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We adopt a sociopolitical perspective to examine how an employee’s political skill works in conjunction with social network structure to relate to the employee’s innovation involvement and job performance. We find that employee innovation involvement mediates the relationship between political skill and job performance and that the number of structural holes employees have in their social network strengthens the positive relationship between political skill and employee innovation involvement. Hypotheses were tested in a large microprocessor manufacturing firm using a sample of 113 employees responsible for generating technological innovations in support of the development of computer microchips. The results of a constructive replication study among medical professionals provide substantial support for our model. This study’s contribution is in showing that political skill both leads to innovation involvement and enables employees to take advantage of the innovation-enhancing potential of certain social network positions.

We develop a multistage self-regulatory perspective on job search effort assuming active job seekers conducting job searches within a job search goal life span. Specifically, we propose that time pressure increases as the goal of finding employment becomes more proximal, while job search uncertainty decreases. Drawing on these premises, we integrate social comparison theory, control theory, and the attentional focus model of time pressure to hypothesize how various intrapersonal (i.e., prior effort, job search progress) and sociocontextual (i.e., effort put forth by peers in a social network) factors relate to job seekers' self-regulation of effort at different stages (i.e., preparatory, active-extensive, and active-intensive) of a job search process. In two studies of job seekers, we found that (1) prior job seeker effort is positively related to current effort across stages, (2) average peer job search effort is more strongly and positively related to job seeker effort earlier in job search, and (3) job search progress (i.e., the ratio of interviews to applications in Study 1 and perceived progress in Study 2) is negatively related to job seeker effort later in job search. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.

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Integrating insights from the organizational social networks and workplace affect literatures, the authors propose a dynamic model of relationships, focusing on the affect experienced within dyadic work relationships to predict their trajectory over time: either improving, declining, or static. The feelings each partner typically experiences within an ongoing relationship (trait relational affect) can be distinguished according to their hedonic tone and activation level, and the combination of both dyadic partners' trait relational affect is predictive of the relationship trajectory. Furthermore, the emotions each partner experiences during specific interactional episodes (state relational affect) can alter and disrupt this relationship trajectory, either temporarily or permanently, to the extent that they diverge from the trait relational affect that is typically experienced. A given relationship trajectory over time leads to the development of different types of informal work ties (strong, negative, or weak), which are associated with a wealth of organizational consequences including effort, motivation, performance, and innovation. The model addresses criticisms that organizational social network research neglects the role of affect and views networks as static entities. The model further provides affect researchers with a novel framework that considers affect as a relational rather than individual phenomenon.