Facilitating employees’ tertius iungens orientation: The role of organizational context

Abstract

This paper examines potential organizational determinants of individual employees’ tertius iungens orientation (TIO), referring to the strategic and behavioral orientation of an individual for connecting people across one’s social network. In previous studies, TIO has been found to facilitate inter-group cooperation, knowledge sharing and innovation, but little research has thus far looked into its potential organizational conditions. Analyses of multilevel and multilevel data shed new light on what organizations can do to facilitate their members’ TIO. At the firm level, we find that the centripetal force of senior team shared vision is positively associated with employees’ TIO, whereas the centrifugal force of decentralization has a negative influence. Further, group-level LMX and the supervisor’s performance expectations we found to influence TIO positively at the group-level. These findings have a number of important implications to both theory and practice.