Brokers in Disguise: The Joint Effect of Actual Brokerage and Socially Perceived Brokerage on Network Advantage
研究实际中介与社会感知中介如何共同影响创新绩效，发现同事感知的中介机会是网络优势的关键权变因素，信任是核心机制。
Interpersonal networks can be conceptualized not only as actual social structures surrounding individuals but also as cognitive social structures stemming from individuals’ perceptions of those relationships. Yet most research on social networks adopts either a structural or a perceptual perspective. In this article, I blend these two traditions to examine how actual and perceptual brokerage jointly determine innovation performance. I hypothesize that while actual brokerage benefits individuals by exposing them to nonredundant information, socially perceived brokerage—being perceived to bridge groups regardless of one’s actual network configuration—may trigger skepticism of brokers’ motives that could hinder their ability to innovate. Thus I argue that others’ perceptions of a focal actor’s brokerage opportunities constitute a critical contingency underlying network advantage. Using a multimethod approach, including a field study in a global consulting firm and a preregistered experiment, I find that individuals spanning structural holes achieve higher innovation performance when their colleagues perceive them to have closed rather than open networks, and that trust is the underlying mechanism driving this effect. Integrating insights from cognitive social structures into structural holes theory, this study illustrates the importance of considering both structural and perceptual mechanisms in modeling how individuals reap the benefits of brokerage.