Personnel ReviewWork-team bonding and bridging social networks, team identity and performance effectivenessKaisa Henttonen, Jan-Erik Johanson, Minna Janhonen,

Article information:To cite this document:Kaisa Henttonen, Jan-Erik Johanson, Minna Janhonen, (2014) "Work-team bonding and bridging social networks,team identity and performance effectiveness", Personnel Review, Vol. 43 Issue: 3, pp.330-349, https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-12-2011-0187Permanent link to this document:https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-12-2011-0187

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Work-team bonding and bridgingsocial networks, team identityand performance effectiveness

Kaisa HenttonenSchool of Business/TBRC, Lappeenranta University of Technology,

Lappeenranta, Finland

Jan-Erik JohansonSchool of Management, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland, and

Minna JanhonenWork and Society Team, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health,

Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

Purpose – The focus in this paper is on the extent to which bonding and bridging social relationshipspredict the performance effectiveness and attitudinal (identity) outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach – The research was survey-based, involving 76 work teams and atotal of 499 employees in 48 organisations.

Findings – The analysis reveals a positive relationship between both bonding and bridgingrelationships and performance effectiveness and attitudinal outcomes. Team identity mediates therelationship between the team’s social-network structure and its performance effectiveness.

Research limitations/implications – The research investigates the performance effectiveness andattitudinal outcomes of social networks simultaneously, which is rare, but for study-design reasonsfails to investigate behavioural outcomes. More extensive data would reveal more about the possibleinteraction between bridging and bonding.

Practical implications – In order to improve performance effectiveness managerial attentionshould focus on building a team and social networks.

Originality/value – The research shows that team identity fully mediates the influence of bondingand bridging social relationships. This finding sheds light on the processes that mediate performanceeffectiveness, which in turn facilitate understanding of how team dynamics lead to differingperformance levels. The results also reveal how the type of social network affects the creation of ateam identity: individuals identify with the team through the social networks to which they belongboth within it and outside. Thus, team identity matters given the evidence suggesting that those whoidentify more with their work teams perform more effectively.

Keywords Performance, Identity, Networks, Quantitative, Group social capital, Work-team

Paper type Research paper

1. IntroductionResearchers attempting to enhance understanding of teams could start from thepremise that they permeate organisations, determine their effectiveness to some extentand affect the lives of the people involved (see Goodman et al., 1987). Given their higherlevels of autonomy within organisational structures, there is a need for the more activemanagement of their boundaries (Alderfer, 2011; Alderfer, 1977, 1980, 1987) through

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Received 31 December 2011Revised 30 October 201225 February 201322 May 2013Accepted 9 November 2013

Personnel ReviewVol. 43 No. 3, 2014pp. 330-349q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0048-3486DOI 10.1108/PR-12-2011-0187

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co-operation and coordination with other teams, other employees and management, forexample. Previous research has highlighted the need for teams to manage bridgingsocial networks with external members in their organisations in order to amassimportant informational and political resources that will improve their effectiveness(Ancona and Caldwell, 1992; Gladstein, 1984). Regardless of the fact that bridgingsocial networks may be performance-enhancing, recent research findings suggest thatmaintaining a variety of social networks outside a team may be detrimental to itsinternal bonding social networks (Keller, 2001), which in turn may have a negativeeffect on its effectiveness (e.g. Beal et al., 2003). The increasingly complex anduncertain business environment has strengthened the need to understand how teamsmanage this delicate balance of bonding and bridging social networks.

These types of tensions have rarely directly attracted research attention, however(see Oh et al., 2004; Reagans and Zuckerman, 2001, for exceptions): the focus hasgenerally been on the effect of either bonding (e.g. Jehn and Shaw, 1997; Salas et al.,1999) or bridging relations on team effectiveness (e.g. Ancona and Caldwell, 1992).There is agreement in the two previously-mentioned exceptions that it is notnecessarily optimal to foster one type of social network, bridging or bonding, butotherwise the results are slightly contradictory. According to Reagans et al. (2004),high numbers of both bonding and bridging social networks are most beneficial interms of team effectiveness. On the other hand, Oh et al. (2004) found that a moderatenumber of bonding ties and a high number of bridging social networks was the optimalconfiguration.

Thus, the first purpose of this study is to extend the results of recent team-levelresearch (Reagans et al., 2004; Oh et al., 2004) on the debate concerning the two types ofsocial networks, that is, bonding and bridging.

