Studying Interpersonal Communication in Organizations: A Leadership Application.

Penley, Larry E.; Hawkins, Brian L.

doi:10.2307/256203

Cited by 100 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The secondary and lowest-order categories that emerged from the data are highly similar with prior research about leadership behavior. Leadership research, for example, has demonstrated the importance of various leadership processes and behaviors including those related to trust (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002), interpersonal communication (Penley & Hawkins, 1985), response flexibility (Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991), and initiating structure and consideration Kerr, Schriesheim, Murphy, & Stogdill, 1974;Korman, 1966;Lowin, Hrapchak, & Kavanagh, 1969;Petty & Pryor, 1974). Therefore, we consider the secondary and lowest-order categories that emerged from our data, though not surprising, important in that they highlight specific behaviors and processes that may hold particular importance within dangerous contexts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

Baran

Scott

2010

Military Psychology

108

101

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Leaders in high-reliability organizational contexts such as firefighting, emergency medicine, and law enforcement often face the challenge of making sense of environments that are dangerous, highly ambiguous, and rapidly changing. Most leadership research, however, has focused on more stable conditions. This study analyzed 100 reports of "near-miss" situations in which firefighters narrowly escaped injury or death, drawing upon sensemaking and high-reliability organizational theories to provide a grounded theory of leadership processes within extreme events. Themes related to direction setting, knowledge, talk, role acting, role modeling, trust, situational awareness, and agility were key categories. Further abstraction of the data revealed the higher-order categories of framing, heedful interrelating, and adjusting as key characteristics of the overall social process of leadership within dangerous contexts, labeled organizing ambiguity. These findings highlight leadership as a collective sensemaking process in which ambiguity is reduced and resilience promoted in the face of danger via interaction among and between leaders and followers.During recent decades, researchers have provided a wealth of theory and empirical analysis regarding leadership. The majority of that scholarship, however, has focused on the influence processes leaders employ during relatively stable operating conditions in which ambiguity levels are low to moderate, information used to manage equivocality is relatively accessible, and time for action is plentiful. Many studies involving military leaders have focused on individual-and organiza-

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

Baran

Scott

2010

Military Psychology

108

101

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“…As part of this effort, we assessed the role of dyadic trust as a critical mechanism underlying the knowledge benefits of strong ties. Although trust has been shown in prior research to be correlated with effective knowledge transfer (Andrews & Delahay, 2000;Penley & Hawkins, 1985;Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998;Zand, 1972), no one to our knowledge has investigated it specifically as a mediator between strong ties and receipt of useful knowledge, either as a multidimensional concept (benevolence and competence) or at the micro (interpersonal) level. In this paper we provide empirical support for a model of knowledge transfer with three key findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When trust levels are higher, people are more willing to give useful knowledge (Andrews & Delahay, 2000;Penley & Hawkins, 1985;Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998;Zand, 1972) and also more willing to listen to and absorb it (Levin, 1999;Mayer et al, 1995;Srinivas, 2000). Trust also makes knowledge transfer less costly (Currall & Judge, 1995;Zaheer, McEvily, & Perrone, 1998).…”

Section: Relational Characteristics Of Knowledge Transfermentioning

confidence: 99%

The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer.

Levin¹,

Cross²,

Abrams³

2002

AMPROC

318

491

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Recent research suggests that people obtain useful knowledge from others with whom they work closely and frequently (i.e., strong ties). Yet there has been limited empirical work examining why this is so. Moreover, other research suggests that weak ties provide useful knowledge. To help integrate these multiple findings, we propose and test a model of two-party (dyadic) knowledge exchange, with strong support in each of the three companies surveyed. First, the link between strong ties and receipt of useful knowledge (as reported by the knowledge seeker) was mediated by competence-and benevolence-based trust. Second, once we controlled for these two trust dimensions, the structural benefit of weak ties became visible. This latter finding is consistent with prior research suggesting that weak ties provide access to non-redundant information. Third, we found that competence-based trust was especially important for the receipt of tacit knowledge. We discuss implications for theory and practice. 3Promoting knowledge creation and transfer within organizational settings is an increasingly important challenge for managers today (Kogut & Zander, 1992). Organizations that can make full use of their collective expertise and knowledge are likely to be more innovative, efficient, and effective in the marketplace (Grant, 1996;Wernerfelt, 1984). Yet ensuring effective knowledge creation and transfer has proven a difficult challenge. At least three separate literatures-on social networks, trust, and organizational learning/knowledge-have addressed aspects of the knowledge transfer problem. We propose and test empirically a theoretical approach that synthesizes these three streams. Structural Characteristics of Knowledge TransferSocial network researchers have offered clear evidence of the extent to which knowledge diffusion occurs via social relations (e.g., Rogers, 1995). Work dating to Pelz and Andrews (1968), Mintzberg (1973), andAllen (1977) indicates that people prefer to turn to other people rather than documents for information. For example, Allen (1977) found that engineers and scientists were roughly five times more likely to turn to a person for information than to an impersonal source such as a database or file cabinet. More recently, Cross (2001) found that even people with ready access to well-populated electronic and paper-based sources of information reported seeking information from colleagues significantly more than from these sources. In general, researchers have found relationships to be important for acquiring information (Burt, 1992); learning how to do one's work (Lave & Wenger, 1991); making sense of ambiguous environments or events (Weick, 1979); and solving complex problems (Hutchins, 1991).Social network theorists have focused much of their attention on structural properties of networks (Adler & Kwon, 2002), such as structural holes at the network level (Burt, 1992) and tie strength at the dyadic level (Granovetter, 1973). Tie strength characterizes the closeness of a relationship between two...

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“…To the extent that people identify with a group, they tend to feel social attraction to fellow group members, and generally consider them to 14 be likeable and trustworthy (Ellemers, 2012;Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis, 2002). Trust, which is defined as the willingness to take risks and rely on another (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998), reduces the risk of sharing information (Penley & Hawkins, 1985). Indeed, social network research demonstrates that when contacts trust one another they share more useful knowledge (Levin & Cross, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

One of Us or One of My Friends: How Social Identity and Tie Strength Shape the Creative Generativity of Boundary-Spanning Ties

Dokko

Kane

Tortoriello

2013

Organization Studies

106

110

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One of us or one of my friends: How social identity and tie strength shape the creative generativity of boundary-spanning ties AbstractSocial ties to colleagues on other work teams can spur creative ideas and workplace innovation by exposing an individual to diverse knowledge. However, for external knowledge to be recombined into innovation, the knowledge must first be recognized as potentially valuable. Going beyond traditional structural explanations, we predict that the use of diverse knowledge to generate creative ideas and solutions will depend in part on employees' psychological attachment to the organizational groups to which they belong, i.e. their social identity, and the strength of their social ties. We test our hypotheses in an R&D division of a global high-technology firm, finding that social identity influences the creative generativity of boundary-spanning ties. Specifically, stronger team identity renders interactions with colleagues on other work teams less generative of creative ideas, while identification with an overarching, superordinate group (e.g., a division) enhances creative generativity. We also hypothesize and find that tie strength attenuates the negative effect of team identity.

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Studying Interpersonal Communication in Organizations: A Leadership Application.

Cited by 100 publications

References 23 publications

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

Organizing Ambiguity: A Grounded Theory of Leadership and Sensemaking Within Dangerous Contexts

The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer.

One of Us or One of My Friends: How Social Identity and Tie Strength Shape the Creative Generativity of Boundary-Spanning Ties

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