Relationship Formation and Change in Ego Networks: A Regulatory Focus Framework
基于调节焦点和中介人文献，研究促进和预防焦点如何影响个体在组织网络中建立、维持、解散和重建关系，并构建四种自我中心配置类型，解释网络变化与结构。
Drawing on regulatory focus and brokerage literatures, we develop new theory that explains individuals’ motivation to form and change their relationships in organizational networks. Specifically, we examine how promotion and prevention regulatory foci influence such relational processes as tie formation, maintenance, dissolution, and reconstitution. We further explore the relationship between motivational orientations of regulatory foci and relational orientations to brokerage (i.e., tertius iungens/gaudens) and develop a typology that outlines four major ego-level configurations. Each of the four configurations, labeled dutiful coordinators, aspirational arbitrators, versatile brokers, and indifferent egos, offers distinct predictions on network change and structuring. Overall, our theory contributes to organization theory by elaborating on the important role of ego motivation and strategy in organizational networks, and in so doing, advances research that focuses on individual agency in social networks and complements structuralist approaches to understanding social network dynamics.