INTRAORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS:
TEAMS & OCCUPATIONS
Analysts of intraorganizational and occupational networks
examine how interpersonal social relations affect status
attainment dynamics, careers, and workplace outcomes
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
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?
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 & Centrality
Power 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)
Central positions in intraorganizational networks are key to
acquiring power to manage one’s resource dependencies.
“[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).
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.
Varieties Of Network Centrality
Persons & 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.
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.
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!
Teams – Worker Autonomy or Tyranny?
Self-managing teams take joint responsibility for job tasks,
thus erase mind/hand separation of Marxian worker alienation
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?
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.
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 crosspressures:

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)
References
Barker, 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.