The ties that lead: A social network approach to leadership

Abstract

This article investigates, for leadership research, the implications of new directions in social network theory that emphasize networks as both cognitive structures in the minds of organizational members and opportunity structures that facilitate and constrain action. We introduce the four core ideas at the heart of the network research program: the importance of relations, actors' embeddedness, the social utility of connections, and the structural patterning of social life. Then we present a theoretical model of how network cognitions in the minds of leaders affect three types of networks: the direct ties surrounding leaders, the pattern of direct and indirect ties within which leaders are embedded in the whole organization and the interorganizational linkages formed by leaders as representatives of organizations. We suggest that these patterns of ties can contribute to leader effectiveness.Good administrators sometimes fail to understand social structure, and fail to anticipate its consequences for organizational survival. This can leave organizations vulnerable to manipulation by skilled political entrepreneurs. In one example, the entire top management team of a manufacturing company learned from a network analysis that the bomb threats, shootings, and vandalism threatening the future of the company were instigated by partisans of a lowerranking manager, who had had systematically recruited family, friends and neighbors into the company over a 30-year period. In a district desperate for jobs, these partisans felt loyalty to the informal leader who had provided them information that allowed them to be first in line for vacancies on Monday morning. The CEO, confronted with an analysis of the deep cleavages existing in the social structure of the organization resulting from the informal patterns of recruiti ng over decades , had this to say about those who had been hired : "… they just seem ed like waves of turt les coming over the hill; hired as they made it to our door" (Burt, 1992: 1).This story illustrates the gap at the heart of our understanding of leadership. It illustrates how important it is for would-be leaders (who may or may not hold formal supervisory positions-see Bedeian & Hunt, in press) to accurately perceive the network relations that connect people, and to actively manage these network relations. This story also

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