Secondly, studies focusing on the debate tend to concentrate purely on theperformance effectiveness of social networks, but to our knowledge, research on socialnetworks in teams has not concentrated on the impact of other dimensions of teameffectiveness (Henttonen, 2010). Progress on understanding the factors that influencework-team effectiveness will only be made if researchers complement their use ofsurvey measures with variables that allow a broader approach, such as performanceeffectiveness and member attitudes. Three dimensions of team effectiveness have beenidentified: performance effectiveness, member attitudes and behavioural outcomes(Cohen and Bailey, 1997). Performance effectiveness includes efficiency andproductivity, for example; member attitudes reflect team identity. Thus, in thisstudy we contribute to the literature in addressing two of these dimensions of teameffectiveness simultaneously, namely performance effectiveness and member attitudes.Of the elements of performance effectiveness we focus on efficiency and productivity,and of member attitudes we focus on team identity. Team identity is a group-levelconstruct representing the collective level of identification among all members: a highlevel of identification produces a strong identity (Lembke and Wilson, 1998). As anattitudinal outcome it is an under-evaluated resource, being one potent indicator of theteam’s functioning, and signalling in particular the extent to which its members haveinternalised the identity of the cooperative group. Thirdly, we elaborate on the role ofteam identity in linking social structure and performance effectiveness, which relatesto the growing body of research on social identity in teams (see, e.g. Bezrukova et al.,2009; Somech et al., 2008).

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Fourthly, given the considerable amount of research in R&D settings, a furthercontribution is to focus on work-team settings involving more standard types of duties(see Henttonen, 2010, for a review). Work teams are defined here as groups ofindividuals in an organisation with a clearly defined membership who are responsiblefor achieving shared goals (Hackman, 1987). The teams investigated in this study wereresponsible for producing goods or services (Cohen and Bailey, 1997). Even if the tasksare not very complex in comparison to innovation teams, for example, they provide animpetus for interaction. Moreover, they are assigned without prescribed paths to goalachievement. Thus, the work teams had to interact in order to complete their tasks.

Figure 1 depicts the anticipated relationships between team social structure andboth attitudinal outcomes and performance effectiveness. More specifically, the studyaddresses the question of whether or not bonding and bridging social relationshipspredict performance effectiveness and attitudinal outcomes (team identity) in workteams. The data testing the model comprises 76 work teams (including 499 employees)from 48 Finnish organisations.

Section 2 reviews the research on bonding and bridging social capital, team identityand team effectiveness. Section 3 describes the study setting and methodology, and theconcluding sections present the findings and assess them in the theoretical context ofteam identity and social capital.

2. Background and hypothesesThis study focuses on the team level, and more specifically on one of the relativelyunexplored aspects of social capital – the question of whether team social capital (alsotermed group social capital; Oh et al., 2006) determines team effectiveness. Socialcapital is defined here following Oh et al. (2006), and concerns the question of how the

Figure 1.The research model

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configuration of the collective’s (here work-team) social networks affects itseffectiveness. Previous research identifies two main types of social networksthrough which social capital flows: 1) bonding social networks and 2) bridging socialnetworks, both of which are at issue in this study.

2.1 The impact of bonding social networks on the performance effectivenessBonding social networks refer to relationships among individuals within the focalgroup (see Sandefur and Lauman, 1998), here the work team. These are therelationships that bring a team together. Specifically, when the members interact withlarger numbers of other members the team should benefit from a lower tendency toengage in social loafing – meaning that people expend less effort when they performcollective tasks than when they work on the same task individually (Kravitz andMartin, 1986) – or opportunism, and a closer adjustment to agreed-on norms: in otherwords the team will perform better. Thus, bonding social networks decrease theprobability of opportunism, lessen the need for costly monitoring, bring downtransaction costs, and are beneficial to all team members (Uzzi, 1996). Moreover,interaction among a relatively larger number of team members indicates greatermutual interdependence. This, in turn, enhances co-operation, which again enhancesteam effectiveness (Molm, 1994). Dense bonding social networks also benefit teamsthrough the sharing of information. Furthermore, the amount of information sharinghas been found to have a positive impact on the quality of team decision-making(Larson et al., 1996). Thus, we expect bonding social networks to be beneficial (see also,e.g. Baldwin et al., 1997; Janhonen and Johanson, 2010; Lucius and Kuhnert, 1997). Ourfirst hypothesis is thus:

H1. Bonding social networks relate positively to the effectiveness of teamperformance.

