Class 20: Social Networks - Power & Influence

Positional Power

• Legitimate power

• Coercive power

• Reward power

Personal power

• expert power

• Referent power

Power

Is the capacity to influence others who depend on you in some way

• Power exist at all levels of an organization

• It can flow in any direction

  • Downward: from senior leaders to junior staff (most common)

  • Upward: from employees to managers (e.g, through expertise or critical information)

  • Lateral: between peers or across departments (e.g, collaboration, persuasion)

• Power can be held by both individuals and groups

Downward direction of power

From senior leaders to junior staff (most common)

Upward direction of power

From employee to managers (e.g, through expertise or critical information)

Lateral direction of power

Between peers or across departments (e.g, collaboration, persuasion)

Human capital

Is the competencies and resources you have yourself - your intelligence, education, experience

Social capital

Is the resources you can mobilize through others, and the ways that your connections to others help you achieve you goals

• social capital f often discussed in terms of social networks

What is a network?

A network is a group of connected people or things

• ex: social media connections, coworkers, teams, or even ideas

Why do networks matter?

This helps us find out things like:

• Who has the most influence?

• Who connects different groups?

• Who might be isolated?

Key insights of networks

There are different ways to be important in a network:

• some people have lots of connections

• Others are bridges between groups

• Some are central to the flow of information

What is a social network?

It’s a visual map of relationships between people

It’s based on sociology and graph theory (a branch of math)

A network is made up of:

• nodes = people (or organizations)

• Edges = connections or relationships between them

Why it matters

• social networks helps us see and study how people are connected

We can use the to understand:

• How information spreads

• Who trusts whom

• How ideas or gossip move

• Even how diseases or innovation spread

Networks tell us…

Who s important and why

Degree centrality

How many direct connections do I have? Often means a cohesive network around the person

• ex: I talk to 10 people on my team

• Ex: all your friends know each other well

Betweenness centrality

How often am I the bridge between others? Means you have a bridging network

• ex: two departments only talk through me — connect them

• Ex: you have friends in different groups who don’t know each other welll

Closeness centrality

How quickly can i reach everyone else in the network?

• ex: I can get a message to anyone in just a few steps

Centrality

In a network confers positional power. But when and why such power is important?

Organizational change

Is one of the most important applications of positional power

• hard to implement, because organizations are inherently neat (why?)

• Can be implemented as a sequence of individual - and group-level changes

• Networks help managers to see where to start

Divergent change

Best implemented by change agents who bridge network clusters

• requires a radical shift in cultural norms and accepted practices

  • Examples:

    • Transferring responsibility for patient discharge from hospitals to NHS

    • Replacing billable hours metric in law firms

  • Change agents with bridging networks

    • Are less likely to encounter unified resistance

    • Can tailor their message to needs/customs of each group

Nondivergent change

Best implemented by change agents in cohesive networks

• incremental change, lower stakes

  • Examples:

    • Adding to physician responsibilities related elated to new technology used in the NHS

  • Change agents with cohesive networks

    • Are more likely to be trusted (e.g. that the change is beneficial for all, not just management)

    • Peer pressure may help convert holdouts

Entrepreneurial (bridging) network

An individual bridges across structural holes, thereby connecting individuals or groups that would otherwise not be connected

• relative advantages:

  • Access to novel and diverse information

  • Increases innovation and creativity

  • Brokerage and control opportunities

  • Integration across groups

  • Career advancement

Clique (cohesive) network

Most members are directly linked to each other: few or no structural holes; high cohesion

• relative advantages

  • Promotes trust

  • Provides clear normative expectations

  • Promotes cooperation and reciprocity

  • Facilitates implementation and execution

Leveraging your network

Your personal network can be an important source of power, but bigger isn’t always better!

• try to bridge disconnected clusters of people

• Try to bridge hierarchical levels and functional groups

• Invest in relationships that extend your expertise

• Beware of homophily (random group assignment helps here)

• Connect to powerful others

• Balance strong/weak ties, cohesiveness and brokerage