Performance in networks: from structures to behaviors

Big advantages can come from serving as a “bridge,” connecting people and groups who would otherwise be unconnected. This position could allow freer access to information, greater control over how that information circulates, and a better view of the opportunities that may gradually arise. So this concept of what we call brokerage has been capturing a lot of attention in social network studies.

Very often, the focus of these studies centers on network architecture and how certain positions (like brokers) can generate benefits for whoever holds them. Yet people who find themselves in such positions, for instance acting like brokers, can in some cases reap very different rewards in terms of individual performance. In other words, even in the same privileged position within a network, not everyone gains the same advantages. Researchers explain this dissimilarity in part by pointing to objective factors such as job rank, past experience, and individual competencies; subjective traits such as cognitive styles, identity and emotions carry some weight too.

But along with these factors we need to examine how each actor really behaves, what we can call their strategic orientation. In other words, how do they actually interpret their roles in the context of social networks, as shaped by their convictions, their motivations, and their values?

When unpacking the position of a broker, linking otherwise disconnected people or groups, we can draw a distinction between two strategic orientations that brokers in the same position can adopt.

The first is “arbitraging”, which is when brokers proactively seek to maximize the advantages of their status. On one hand, they’ll try to get as much information as they can from their contacts, but without sharing it; on the other, they leverage their position to gain control and win power in the network.

The second is referred to as “collaborating”. Brokers who adopt this orientation encourage direct knowledge, information exchange and collaboration between their contacts, fostering sharing and connecting diverse resources. But the new links that emerge from this inclination for sharing could burden brokers with significant coordination costs, possibly even undermining their advantageous position in the network, both in terms of benefits and opportunities for control.

We investigated the impact of these two strategic orientations in our study on 381 employees of a large multinational company. Our sample was particularly pertinent for analyzing the advantages of brokerage thanks to the high degree of dispersion, both in terms of geography (with five continents represented) and expertise (we counted 12 different areas of activity).

For all the participants, we first reconstructed their network of contacts and then used ad hoc indicators to measure their actual brokerage position within the organization. Next we collected data on individual performance based on company evaluations. And finally we profiled each person on their preferred strategic orientation using a questionnaire centering on a scenario simulation.

We found that collaborating was by far the more common orientation, indicated by 85% of our respondents. In comparison, only 11.5% adopted arbitraging. (The remaining 3.5% took on an intermediate orientation.) We also found these orientations were relatively stable over time, and no significant variations emerged across sub-functions, either in different geographical areas or much less on the basis of diverse experience, education, or job rank.

But as far as performance, although our findings confirm the positive impact of a brokerage position on individual evaluations, we found that this impact is much higher when brokers take on an arbitraging orientation, and in contrast much lower when they have a tendency toward collaborating.

There’s no doubt about the advantage of being in a position of brokerage. But to exploit this position to the fullest, people need to adopt certain behaviors. In fact it’s not just the position within a network, but also how people interpret their role in this position – the specific behavior they adopt – that can shape results.

The people who maximize their brokerage position are the ones who adopt arbitraging behavior, which reflects an alignment between role/structural position and strategic orientation. In other words, by defending and proactively leveraging the information advantages and control that come with the position, brokers can optimize benefits on an individual level.

Vice versa, brokers with collaborating strategic orientations end up sharing and redistributing information advantages throughout their network, to the detriment of their individual performance and without necessarily improving collective performance. On top of that, individual performance can suffer from the negative fallout of coordination costs that come with the intermediary role that collaborating brokers may play. In this case, we see a misalignment between their position in the network and their strategic orientation.

One of the key advantages in adopting an arbitraging orientation is the fact that this is the source of invaluable new ideas. Access to information from different groups of people, and the ability to control it and translate it into original ideas – all this gives these brokers an exceptional edge, because they can frame and adapt this information to meet the specific needs of diverse audiences.

In contrast, openly sharing potentially strategic information with various groups of people indiscriminately not only means losing control of ideas. This behavior can even generate substantial costs that tie into enabling different actors to communicate and coordinate among themselves.

Future investigation could delve into context factors that can prompt people to adopt a certain orientation, be it arbitraging or collaborating. These factors might include the organizational or national culture: an individualistic one might encourage more arbitraging-directed behaviors, while a collectivist culture would foster collaboration. In addition, we can theorize that in highly dynamic, fluid contexts a collaborative approach is a better fit for building consensus quickly and helping new entrepreneurial initiatives take off.