Job design: A social network perspective

Journal of Organizational Behavior

J. Organiz. Behav. 31, 309–318 (2010)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

Commentary Job design: A social network perspective

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.609

MARTIN KILDUF

* Correspondence to: Martin Kilduff, University1AG, U.K. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, L

F1* AND DANIEL J. BRASS2

1Judge Business School, Cambridge University, Cambridge, U.K.2Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A.

A large part of many people’s workday consists of interactions with others. Yet job design research has

tended to neglect these network interactions as sources of attitudes and behaviors. Looking back at the

history of job design research, we can trace how interest in social aspects of job design have waned and

waxed. In 1971, Hackman & Lawler published a precursor to the Hackman and Oldham (1975, 1976)

Job Characteristics model. In addition to the core job dimensions of variety, autonomy, task identity,

and feedback, Hackman and Lawler included two social dimensions: dealing with others and friendship

opportunities. Prior to 1971, researchers from the Tavistock Institute endorsed aligning the social and

the technical. Despite considerable research on ‘‘socio-technical systems’’ (Cooper & Foster, 1971;

Herbst, 1962; Trist, Higgin, Murray, & Pollack, 1963), the social dimension of job design was excluded

from what became the dominant job design model. Following Herzberg’s (1966) emphasis on the

motivational nature of the job itself, and debate concerning intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (e.g.,

Deci, 1971), Hackman and Oldham chose to focus exclusively on the individual in relation to his or her

task. They dropped ‘‘dealing with others’’ and ‘‘friendship opportunities’’ and modified task feedback

to only include feedback from doing the job itself (in additional to adding task significance and

modifying variety to focus on a variety of skills).

The Hackman/Oldham model generated a tremendous burst of research, but the social aspects of job

design did not reappear until Salancik and Pfeffer’s (1978) social information processing critique. The

SIP framework generated considerable research as scholars argued over whether job characteristics

were objective or socially constructed. The flurry of research died quickly because the effects of social

cues in the experimental situations typical of SIP research tended to be fleeting (as shown by Kilduff &

Regan, 1988). In many ways, Hackman and Oldham seemed to have closed the book on job design.

However, there is now a resurgence of interest in the social aspects of job design. Specifically,

relational job design approaches recognize that tasks seldom occur in isolation (see Grant & Parker,

forthcoming, for a review). There are many important contributions of this relational turn including the

development of measures of social characteristics of jobs (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006) and analyses

showing that these social characteristics explain significant amounts of variance in turnover intentions,

organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and subjective performance (Humphrey, Nahrgang, &

Morgeson, 2007). Further, theory and research has extended our understanding of how providing

employees contact with those who benefit from their work strengthens employees’ prosocial

of Cambridge, Judge Business School, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2

td.Received 3 March 2009Accepted 5 March 2009

310 M. KILDUFF AND D. J. BRASS

motivations, thereby encouraging higher levels of effort, persistence, and helping behaviors (Grant,

2007; Grant, Campbell, Chen, Cottone, Lapedis, & Lee, 2007). The perspective that we discuss extends

these relational approaches by considering job design in the context of social networks of interaction

across the organization. We examine how tasks and the people who perform them are embedded in

structures of relationships with other tasks and people.

Thus, the network approach differs from prior job design developments in explicitly considering the

organization of work as a network—a workflow network in which tasks move between different people

and different departments. This workflow network, over time, comes to be embedded within additional

networks of communication, advice, and friendship that constitute the informal social structure of the

organization. These informal networks, embedded within and, indeed, influencing the more formal

structures of the division of labor, provide the opportunities and constraints that characterize

organizational life. To the extent that individuals in many organizations are increasingly engaged in

collaborative, knowledge-producing work, then tasks require, in addition to the duties stated in formal

job descriptions, a high degree of social interaction, information gathering, and innovation. The design

of such jobs may be as much an idiosyncratic endeavor on the part of individuals (cf. Miner, 1987)

constructing social network links (wittingly or unwittingly) as the result of blueprints in the HR

department.

Thus, a network approach to job design focuses on how social networks in organizations interrelate

with job design in affecting individual and group attitudes and behaviors. Job design, from a network

perspective, can only be understood in the context of the structure of social relationships within which

individual attitudes and behaviors are embedded and from which individuals derive social utility.

