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The emergences and consequences of intra-organizational social networks--social capital perspective

Social networks and social capital issues have been combined with organizational behavior scope for decades. Nevertheless, the difficulty of methodology and data collection causes the rareness of related empirical study. In this dissertation, multi-level research structure and hypothesis, including dyadic-level, individual-level, and network-level, are proposed to be examined respectively. 505 questionnaires were collected from 17 companies providing a great deal of support to be analyzed by social network analysis technique of UCINET VI for windows. The following are results and conclusions of each research level:
For dyadic level, ¡§cognition-based trust¡¨ and ¡§affect-based trust¡¨ are core variables representing dyadic relationship quality. Similarity/attraction paradigm, self-categorizing, and social identity were used as theory basis to prove the positive effects of antecedents embracing gender, education level, age, and tenure similarity, also the ¡§value fit¡¨ and ¡§cognitive friendship¡¨, on dyadic relationship quality and interaction behaviors. The results demonstrate the higher similarity of education level and tenure between two individuals, the greater level of value fit, friendships, cognitive-based trust, affect-based trust, knowledge sharing, and citizenship behaviors. Cognition and affect trusts between two individuals cause the knowledge sharing and citizenship behaviors for each other. The positive effects of gender differences on relationship quality are discovered unexpectedly.
For individual level, the normalized in-degree of centralities of ¡§advice networks¡¨ and ¡§friendship networks¡¨ were measured by social network analysis techniques to be examined as core variables. I draw on the formal organization structure (work flow network centrality and rank), personalities (conscientiousness, high-low self-monitoring, extraversion/introversion, collectivism/individualism), and job characteristics (job inter-dependency and work loading) for the antecedent variables of ¡§advice networks¡¨, ¡§friendship networks¡¨, and personal contextual performance (knowledge sharing and citizenship behaviors). Also treat the ¡§personal social capital¡¨ as the mediate variables among personal social networks and personal contextual performance. The results demonstrate the positive effects of rank, work flow network centrality, conscientiousness, self-monitoring, collectivism, and job inter-dependency on the centrality of advice network. The negative-effects of work loading are also verified. For the centrality of friendship network, the results proved the positive effects of the work flow network centrality, and conscientiousness, also the negative effects of work loading on it. Knowledge sharing behaviors representing the part of personal contextual performance are positively affected by conscientiousness, self-monitoring, rank, work flow network centrality, advice network centrality, friendship network centrality, and personal social capital. Work loading influences the knowledge sharing behaviors negatively. Citizenship behaviors that also represent the part of personal contextual performance are influenced by advice network centrality, friendship network centrality, and personal social capital. The mediating effects of social capital among personal social networks and personal contextual performance are also manifested.
For network level, the comparisons among formal organization structure and nine intra-organizational social networks demonstrate the influences of rank and division on social network structural configuration. I also draw on the similarity-attraction paradigm as the theory basis to examine the positive effects of the similarity of department, gender, age, education-level, marriage status, and nine intra-organizational social network matrices on the relational matrices of friendship and affect-trust. MRQAP (Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure) technique is applied on this analysis. The results verified the positive effects of the similarity of department, gender, and marriage status on friendship and affect-trust between two individuals. In addition, the theoretical and managerial implications, limitations and future research questions based on the findings and suggestions for future research are provided.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0818104-170844
Date18 August 2004
CreatorsChen, Jung-te
ContributorsBih-shiaw Jaw, Kuo-jen Su, Victor W. Liu, Liang-chih Huang, Wann-yih Wu
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0818104-170844
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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