2.2 The impact of bridging social networks on the performance effectivenessBridging networks are relationships that cross team boundaries. Given that teamsexist in the broader social structure of organisations, there is a need to consider theirboundary-spanning activities, which are critical determinants of their social-capitalresources and, ultimately, of their effectiveness (Ancona, 1990; Oh et al., 2006). Teamscommunicating more frequently with a variety of people have greater access toresources other than themselves (Hansen, 1999; Tsai, 2001). Via bridging socialnetworks comprising various external team members they can obtain diverseinformation and accumulate a wide range of knowledge that will enhance effectiveness.For example, teams whose members socialise with diverse other people will quicklylearn about organisational developments, and if they experience a setback they aremore likely to be able to access a broad base of emotional and political support throughtheir ties with other teams in the organisation. Previous studies report a positiveconnection between bridging social networks and the team’s social-capital resources(Wong, 2008), and ultimately its effectiveness (Oh et al., 2004; Wong, 2008). We thusassume that the team with bridging social networks will perform better:

H2. Bridging social networks relate positively to the effectiveness of teamperformance.

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2.3 The mediating role of team identity between bonding and bridging social networksand the performance effectivenessOne way of establishing team identity is via the bonding social networks between themembers (Ellemers et al., 2004): the interaction within the team leads to multiple typesof social networks, which further influences member behaviour. Festinger’s work onsocial comparison indicating that dense social interaction affects both the perceptionsand attitudes of group members has inspired a large body of literature in the area ofsocial psychology (see, e.g. Festinger et al., 1950; Festinger, 1954). People, here teammembers, who intensively interact with each other are likely to have similarperceptions and attitudes as those who do not (Alderfer, 2011). Moreover, it seems thatdense bonding social networks within the team also foster identification with the group(Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993). Presumably, therefore, work-team members needbonding social networks in order to identify with their own team.

H3. Bonding social networks relate positively to team identity.

Tajfel (1972) adopted the term social identity in his theory of how people conceptualisethemselves in an intergroup context, and how a system of social categorisation “createsand defines an individual’s own place in society” (p. 293). He defines social identity as“the individual’s knowledge that he belongs to certain social groups together withsome emotional and value significance to him of this group membership” (Tajfel, 1972,p. 292; Tajfel, 2000). Similarly to individuals who identify with a social group andadopt its norms and values according to the group’s prototypes, group members alsodevelop cognitive prototypes of out-groups (Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987, see Hoggand Terry, 2000). As groups exist in relation to other groups, they thereby gain theirdescriptive and evaluative properties, and thus their social meaning. Moreover, associal identity is self-evaluative and accrues its value from the evaluative properties ofthe in-group, social comparisons between groups focus on establishing one’s owngroup. Intergroup relations involve the process of competing for a positive identity(Turner, 1975). In other words, teams and their members strive to protect or enhancetheir distinctiveness and social identity. How the process evolves depends on the teammember’s subjective understanding of the team boundaries and the respective stabilityand legitimacy status (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). The fourth hypothesis therefore restson the notion that team identity does not form in isolation, but is rather subject to theinfluences of other organisational members with who team members interact.

H4. Bridging social networks relate positively to team identity.

According to Lembke and Wilson (1998), a strong team identity is crucial for optimalteam effectiveness in terms of fostering teamwork and success through the unificationof the members in a socially identifiable whole. It also prevents members frombecoming distracted by individual goals they might prioritise over the interests of theteam (Ellemers et al., 2004). van Dick et al. (2008) also report a direct relationshipbetween team identification and performance. Therefore, we propose:

H5. Team identity relates positively to performance effectiveness.

Resources flowing through social networks may be work-related, such as advice andstrategic information, but such networks also transmit social identity (Podolny andBaron, 1997). Dense and cohesive social networks are conducive to the formulation of a

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clear social identity (Podolny and Baron, 1997), which in this context is more easilydiscernible. Furthermore, individuals who do not conform to it are “corrected” andencouraged to adapt to the groups’ shared attitudes (Bienenstock et al., 1990). Thus,research suggests that individuals, here team members, are more likely to take on andreflect the attitudes of those around them when they have interconnected relations(Krackhardt and Porter, 1985). Mullen and Copper (1994) also found in theirmeta-analytical study that dense social networks enhanced productivity. Thus,identity may mediate the relationship between bonding social networks and teameffectiveness in that embeddedness reinforces the opinions, perceptions and attitudesof team members through commonly held relationships:

H6. Team identity mediates the relationship between bonding social networksand performance effectiveness.