Social Networks

Like other successful research programs, the social network approach is constituted around a set of

generative ideas from which are drawn subordinate theories and hypotheses. These hypotheses alert

researchers to hitherto neglected or unnoticed phenomena (see the discussion of research programs in

Lakatos, 1970). The leading ideas that differentiate social network theory from other approaches

include at least the following four interrelated concepts: the primacy of social connections,

embeddedness in social fields, the social structuring of activity, and the social utility of connections

(Kilduff, Tsai, Hanke, 2006).

Social relations

In emphasizing the primacy of social relations, social networkers examine people in the force field of

influences, rather than exclusively focusing on the attributes of the people. To the extent that focal

individuals are studied, it is their positions in social networks that are the focus rather than their

attributes as ‘‘atomized,’’ isolated actors. A social relationship between two people can enhance many

aspects of how the job is perceived and experienced. As one temporary worker famously described,

even the most apparently monotonous work can become a source of delight and satisfaction in the

presence of amusing others (Roy, 1960). In this account of ‘‘banana time’’ enlivening 10-hour days

devoted to the operation of a relatively simple fabric-stamping machine, the objectively impoverished

work is enriched by the anticipation and enjoyment of routine badinage and game playing. Conversely,

Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 31, 309–318 (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/job

JOB DESIGN: A SOCIAL NETWORK PERSPECTIVE 311

the motivating aspects of enriched jobs can be dampened by negative relationships with co-workers and

supervisors (Labianca & Brass, 2006).

Embeddedness

Closely related to the primacy of social relations is the notion of embeddedness (Granovetter, 1985)

that we define as the extent to which economic transactions are embedded in, and affected by, networks

of interpersonal relationships (see also Uzzi, 1997). Even in efficient markets, evidence suggests that

decisions are affected by relationships such as friendship (Kilduff, 1990). Actors typically show a

preference for interacting with similar others (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). Thus,

workflow exchanges can be considered in light of their embeddedness within social relationships. For

example, the motivating effects of job characteristics tend to be moderated by satisfaction with

co-workers and supervisors (Oldham, 1976). Jobs tend to be experienced holistically—they bathe in

the reflected light of individuals’ social relationships with coworkers.

Structure

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of social network analysis is its focus on the structure of

relationships. A social network is defined as a set of actors and the relations (such as friendship,

communication, and advice) that connect the actors (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003, p.135). Although dyadic

relationships form the building blocks for networks, the idea of a network typically implies more than

two actors and the focus is on the pattern of relations among at least a triad of actors. It is typically

assumed that indirect ties (e.g., friend of a friend) are important. For example, in Granovetter’s (1973)

often-cited research on finding jobs, he argued that job search was embedded in social relations that he

defined as strong or weak ties. Tie strength was a function of time, intimacy, emotional intensity, and

reciprocity. Strong ties are friends and family; weak ties are acquaintances. Granovetter found that the

use of weak ties in job search led to higher paying, more satisfying jobs.

Although the research exemplified the primacy of social relations and the embeddedness of relations,

it was Granovetter’s structural explanation for the ‘‘strength of weak ties’’ that generated research

interest in networks. Focusing on the indirect ties in the network, Granovetter argued that strong ties

tend to be themselves connected (part of the same social circle) and provided the job seeker with

redundant information. Weak ties, on the other hand, tend to not be connected themselves; they

represent ties to disconnected social circles that provide more useful, non-redundant information. Job

seekers who used weak-tie acquaintances ended up with more non-redundant information and better

jobs. Burt (1992) modified this approach by simply focusing on whether ties were themselves

connected or not, referring to a lack of connection as a ‘‘structural hole.’’ Thus, although social network

analysis is not unique in its focus on social relationships, one of its distinctive competences derives

from its focus on the pattern of relationships beyond the dyad: the network.

Social utility

The assumption that social networks have utility is embodied in the concept of social capital, a concept

that has at least two somewhat different meanings (Kilduff & Tsai, 2003, p.135). The social capital of

an individual includes the benefits that accrue to the individual as a result of social network

connections, whereas the social capital of a community consists of ‘‘civic spirit grounded on impartial


DOI: 10.1002/job


application of the laws’’ (Portes, 2000; see also Putnam, 1996). Social capital at the individual level can

be contrasted with human capital: the skills, abilities, and experience that individuals possess as a result

of education and training.

