IMO Research Seminar: Against the grain: Peers' affective and behavioral responses to employees' networking-up

Istituto di management e organizzazione

Data: 18 Ottobre 2017 / 12:30 - 14:00

PC-04

Professor Massimo Maoret from IESE will be presenting his latest research on Wednesday 18th of October at 12:30 in PC-04 in the blue building, here is the abstract:

 

How do peers react to employees who network with management? Research has explored the reasons for networking-up – or engaging in relationships with people higher up in the organizational hierarchy – yet little is known about what affects coworkers’ reaction to such behavior and its impact on employees who engage in it. Building on the social network, social comparison, and status literatures, we argue that the extent to which peers network-up shapes their affective and behavioral responses toward employees who interact with managers. More specifically, we argue such responses will diverge: while the extent to which peers’ network-up positively moderates the relationship between employees’ networking-up and how much they are liked, it negatively moderates the link with the amount of knowledge they are willing to transfer to them. Finally, peers’ networking-up positively moderates the extent to which they seek employees who network-up for advice, thus configuring an interesting paradox, as employees are not willing to share knowledge with their structural peers yet they seek advice and thus knowledge from them. Results from our analysis of data derived from two different organizations and an experiment support our hypotheses, thus yielding theoretical contributions and managerial implications about the competing and paradoxical pattern of affective and behavioral responses to networking-up.

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