Focusing increasingly on open system models (Katz and Kahn, 1978), researchers havestarted to pay more attention to the context in which groups operate. Early researchresults (Ancona and Caldwell, 1987; Burgelman, 1983) identified the importance ofinteraction between teams and other groups within the organisation. The amount ofinteraction between a team and other groups external to it has also been found to relatepositively to team performance (Ebadi and Utterbach, 1984). Furthermore, awarenessof out-groups strengthens awareness of one’s in-group (Allen et al., 1983, Turner, 1981).More specifically, according to social identity theory, given the relational (interactionsthrough social network relationships) and comparative nature of social identification,social identities are maintained primarily through intergroup comparisons. Thus,groups (here teams) needing to strengthen their self-esteem try to find positivedifferences between themselves and reference groups (Tajfel, 1978, 1981). We thereforepropose:

H7. Team identity mediates the relationship between bridging social networksand performance effectiveness.

3. MethodsData for this study was obtained from a mail survey among Finnish workorganisations with at least two members, and a random sample of teams in theseorganisations. The Maintenance Work Ability (MWA) barometer survey carried outby the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health provided the relevant informationguiding the choice of survey recipients. The 900 questionnaires yielded 595 individualresponses. In order to facilitate team-level analysis the respondents to the MWAsurvey were asked to give information about the teams in their work place – what theywere like, how they functioned and why they were set up. The choice of organisationsfor further study was based on two criteria: the existence of teams and a willingness totake part in the survey (Taittonen et al., 2008). Ninety-nine organisations expressedtheir willingness to take part, the implication being that of the 900 organisations atleast 10 per cent had teams of some kind.

The first step was to send an invitation to the designated contact persons, mainlyHR or operations managers who had taken part in the MWA survey and who hadagreed to be contacted again. The researchers then followed this up by telephone.Although 77 of the contact persons had agreed to take part in the team survey, 22refused at this point, mostly because they were too busy but also in some cases because

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of a reluctance to ask subordinates to complete the survey outside working hours. Inthe end, respondent names were received from 56 organisations. (Taittonen et al., 2008)

The contact persons were asked to identify two teams for further investigation, onehigh-performing team and the other performing notably less well (Taittonen et al.,2008). These stipulations were used to prevent the naming of two teams showingexcellent performance and thus to ensure some variation. The contact personsdelivered the questionnaires to the eventual respondents. The final survey responserate was 75 per cent, and 101 teams were included.

Network analysis requires a high response rate (Wasserman and Faust, 1994), andwe therefore excluded teams with less than 80-per-cent participation. We also excludedteams with fewer than three members, as well as project teams of which were too fewto allow meaningful analysis. The teams’ members and their leaders all filled in thesurvey. The present study covers 499 employees in 76 teams representing 48 differentorganisations. The average team size was seven, the average tenure was four years,and the average age of the respondents was 42 years. The average organisationaltenure was 10.2 years and, finally, 55 per cent of the teams represented the publicsector and 45 per cent the private sector. The sectoral distribution was as follows:social services and health care (40 teams with 228 members); the public sector (27teams with 142 members); the private sector (13 teams with 86 members); publicadministration (14 teams with 113 members); education (six teams with 48 members).The remaining teams represented a variety of fields, including retail trade (three teamswith 16 members) and finance (four teams with 40 members).

3.1 MeasurementsThe question: “To who do you often turn for advice in work-related matters?” which isintended to assess advice-related communication networks (Burt, 1992; Ibarra andAndrews, 1993) elicited responses about advice-related interaction with other membersof the team. The network survey listed the names of each individual in the respondent’swork team, and the interviewer asked each respondent to identify the relevantmembers.

Bonding networks. Network density, meaning the number of actual contacts inrelation to the theoretical maximum, measures the extent of bonding relationships.Thus, if all the team’s members had connections with each other the density was oneand if there were no connections it was zero. This construct reflects the intensity of therelationships within a group, connoting the extent of interlocking and the reciprocity(Wong, 2008).

Bridging networks. Bridging relationships were measured in terms of externalrange, defined as interactions that extend beyond the team’s boundary and relate to itsperformance (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992). The interviewer asked the respondents(including middle management, other teams and other employees) to rate how oftenthey communicated with people occupying each of a set of organisational positions onthe following scale: every day, weekly, monthly, a few times a year, and never(alpha ¼ 0.69). Communication frequency indicates relational strength (see Uzzi, 1996,1999) on two levels: frequency and emotional closeness. However, no data on emotionalcloseness was available for this study, thus future research could consider this aspect(Burt, 1992). External range comprises the sum total of connections and their strength(in terms of interaction frequency) on the individual level, aggregated to the team level.