We focus here on the first approach to social capital, which emphasizes the utility of social network

connections. This approach is exemplified by the studies that show that an actor’s position brokering

between others provides information and control benefits to the actor (e.g., Granovetter’s (1973) weak

tie explanation or Burt’s (1992) focus on ‘‘structural holes’’). In contrast, actors embedded within

relatively closed groups may benefit from high levels of trust and may be constrained by high levels of

monitoring (Coleman, 1990). Connecting to the ‘‘disconnected others’’ (across structural holes) can

change the individual’s experience of his or her job in terms of variety, autonomy, feedback, and

significance. But, to the extent that an individual inhabits such an open network, the individual’s

reputation within the organization may suffer either because the individual’s attempts to perform a

brokerage role incurs the sanctions of others (Burt, 1992) or because the individual’s identity is difficult

for others to discern (cf. Podolny, 2001). Individuals within closed networks are likely to experience

lowered autonomy, less variety, and redundant feedback (cf. work on Simmelian ties: Krackhardt &

Kilduff, 2002); but such effects may be outweighed by interpersonal trust and support.

With these four ‘‘leading ideas’’ in mind, we turn to a more detailed analysis of the interrelationships

between social networks and job design. We organize our analysis around the job characteristics (and

resultant job attitudes of satisfaction) and performance.

Job Characteristics

Important features of job design such as autonomy may be subject to relatively invisible social network

constraints. A focus exclusively on the characteristics of a job can miss the ways in which jobs are

embedded in networks of relationships (Brass, 1981). The autonomy of the individual is affected by the

surrounding structure of relationships. A densely connected group of work partners facilitates

the development of trust and the monitoring and enforcement of norms of reciprocity (Coleman, 1990).

We can trust our closely knit group of coworkers because interconnections among them provide for

easy monitoring of norms and sanctions against inappropriate or opportunistic behavior. Thus, the

diamond merchants in New York can exchange thousands of dollars worth of diamonds without the

worry of theft because the diamond community is highly connected (Coleman, 1990).

Although this network structure may provide for smooth operations, it also inhibits the autonomy

of any one individual. Individuals are constrained by the norms and expectations of the dense group of

interactions. Thus, we expect that network density (percentage of ties divided by total number of

possible ties), particularly in the surrounding work group, to be negatively connected to task autonomy.

Feedback concerning job performance—an important aspect of job design—is likely to be richer

and more diverse to the extent that individuals’ work connect them to people or groups who are not

themselves working together. To the extent that the individual is constrained within a closed network of

people whose work connects them to each other, then the individual is likely to receive redundant

information concerning work performance and other aspects of tasks. Likewise, skill variety is likely to

be affected by the extent to which the individual’s personal network (of friends and acquaintances

within the organization) resembles a closed network (e.g., a clique) or an open network of relatively

unconnected people. An open network can provide the individual with a variety of communications that

can foster creative solutions to work-related problems, or lead to innovations in jobs (Burt, 2004). Such

creative activity naturally increases skill variety. Further, task significance may be enhanced by the


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extent to which an individual’s personal and workflow network contacts reach out to different parts of

the organization rather than remaining limited to the immediate work group. Relationships with

workers in diverse parts of the organization may provide the individual with a broader, enhanced

perspective on how his/her job affects others in the organization.

Although we expect that strong, direct relationships will have more effect than distant, weak

relationships, we also know people seek out others who have attitudes similar to their own. Similarity

breeds interaction and interaction is the medium of influence and increased similarity as individuals

with similar attitudes reinforce each other and become even more similar. Differences in attitudes of

dissimilar others have little effect: disagreements can be attributed to the dissimilarity, and may even be

used to reinforce one’s own attitudes. Dyadic influence between friends is amplified when we consider

the triadic effects and the larger network. That is, influence attempts of one friend are more likely to be

successful when they are reinforced by several interconnected friends (Krackhardt, 1998).

When similarity centers on attributes such as gender and ethnicity, persistent patterns of structural

divide may form (Brass, 1985; Mehra, Kilduff, Brass, 1998). Homophily may also form around job

functions: engineers preferring to interact with engineers; sales people preferring other sales people.

Such persistent structural divides may provide cohesion to those grouped within clusters, offering

social support and identity confirmation (Milton & Westphal, 2005). Although these patterns may be

dysfunctional for the entire organization, they may enhance perceptions of task significance and task

identity within a particular functional group.

An alternative explanation for attitude and behavioral similarity derives from social comparison

theory (Festinger, 1954). People, in making important decisions or in constructing attitudes in

circumstances in which objective criteria are unavailable, tend to look to similar others (see Oldham,

Kulik, Ambrose, & Stepina, 1986, for an application to job design). From a social network perspective,

there is intense debate concerning which types of people serve as comparison others (see Kilduff and

Oh, 2006, for a review of this debate). A cohesion perspective suggests that people turn to their friends

when seeking advice concerning job-related issues (cf. Kilduff, 1990). In contrast, the structural

equivalence perspective (Burt, 1982) suggests that, in competitive environments, people compare their

attitudes and behaviors against those who occupy equivalent or similar positions in the social network.

