The paradox of building bridges: Examining countervailing effects of leader external brokerage on team performance

Summary Leaders' positions as external brokers in organizational networks—those acting as a bridge between individuals outside the boundaries of their team—can enhance or constrain their effectiveness. Yet, whereas extant research on network brokerage views it as a private good whose benefits accrue directly to the broker, recent research suggests brokering between external communities can serve as both a public good as well as a public liability that can spillover to team members. We integrate network leadership theory with the externalities of network brokerage perspective to examine the countervailing effects of leaders' external brokerage in an information network with peer leaders and executives on team performance. In a sample of 465 team members in 80 teams distributed across 10 sister companies within one conglomerate, we used multilevel structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses. On one hand, we found that leader external brokerage was positively associated with team performance through team members' perceptions of organizational support; on the other hand, we found that leader brokerage is detrimental to team performance by compromising leaders' commitment to their teams. Our results suggest that, while leaders are encouraged to forge connections outside their team to harvest social capital benefits, there are both public benefits and liabilities of team leaders' external networks that can impact team performance.