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The question concerning contact with other teams also constituted one of the measuresof team-external contact, the aim being to assess the potential value of non-hierarchicalinteractions. The external network range in this study comprised vertical andhorizontal networks. Vertical networks are ambassadorial in nature and thus involve,among other things, gaining recognition, lobbying for resources, obtaining supportand receiving rewards from those on higher levels (Ancona, 1990; Ancona andCaldwell, 1992). Horizontal networking, on the other hand, occurs among experts andother work-team members on similar hierarchical levels, the aims includingcoordination and the sharing of information and knowledge (Ancona and Caldwell,1992).

Performance effectiveness. Team members and leaders were asked to evaluateteam-level performance effectiveness on three items: “The team works effectively”,“The team works fluently”, and “The group works better than other teams”(alpha ¼ 0.82). This type of self-report measure is open to criticism, generally on thegrounds that some people cannot report their performance accurately for reasons ofpoor introspection (e.g. Locke et al., 1988 cf. Kratzer et al., 2008). In order to weaken thepotential impact of poor retrospection the interviewers asked the group members andleaders alike to evaluate the team’s performance rather than their own. Indeed, Cooper(1981) in his well-known study on success factors in engineering-design groups gainedaccuracy levels of over 80 per cent when he asked the members and leaders to evaluatetheir projects after their completion. Moreover, managers who are not very familiarwith the team’s internal dynamics tend to give high ratings according to team-internalfactors such as the amount of communication with external agents (Cohen and Bailey,1997).

There is also evidence that self-rating correlates highly with more objectivemeasures if anonymity is guaranteed. Heneman (1974); see Kratzer et al., 2008), forexample, found that self-report measures were less restricted in range and leniencythan supervisory ratings, which tend to be considered more objective. In his view, thisreflected the fact that the intended use of such measures is explicitly for researchpurposes, as in this study, and not for assessing teams or for other organisationalpurposes. Furthermore, given that the focus in this study was on several organisationsit would otherwise have been challenging to find meaningful and consistent metrics. Itis also worth noting that public-sector organisations, in which some of the teamsoperated, do not necessarily use performance measures. Thus, the measure wouldappear to mimic, to some extent, methods of performance assessment in some real-lifesettings, and presumably paints a reliable picture of team performance.

Attitudinal outcomes. Attitudinal outcomes, including identification with the team(alpha ¼ 0.74), comprise one potential indicator of how well the group is functioning.The following items were used (see Mael and Asford (1992): “When someone criticisesour work team it seems like a personal insult”; “I am very interested in what othersthink about our work team”; “When I talk about our work team I usually say ‘we’rather than ‘they’”; “The work team’s success is my success”; “When someone praisesour work team, it feels like a personal compliment”; and “My membership of this workteam reflects what I am personally”. The statements were assessed on a seven-pointsemantic-differential measurement scale.

Control variables. Numerous other characteristics appear to influence groupdynamics and performance. However, because it would have been impossible to

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include them all, group size, group tenure, group task and organisational tenureconstituted the dummy variables.

Previous research has found that size influences team dynamics and performance(Brewer and Kramer, 1989; see also Moreland and Levine, 1992 for a review). Forexample, large teams may well be less dense, but because they have more membersthey may have better access to team-external relationships. Furthermore, because teamperformance as the dependent variable was a function of the volume of work the teammembers produced, a significant relation to size was expected. The teams investigatedin this study varied in size, from one with three members to one with 15, thus size wasmeasured in terms of the number of participants.

In addition to performance effectiveness and member attitudes, as studied here,Cohen and Bailey (1997) include behavioural outcomes as part of team effectiveness.However, it proved difficult to include the behavioural outcomes of social structure andidentity in the analysis due to the wide variation in work tasks across theorganisations. The teams carried out various types of task in areas ranging fromeducation, administration, social services and health care to retail trade. Theclassification delineated tasks as fairly complex as opposed to highly complex,new-product-development tasks that require even more innovativeness in the effectivecoordination and integration of ideas, and more information processing. In order toremedy this we included a control variable (more expert tasks and others), reflectingthe possibility that some teams may be more dependent on information sharing, andothers on diverse information. However, it would seem that, in the light of the fullrange of possible work tasks, all of the types included in this study involve roughlysimilar issues.

