How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes

When organizations face paradoxical tensions, such as when they must simultaneously meet scientific and commercial objectives, individuals within the organization also experience tensions. How individuals’ responses to these tensions inform the collective organizational response remains a theoretica...

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Main Authors: Keller, Joshua, Wong, Sze-Sze, Liou, Shyhnan
Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143883
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1438832023-05-19T07:31:18Z How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes Keller, Joshua Wong, Sze-Sze Liou, Shyhnan Nanyang Business School Business::General Commerce Conflict When organizations face paradoxical tensions, such as when they must simultaneously meet scientific and commercial objectives, individuals within the organization also experience tensions. How individuals’ responses to these tensions inform the collective organizational response remains a theoretical and empirical challenge. We address this challenge by introducing a social network perspective. In a two-stage mixed-method study of a research institute in Taiwan, we examined how individuals’ social networks facilitated the organization’s response to a science-commerce paradox. Our results demonstrated that the level of heterogeneity in each individual’s social network influenced how each individual contributed to the organization’s collective response. Specifically, individuals with heterogeneous instrumental networks were more likely to contribute to the organization-wide consensus response, whereas individuals with homogeneous expressive networks were more likely to contribute to a polarized subgroup response. Our findings suggest that individuals’ roles in shaping a collective organizational response to paradoxes depends on who they seek advice from and who they befriend. Ministry of Education (MOE) Accepted version This research was supported by funding from the Ministry of Education, Singapore. Tier 1 (grant number: RG2/11) 2020-09-29T05:34:39Z 2020-09-29T05:34:39Z 2019 Journal Article Keller, J., Wong, S.-S., & Liou, S. (2019). How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes. Human Relations, 73(3), 401–428. doi:10.1177/0018726719827846 0018-7267 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143883 10.1177/0018726719827846 3 73 401 428 en Human Relations © 2019 The Author(s). All rights reserved. This paper was published by SAGE Publications in Human Relations and is made available with permission of The Author(s). application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Business::General
Commerce
Conflict
spellingShingle Business::General
Commerce
Conflict
Keller, Joshua
Wong, Sze-Sze
Liou, Shyhnan
How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
description When organizations face paradoxical tensions, such as when they must simultaneously meet scientific and commercial objectives, individuals within the organization also experience tensions. How individuals’ responses to these tensions inform the collective organizational response remains a theoretical and empirical challenge. We address this challenge by introducing a social network perspective. In a two-stage mixed-method study of a research institute in Taiwan, we examined how individuals’ social networks facilitated the organization’s response to a science-commerce paradox. Our results demonstrated that the level of heterogeneity in each individual’s social network influenced how each individual contributed to the organization’s collective response. Specifically, individuals with heterogeneous instrumental networks were more likely to contribute to the organization-wide consensus response, whereas individuals with homogeneous expressive networks were more likely to contribute to a polarized subgroup response. Our findings suggest that individuals’ roles in shaping a collective organizational response to paradoxes depends on who they seek advice from and who they befriend.
author2 Nanyang Business School
author_facet Nanyang Business School
Keller, Joshua
Wong, Sze-Sze
Liou, Shyhnan
format Article
author Keller, Joshua
Wong, Sze-Sze
Liou, Shyhnan
author_sort Keller, Joshua
title How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
title_short How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
title_full How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
title_fullStr How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
title_full_unstemmed How social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
title_sort how social networks facilitate collective responses to organizational paradoxes
publishDate 2020
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143883
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