition: The Ubisoft case (2019, background): “Recent work more specifically examined the brokerage process (Fleming et al., 2007; Gargiulo et al., 2009), with fundamental work done in that respect by Obstfeld (2005, see also Obstfeld et al.”
Integrating Personality and Social Networks: A Meta-Analysis of Personality, Network Position, and Work Outcomes in Organizations (2015, methodology): “…results showed that the coefficient of the path from brokerage to career success became nonsignificant after including the outlier study (i.e., Gargiulo et al. 2009), which greatly increased the harmonic mean size as well as the coefficient of the path from indegree centrality to career…”
The Positive Externalities of Social Capital: Benefiting from Senior Brokers (2012, methodology): “…contingent benefits of first-order social capital has shown that (private) returns of social capital are contingent on the role a focal actor plays in a firm, defined either by the exclusivity of the role (Burt, 1997) or by its position in the formal hierarchy of the firm (Gargiulo et al., 2009).”