There is evidence of deterioration in team performance over time (Leenders et al.,2003). On the assumption that it is not the age of the team per se, but the time thecurrent members have been in it, that matters we used tenure to represent the averagenumber of years of membership. Team members who have been in the organisationlonger may naturally have more relationships within it than relative newcomers (see,e.g. Rollag, 2004). Organisational tenure refers to individual team members. Therefore,individual differences in tenure should somehow emerge to create team-levelconstructs that relate to collective outcomes on the team level (Stewart, 2006). Table Isummarises and describes all the variables used in the study.

3.4 Data analysisThe focus in the present study is on the relationship between bonding and bridgingsocial networks in work teams, and on attitudinal and performance effectivenessoutcomes. Hence, we assumed in the analysis that individuals engaging in teamworkact homogeneously within their teams (Drazin et al., 1999), and therefore did notinclude individual-level aggregates. The reason for conducting a one-way analysis ofvariance was to justify this aggregation statistically, and to find out if there wasgreater variation in the performance-effectiveness and team-identity ratings betweenthan within the teams. The analysis confirmed the appropriateness of the aggregation(for performance effectiveness F ¼ 4.98, p , 0.000 and for team identity F ¼ 2.13, p,0.000). Before aggregating the team members’ evaluations the researchers calculatedthe inter-rater agreement (IRA) on performance effectiveness and identity byaveraging the IRA score, as James et al. (1984) suggest: scores of 0.92 for performance

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effectiveness and 0.78 for team identity justified the use of the arithmetic mean as theteam score. We used Harmon’s one-factor test to check for common method variance(see Podsakoff and Organ, 1986), including all the independent variables and thedependent variable in an exploratory factor analysis. The data would have had acommon method bias problem if a single factor had emerged that accounted for a largepercentage of the variance in the resulting factors: no single factor emerged.

The hypotheses were tested by means of multiple regression analysis. Tests ofmediation followed the guidelines of both Baron and Kenny (1986), whose test is widelyapplicable in management research, and Pierce et al. (2004), who formed threeregression models in order to test for mediation and linkages. The analysis did notinclude Sobel’s test, which only works well in large samples (Kristopher et al., 2001).

4. FindingsTable II gives the means and standard deviations for the main study variables,together with the inter-correlations between all the variables included.

Table III presents the results of the hierarchical regression analyses testing thehypothesised relationships between group social capital, more specifically bridgingand bonding relationships, and team outcomes, both performance effectiveness andteam identity. Table III also indicates the mediation effects.

Do bonding and bridging social networks matter in relation to the effectiveness ofteam performance? H1 concerns bonding social networks (measured in terms ofdensity). The results reported in models 2 and 5 in Table III support the hypothesis:bonding social networks related positively to performance effectiveness. Additionally,tests of the influence of the bridging relationships (measured by external range)identified a positive relationship, thereby supporting H2. H3 and H4 predict a positive

Variable Description

Bonding social networks Density – Number of actual contacts in relation to the theoreticalmaximum. Totally connected team: density ¼ 1, no relationshipbetween members ¼ 0

Bridging social networks External range – Team members’ external relationships with othermanagement, other teams, other organisational members

Team effectiveness Self-evaluated efficacy. The measurement derived from the followingitems: “The team works effectively”, “The team works fluently”, “Theteam works better than other teams”

Team identity The measurement derived from the following items: “When someonecriticises our work team it seems like a personal insult”; “I am veryinterested in what others think about our work team”; “When I talkabout our work team I usually say ‘we’ rather than ‘they’; “The workteam’s success is my success”; “When someone praises our work team,it feels like a personal compliment”; and “My membership of this workteam reflects what I am personally”

Control variablesTeam size Number of members in a teamTeam task Task type: expert task and otherOrganisational tenure(members in the team)

Number of years each team member has worked in the sameorganisation

Table I.The study variables

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Table II.Descriptive statistics andcorrelations (n ¼ 76)

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Tea

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Notes

:* C

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Table III.Mediating effect,

standardised regressioncoefficients and model fit

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relationship between team identity and both bridging and bonding social networks: theimpact was indeed significant and positive. Taken together, bonding and bridgingrelationships explained all of the variance in the performance effectiveness (model 3 vsmodel 5 in Table III), and an additional 29 per cent of the variance in team identity(model 1 vs model 2 in Table III) in the equations controlling for team size, team tenureand organisational tenure. Finally, H5, H6 and H7 concern the mediating effects ofteam identity between bridging and bonding social networks and performanceeffectiveness. Does team identity mediate the impact? There is support for bothhypotheses: team identity related positively to performance effectiveness and mediatedfully its relationship with both bridging and bonding social networks.

