Understanding Desired Greater Collaboration Ties: Tie‐Strengthening and Bypassing Approaches for Managing Formal Workflow Network Dependencies
通过调查直接测量员工希望与同事加强协作的意愿，发现员工通过强化与可信正式伙伴的联系或绕过正式工作流选择其他伙伴来管理依赖关系。
ABSTRACT Whereas organizational network studies infer employees’ agentic desires through observed network changes, we capture desires to collaborate more closely with co‐workers directly through a survey. We argue that formal structures create workflow dependencies between employees as they gather others’ inputs to complete their tasks, and individuals desire to alter their networks to manage those dependencies using the following two main collaborative approaches: (1) collaborating more intensely with existing formal workflow network partners; and (2) engaging in bypassing approaches with specific partners outside of their prescribed formal workflow. We found that employees pursued a tie‐strengthening approach with formal partners they already trusted to provide high‐quality work inputs in a reliable manner. When using the bypassing approach, employees’ choice of desired partners reduced their workflow dependencies on alters upstream in the formal workflow, detouring around them either by choosing an alter that was structurally equivalent to existing partners or moving two steps further upstream to choose alters that close disadvantageous structural holes, suggesting these potential greater collaboration ties had higher latent structural value . Our study illustrates agentic desires toward dealing with the formal workflow's dependencies through the choice of specific partners with whom to collaborate more closely in the future, using tie‐strengthening and bypassing approaches.