Brokerage and Brokering: An Integrative Review and Organizing Framework for Third Party Influence

Abstract

Brokerage and brokering are pervasive and consequential organizational phenomena. Prevailing models underscore social structure and focus on the consequences that come from brokerage-occupying a bridging position between disconnected others in a network. By contrast, emerging models underscore social interactions and focus on brokering-the behavioral processes through which organizational actors shape others' relationships. Our review led us to develop a novel framework as a means to integrate and organize a wide range of theoretical insights and empirical findings on brokerage and brokering. The Changing Others' Relationships (COR) framework captures the following ideas that emerged from our review: (a) Different triadic configurations enable different forms of brokering, which in turn produce distinct effects on others' relationships, (b) brokering is a multifaceted social influence process that can take the form of intermediation (connecting disconnected others) or modification (changing others' preexisting relationships), (c) comparing social relations prebrokering versus postbrokering reveals a broker's impact, (d) brokering can influence others' relationships positively or negatively, and (e) information and incentives are two principal means through which individuals change others' relationships. Overall, the current review integrates multiple streams of research relevant to brokerage and brokering-including those on structural holes, organizational innovation, boundary spanning, social and political skill, workplace gossip, third-party conflict managers, and labor relations-and links each of the emergent themes identified in the current review to promising directions for future research on brokerage and brokering.

Broker Organizations to Facilitate Cross‐Sector Collaboration: At the Crossroad of Strengthening and Weakening Effects

“…These insights contrast with a recent review of individual brokers as specifically explored in employment and labor relations contexts (i.e., beyond our focus on broker organizations in cross‐sector collaboration), which points to brokers intentionally inflicting harm on the linked actors’ relationship (Halevy, Halali, and Zlatev ). They do so by withholding information, providing misinformation, and creating confusion and conflict between these actors (Kniffin and Wilson ; Posner, Spier, and Vermeule ).…”

The Uniplex Third: Enabling Single-domain Role Transitions in Multiplex Relationships

“…Our conceptualization of the uniplex third position also distinguishes it from the brokers studied in prior literature (Burt, 2005;Kleinbaum, 2012;Quintane and Carnabuci, 2017;Halevy, Halali, and Zlatev, 2019). An actor in the uniplex third position is neither the tertius gaudens who plays two alters off against each other for self-gain (Simmel, 1950;Burt, 1992) nor the tertius iungens who joins two alters for collective benefit (Gargiulo, 1993;Fernandez and Gould, 1994;Burt, 2001;Obstfeld, 2005).…”

The unique research on the informal ties and social networks in East Asia: Diverse perspectives and new research agenda

“…Third and finally, there is an urgent need to focus on the interaction between the substance dimension for relational embeddeness and structural dimension for structural embeddedness (Granovetter, 1985;Gu et al, 2019). This is related to the urgent need to remedy the lack of focus on the process-related issue, especially the interaction between the substance dimension and structural dimension of informal ties and networks, which is often reflected in the interplay between bridging ties and bonding ties (see Halevy, Halali, & Zlatev, 2019;Li et al, 2019, for the most recent reviews). For instance, it is interesting to study the process of evolution from a network as cocoon to that as multicolor Chinese knot.…”