Subsequent post hoc testing checked for possible interaction effects between thebonding and bridging social networks. Significant interaction would suggest the needfor a proper balance within the two types in order to achieve optimal group socialcapital. The testing for possible linear interactions involved centring the predictorvariables (Cohen et al., 2003), and then including the product of the bridging andbonding variables. The results failed to uncover any interaction effects in relation tothe effectiveness of team performance. Bridging and bonding social networks did havean interaction effect on team identity, however, although it only approachedsignificance (b ¼ 21.88, p ¼ 0.65). Visual investigation of the interaction suggestedthat the social networks were complementary: team identity is strong as long as thereare either bonding or bridging social networks.

5. Discussion, implications and further researchThe objective of this study was to find out whether bonding and bridging relationshipspredicted the performance effectiveness and attitudinal (team identity) outcomes. Thefocus was on one somewhat neglected team type in the literature on group socialcapital, namely work teams. The findings enhance understanding of performanceeffectiveness along several dimensions. First, bonding social networks promotedeffectiveness, thus supporting previous studies reporting a simple positive linearrelationship between bonding relationships and team effectiveness (Lucius andKuhnert, 1997; Luo, 2005; Reagans and Zuckerman, 2001; Sparrowe et al., 2001).Similarly, bridging relationships appeared to have an impact on performanceeffectiveness, which supports the work of Wong (2008), for example, who identifies apositive relationship between the number of bridging social networks and teameffectiveness. The findings thus suggest that work teams need both types of socialnetworks simultaneously in order to enhance performance effectiveness. Generally,bonding and bridging social networks appear to have conflicting effects from thesocial-capital perspective. According to one school of thought the absence of densebonding social networks within a team is problematic (e.g. Oh et al., 2004), whereasanother concentrates on the advantages (e.g. Burt, 2001). The optimal-configurationperspective offers an alternative view on group social capital as overall balance, ratherthan the maximum number of relationships (Oh et al., 2006; see also Alderfer, 2011). Inthis respect this study contributes to the research (see also Reagans and McEvily, 2003;Reagans and Zuckerman, 2001; Sumelius, 2009) showing that the optimalconfiguration of a team’s social-network relationships may combine seeminglyconflicting but in fact complementary elements such as bonding and bridging. It thusjoins the growing body of literature emphasising the need to pay attention to and

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manage tensions and paradoxes (see, e.g. Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004). Theimplication is that both types of social networks capture important factors reflectingwhat a work team needs to be successful in attaining its goals.

Second, both bonding and bridging social networks were related to team identity,indicating that individuals identify with the team through the social networks theyhave within and outside of it. Both bonding and bridging social networks matter, butneither suffices to preserve team identity. In this our results are in line with Festinger’swork on social comparison and Tajfel’s social identity theory. According to the presentdata, social networks within the organisation help to sustain the sense of togethernesswithin the group regardless of whether they are within the team (bonding) or theorganisation (bridging). The real threat to identity lies in the lack of work-relatedcontacts in that social isolates cannot grasp the cues for a common frame of reference.The need to combine bonding and bridging social networks for reasons of performanceeffectiveness underlines the significance of mixing internal and external resources forthe fruitful accomplishment of team duties. Third, the study adds to the information onteam processes that mediate the effect of the social networks on team effectiveness:investigating social networks that contribute to superior work-team performanceeffectiveness gives a more comprehensive understanding of the effect of socialnetworks. On a more general level, awareness of the processes that mediate teameffectiveness is essential in order to understand how team dynamics and interactionpatterns lead to differing performance levels. Knowledge of the processes that facilitatesuperior performance provides managers with the tools they need to train and managemore efficient work teams.

Similarly, a team that fails to establish a team identity will not be one of the bestperformers: acknowledgement among members that they share a common identityminimises the chances of sub-group categorisation and bias in relation to identity andassociation (Hogg and Terry, 2000), and increases the motivation to reach agreementand coordinate their behaviour in exchanging information, for example (see,e.g. Haslam and Ellemers, 2005).