Thus, people whose workflow relationships encompass the same others (they receive work from the

same other people and provide work to the same other people) are structurally equivalent and may see

themselves as rivals in the job design arena. They occupy identical jobs in terms of the organization of

work.

Alternatively, it may be that individuals occupying identical positions in social networks are

recipients of the same kinds of information and social pressure, and this leads to similarity of job

attitudes and decisions in the absence of any rivalry—a process known as social cohesion (Friedkin,

1984). Research suggests that both cohesion and structural similarity approaches can explain

similarities in attitudes (see Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004 for review). To understand the

outcomes of job design for a set of people requires, however, understanding which other people are seen

as similar in the social network for purposes of social comparison concerning jobs and job-related

outcomes.

Performance

Intuition suggests that large networks may be beneficial to performance. If social capital has

advantages, let us build lots of social capital by connecting to lots of people. And, other things being


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equal, large networks are probably more advantageous than small networks. But just making lots of

connections at random is inefficient—your return on time and effort is unlikely to be optimal (Burt,

1992). Rather, connections to a limited set of others with whom you have only weak ties (Granovetter,

1973) may enhance performance. People with whom you have weak ties (relative to those with whom

you have strong ties) are likely to have few ties among themselves and, therefore, are likely to provide

you with diverse non-redundant information (cf. Friedkin, 1980). The important principle that has

emerged from this line of thinking is that, in circumstances in which markets are inefficient, individuals

who broker across the disconnected others may reap benefits, whether they are connected to these

disconnected others by strong ties of friendship or weak ties of acquaintanceship (Burt, 1992).

One of the liveliest topics within the social capital arena concerns these brokers who span across the

gaps in social structure referred to as structural holes (Burt, 1992). Job design has tended to neglect the

informal structuring of work relationships that characterizes brokerage. The brokerage role can

consume much of the individual’s energy to the benefit or detriment of the overall organization (Burt &

Ronchi, 1990). Evidence suggests that to the extent that individuals’ jobs permit them to occupy such

roles within companies (brokering information, influence, and workflow across disconnected people in

their social network) these individuals achieve faster promotions (Brass, 1984; Burt, 1992) and higher

performance (Mehra, Kilduff, Brass, 2001). Connecting to the disconnected others may be a function of

one’s role in the prescribed workflow (Brass, 1981) or individual initiative in developing ties that go

beyond the prescribed workflow and hierarchy (Brass, 1984).

Further, individuals who move into brokerage positions tend to be the chameleon-like high self-

monitors who are able to adapt attitudes and behaviors to the demands of quite different roles (Oh &

Kilduff, 2008). When high self-monitoring individuals reach positions of power in organizations, they

take advantage of the discretion that comes with formal power to flexibly adapt their roles to the

changed requirements of their jobs. For example, in a service-oriented organization, in which upbeat

emotions were an important part of the front-line employees work, emotional help to unhappy

employees was provided by the managers who were high rather than low self-monitors (Toegel, Anand,

& Kilduff, 2007).

Self-monitoring helps explain why some people rather than others tend to be more influenced by

others in forming their job attitudes and decisions (Kilduff, 1992) and why some people rather than

others occupy brokerage roles in organizations (Mehra, Kilduff, & Brass, 2001). As a general

proposition, however, the network perspective suggests that, irrespective of self-monitoring

orientation, how well people do their jobs and how satisfied they are with their career progress

may depend on the extent to which they occupy work roles that allow brokerage across disconnected

others. Returns on social capital investments are likely to be higher in brokerage roles than in other

organizational roles. The extent to which individuals are able to benefit from the trust they have earned

in the execution of their jobs may be contingent on a social network of contacts within which the

individual is embedded, a contingency over which the individual may have exercised little or no

control.

In seeking to extend the ‘‘holeyness’’ and range of their social networks in organizations, people

have to overcome preferences for interacting with others similar on demographic characteristics.

