The Leader in Benign and Stormy Waters: Reinforced Centrality and Team Performance Over Time

We develop the concept of reinforced centrality as key to understanding how formally appointed team leaders respond to challenging network contexts in facilitating team performance. Team leaders who occupy positions of reinforced centrality have ties with many team members that incorporate both expressive and instrumental relations: each tie between the leader and a team member combines both friendship and advice. We propose that leader reinforced centrality is particularly relevant for teams that have troublesome relationships, such as teams with dense hindrance networks (Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne, & Kraimer, 2001). Reinforced centrality provides leaders with the clout and power to bring teams back on track. Conversely, the extra potency provided by reinforced centrality may be redundant for leaders of teams with dense friendship networks. In such teams, the emotional closeness among team members may enable coordination with little help from formal leaders. We find support for these ideas in analysis of the effects of team leader reinforced centrality on long-term team performance change with data from 84 work teams (255 respondents) that provided services and resources to organizational members.

Biography
Martin Kilduff (PhD Cornell, 1988) is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the UCL School of Management and former editor of Academy of Management Review (2006-08). His research focuses on the micro-foundations and consequences of individuals' social networks, with particular emphasis on the role of personality, cognition, and emotion in these processes. His recent work investigates: the career benefits and drawbacks of working under a high-reputation boss (AMJ, 2016); the relative effects of personality and network position on career outcomes (Organization Science, 2015); and the extent to which men and women leaders are evaluated by the social network contexts in which they work (Organization Science, 2015).