It would appear from the results of this study that managerial attention shouldfocus on building a team identity and social networks. One way of building such anidentity would be to communicate to the team members the fact that they constitute acritical social unit (Lembke and Wilson, 1998), telling them, for example, why theirteamwork is critical in relation to the organisational goals in general. Clarifying theteam’s boundaries (in terms of who belongs to it and who does not) and the roles andcontributions of each member could also help. Moreover, achieving a shared meaningrequires not just formal but also informal communication. Team members may notcome to the same conclusions individually even if they are given the same information,and meetings should be held. Furthermore, it has been found that engagement in teamdecision-making facilitates involvement, commitment and a sense of belonging, whichin turn lead to higher levels of team identity (Tyler and Blader, 2003). If they are tobecome emotionally attached to the team the members need to feel that they, to someextent, can choose – at best even desire – to be part of it. Performance-managementand reward systems could also be used to align the behaviour of team members. Inorder to promote teamwork such systems should focus on team rather than individualoutcomes (Lembke and Wilson, 1998; Ramamoorthy and Carrol, 1998), which couldmean rewarding and encouraging team-oriented behaviours such as social networking.

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Thus the members would be encouraged to develop bridging relationships, forexample. The findings suggest that managers wishing to optimise team-basedorganisation should ensure that both bonding and bridging social networking are onthe agenda. Traditional team-building efforts could focus on building dense bondingsocial networks within the team, and thereby also team identity. These could includearranging common spare-time and social activities. Social gatherings, frequentintergroup meetings and the use of cross-functional teams might combat silo workingand promote bridging social networks across team boundaries, and variouscomputer-based social-networking systems (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) could alsoenhance their development.

This study has several potential limitations. Although some scholars recommendthe use of both subjective and objective measures of performance whenever possible(Wall et al., 2004), the researchers did not have access to objective measures withregard to the teams in question. However, Wall et al.’s (2004) comparison betweensubjective and objective measures reveals a positive association (convergent validity),and a rough equivalence with a range of independent variables (construct validity).The focus on the social context may also have biased the subjective evaluation ofperformance. Previous studies have relied mainly on the evaluation of the team leader,who is also involved in the daily activities of the team. Hence, we raise the question ofwhether one team leader who is thus involved could give a better and less subjectiveevaluation of performance in comparison to the mean value of the evaluations given byhimself/herself and the team members (varying between three and 15 individuals inthis study).

Further research could focus on the impact of social networks on other dimensionsof team effectiveness. As Cohen and Bailey (1997) suggest, team effectivenesscomprises performance effectiveness, member attitudes and behavioural outcomes. Allthree dimensions deserve attention. Future studies could focus more on behaviouraland attitudinal outcomes rather than task-related performance. One could questionwhether these different aspects of team effectiveness have similar or differentpredictors: both social and task-related outcomes have been highlighted as significant(see, e.g. Kozlovski and Bell, 2003 for a review). Thus, this area of research providesmany fruitful opportunities for further study.

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Further reading

Burt, R.S. (1982), Toward a Structural Theory of Action: Network Models of Social Structure,Perception and Action, Academic Press, New York, NY.

Modig, N. (2007), “A continuum of organizations formed to carry out projects: temporary andstationary organization forms”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 25 No. 8,pp. 807-814.

Peltomaki, P., Viluksela, M., Hiltunen, M-L., Kauppinen, T., Lamberg, M.E., Mikkola, J., Pirttila, I.,Rasanen, K., Suurnakki, T., Tuomi, K. and Husman, K. (2001), Tyky-barometri. Tyokykyayllapitava ja edistava toiminta suomalaisilla tyopaikoilla vuonna, Tyoterveyslaitos jasosiaali- ja terveysministerio, Helsinki.

About the authorsDr Kaisa Henttonen is a Post-doc Researcher, Lecturer and Project Manager at the School ofBusiness and Technology Business Research Centre (TBRC), Lappeenranta University ofTechnology, Finland. Her research and teaching interests span the fields of innovation (social)networks, and virtual collaboration. Kaisa Henttonen is the corresponding author and can becontacted at: kaisa.henttonen@lut.fi

Jan-Erik Johanson is a temporary Professor of Financial Management at University ofTampere, Finland, and tenured University Lecturer at the University of Helsinki, Finland.Recently, he has studied strategic management, power relations of pension funds anddeterminants of efficiency in team-based organisations. His research interests include publicorganisations, organisation theory, strategic management, and social network analysis.

Dr Minna Janhonen is a Specialized Researcher at the Finnish Institute of OccupationalHealth, Helsinki, Finland. Her main research interests include teamwork, inter andintra-organisational social networks, and the well-being/performance relationship in theorganisational context.

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