Indeed, within work groups demographic differences tend to be unrelated to the development of

structural holes (Balkundi, Kilduff, Barsness, & Michael, 2007) or restrictions in cognitive diversity

(Kilduff, Anglemar, & Mehra, 2000). However, outside of the intense interactions characteristic of

work groups, default tendencies of social segregation based on gender and ethnicity do tend to appear

(Mehra, Kilduff, & Brass, 1998). Indeed, it is these tendencies, along with proximity, that result in

network clustering (to the advantage of brokers who bridge across clusters). By bridging clusters,

brokers not only acquire non-redundant information but also are first to see synergistic opportunities

(Burt, 1992).


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Zooming out from individuals, one encompasses teams, departments, organizations, and, indeed, the

network of inter-organizational relations (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2005; Ibarra, Kilduff, & Tsai, 2005).

Zooming out in this way illustrates the reciprocal embeddedness of job design and networks of

relationships. As patterns of workflow change, so does the structuring of work teams (Kilduff, Funk, &

Mehra, 1997). The performance of teams benefits from a moderate level of disconnectedness. Teams

with neither very few nor very many structural holes tend to outperform fragmented or very cohesive

teams (Balkundi, Kilduff, Barsness, & Michael, 2007). Further, team performance may benefit from a

mixture of internal density among members and external connections to disconnected others (Reagans,

Zuckerman, & McEvely, 2004). Weak ties from one team to another enhance the search for non-

redundant information but strong between-team ties provide the structure necessary for the transfer of

complex information (Hansen, 1999).

These performance implications of social networks may be contingent on the nature of tasks.

Unstructured, relative to highly routinized tasks, may benefit from diverse, non-redundant contacts

(Burt, 2000). But even routine tasks can benefit from non-routine connections that facilitate

performance by bypassing prescribed, bureaucratic workflow procedures.

Conclusion and Future Directions

As the field of organizational behavior moves away from an exclusive focus on individuals to consider

people in organizations in terms of their embeddedness in social networks (e.g., Kilduff & Krackhardt,

2008), this relational turn encompasses that important aspect of organizational behavior involved in job

design. Building on these new directions, we have explored a social network perspective on job design.

Among the ideas we have suggested are these.

� W

Co

ork tends to be viewed through the prism of social relations within which the job is embedded;

� W
ork-related decisions and outcomes are likely to be influenced by interrelations with friends and
others in the workplace;

� T
he structure of ties around the individual—whether open or closed—is likely to affect the
individual’s experience of job characteristics such as autonomy;

� J
ob satisfaction and career outcomes are likely to be affected by whether the individual plays a
brokerage role in the informal networks of relations within the organization;

� G
roup performance may be facilitated by dense networks of close ties within the group combined
with external ties to a range of disconnected other individuals and groups.

Relatively more is known about the practical design of jobs than the design of social networks. It is

difficult for managers to suggest to employees that they change their social networks (especially strong

ties). However, managers can structure formal task assignments in order to expose employees to others

with differing perspectives. Cross-functional teams often serve this purpose as well as committee

assignments and training programs. Informal activities (e.g., organizationally sponsored team sports)

can promote weak ties. Managers can promote enriched social jobs by creating a culture encouraging

differing perspectives and creative problem solving. Job design should include an awareness of the

embeddedness of jobs in social networks of friendship, acquaintanceship, and even kinship (cf. Burt &

Ronchi, 1990) in addition to an isolated focus on the particular task. Simple awareness of the results of

social network research may encourage motivated employees to build ties to dissimilar others. A social

network perspective on job design reveals the embeddedness of work in structures of social ties that

powerfully constrain and enable the initiatives and achievements of individuals.

pyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 31, 309–318 (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/job


Author biographies

Martin Kilduff (Ph.D., Cornell) is Diageo Professor of Management Studies at Judge Business

School, Cambridge University, and former editor of AMR. Previously he served on the faculties of

University of Texas at Austin, Penn State, and INSEAD. His work focuses on social networks and

includes the co-authored books Social Networks and Organizations (Sage Publications, 2003); and

Interpersonal networks in organizations: Cognition, personality, dynamics and culture (Cambridge

University Press, 2008). Recent empirical research focuses on the ripple effect of personality on social

structure (JAP, 2008) and small-world biases in the perception of friendship networks in organizations

(OBHDP, 2008).

Daniel J. Brass is J. Henning Hilliard Professor of Innovation Management in the Gatton College of

Business and Economics at University of Kentucky, Director of LINKS—The International Center for

the Study of Social Networks in Business, and past Associate Editor of Administrative Science

Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. from University of Illinois. He has published articles in journals such

as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management

Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human

Decision Processes, and Science. His research on the antecedents and consequences of social networks

in organizations has been cited more than 3000 times.

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Job design: A social network perspective