Abstract
Employee social network strategies play a key role in firm strategies and organizational performance. Currently, scholars underestimate the contributions of employee social strategies in firm strategies. Little is known how informal employee social networks, group entitativity and competition could shape and direct firm strategies and organizational performance. The article examines social network theory and strategic management’s content, process and open schools of thought to propose a new interpretation for managing firm strategies. More specifically, the author examines alternate causal paths, underlying processes and structures as mechanisms in employee social network strategies within a theoretical framework. The article proposes 4 theoretically driven propositions and makes two contributions. First, the article contributes to organizational behavior literature by focusing on the literature gap in network dynamics and competitive actions through employee social networks. Second, although there is immense literature on positive and negative employee competition in business, the article makes a contribution to the strategic management literature by moving beyond formalized structures and roles within an organization to focus on the multilevel informal workplace social interactions and processes that impact strategizing activities. Overall, the article extends strategy research in relation to how employee social networks operate through competition and group entitativity in firm strategies.
Highlights
Employee social networks warrant significant consideration in firm strategies and performance
There is immense literature on positive and negative employee competition in business, the article makes a contribution to the strategic management literature by moving beyond formalized structures and roles within an organization to focus on the multilevel informal workplace social interactions (Winslow et al, 2019), “alternate causal paths” and “underlying processes and structures as mechanisms” (Cornelissen et al, 2021, p. 7) that impact strategizing activities
Employee social networks derive from informal individual employee strategies that evolve and merge with formal firm strategies through the connected micromeso-macro levels and in turn, could improve or decrease organizational performance
Summary
Employee social networks warrant significant consideration in firm strategies and performance. Employee social networks derive from informal individual employee strategies that evolve and merge with formal firm strategies through the connected micromeso-macro levels and in turn, could improve or decrease organizational performance. Informal employee strategic interactions between internal employee networks and external employee networks become formally integrated within job-related tasks and workplace rules (Graen and Scandura, 1987) that shape and drive formal firm strategies and performance throughout the hiring and talent management processes. Informal employee social network strategies impact market competition through power relationships among suppliers, buyers, entrants, substitutes and rivalry that influence current and future levels of prices, investment in the industry and firm performance and profitability. Firms will formulate strategies for improving supply chain efficiency and decrease working capital within increasing market competition among networked relationships with organizations that must jointly share information to derive benefit from the interorganizational arrangement. Proposition 4 suggests employee group entitativity within interorganizational networks decrease organizational performance
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