Structural properties of work groups and their consequences for performance

Abstract

Over the past several decades, social network research has favored either ego-centric (e.g. employee) or bounded networks (e.g. organization) as the primary unit of analysis. This paper revitalizes a focus on the work group, which includes structural properties of both its individual members and the collection as a whole. In a study of 182 work groups in a global organization, we found that structural holes of leaders within groups as well as core-periphery and hierarchical group structures were negatively associated with performance. We show that these effects hold even after controlling for mean levels of group communication, and discuss implications for the future of network analysis in work groups and informal organizations.