The Focused Organization of Advice Relations: A Study in Boundary Crossing

Organizations contain multiple social foci—settings for interaction providing members with occasions for structuring their social relations. In this paper we examine how identification with particular social foci within organizations influences the propensity of advice-seeking ties to crosscut the boundaries of organizational subunits. We propose and test a theory of relationship formation based on the strength of organizational members’ identification with social foci. We expect that advice relations of organizational members identifying more strongly with local foci (organizational subunits) will be more likely to be contained within their boundaries. By contrast, we expect that advice relations of organizational members identifying more strongly with a global focus (the organization as a whole) will be more likely to crosscut the boundaries defined around local foci. We test these hypotheses on data we collected on advice-seeking relations among members of the top management team in an industrial multiunit group that comprises five distinct subsidiary companies. Results show that identification with social foci affects the formation of crosscutting network ties over and above the effect of the formal organizational boundaries that encircle the foci. More specifically, we find that organizational members who identify strongly with local foci (subsidiaries, in our case) tend to seek advice within such local foci, whereas organizational members who identify strongly with a global focus (corporate, in our case) tend to be sources of advice across the boundaries of the local foci in which they participate. Cross-boundary advice ties are less likely to occur among managers who identify strongly with their subsidiaries but weakly with the corporate group. As a consequence, identification with local foci constrains knowledge transfer relations within the boundaries of such foci. On the contrary, cross-boundary advice ties are more likely to occur among managers who identify strongly with the corporate group but weakly with their subsidiary. As a consequence, identification with a global focus activates knowledge transfer across the boundaries of local foci.