Bridging Cultural Holes in Organizations: The Dynamic Structure of Social Networks and Organizational Vocabularies Within and Across Subunits

Abstract

The mechanisms by which social networks and organizational vocabularies combine jointly to affect communication patterns across organizational boundaries remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we examine the mutually constitutive relation between the network ties through which organizational members communicate with each other and the vocabularies that they use to describe their organization. We suggest that the dynamic structure of social networks and organizational vocabularies is contingent on the formal design of organizational subunits. Within subunit boundaries, members who interact with each other are more likely to develop similar vocabularies over time. Interestingly, between subunits, the more two members share similar organizational vocabularies, the more likely they are to form a tie over time. We find empirical evidence for these arguments in a longitudinal study conducted among the managers of a multiunit organization. Organizational vocabularies, we suggest, may sustain communication patterns across organizational boundaries, thus bridging cultural holes within organizations.

Ventriloquial Authority in Management Learning and Education: A Communication as Constitutive of Learning and Education Perspective

“…However, it is rare in the management literature to find analyses that treat communication as anything other than the expression, transmission, or representation of pre-existing information. Communication, in management studies' typical rendering, occurs inside or between (putatively pre-existing) organizations, as in the many studies of communication networks that locate communicating systems inside organizations rather than framing them as constituting that which we consider 6 to be organization (Nisar, Prabhakar & Strakova, 2019;Tasselli, Zappa & Lomi, 2020). A similar view crops up in the internal coordination literature, when communication is understood as capable of producing moments of coordinated activity, but not as generating the structures, roles, and routines 'inside' of which coordination occurs (Bruns, 2013;Im, Yates, & Orlikowski, 2005;Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009).…”

Network Dynamics and Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda

“…In our framework, each level of network change has some degree of autonomy and stability, yet each level is linked to and dependent upon other levels. Studies of network change either seek to understand the social processes that would lead certain nodes to be connected and other nodes to be disconnected (e.g., Clough & Piezunka, 2020; Tasselli, Zappa, & Lomi, 2020), or they attempt to explain change in network structures over time (e.g., Hernandez & Shaver, 2019; Kleinbaum, 2018).…”

“…They also found that co-located teachers (i.e., spatially similar) communicated more frequently and felt more emotionally attached. Tasselli et al (2020) found that cultural similarity, in terms of managers sharing similar individual vocabularies in describing their organization, facilitates the formation of communication ties between formal organizational boundaries, nurturing informal task-related ties across subunits over time.…”

“…In one study of workplace friendships over time, the maintenance of friendship relations with former coworkers at a previous organization facilitated the perception of social integration in new workplaces (Walsh et al, 2018). A different study sought to understand the dynamic relationships between social networks and the vocabularies people use to describe and make sense of their workplace experiences (Tasselli et al, 2020). The study found that, within organizational subunits, individuals with task-related communication ties became more similar in their organizational vocabularies; and the more two members shared similar organizational vocabularies, the more likely they were to subsequently form a task-related communication tie.…”

Temporal dimensions of knowledge exchanges in horizontal knowledge networks

“…Firstly, unlike market and hierarchical networks that treat knowledge as an asset, horizontal industry networks treat it as an interaction, in which case the focus of network function shifts to the social interaction, dialectical negotiation and reciprocal exchanges (Dooley & Gubbins, 2019;Eapen & Krishnan, 2019). Secondly, from a structural perspective, these networks; (1) may not restrict access to join, (2) are neither sanctioned nor hierarchical, (3) are socially connected than organisationally, and (4) provide voluntary attendance or participation (Hacker, Bodendorf, & Lorenz, 2017;Tasselli, Zappa, & Lomi, 2020). Consequently, traditional management approaches to manage knowledge become limited and may become dysfunctional.…”