Research

The Roles of Learning and Status Attainment in Successful Newcomer Socialization: Random Assignments to Complex Projects and Early Career Outcomes

Li, S., Krackhardt, D., & Niezink, N. M. D. (in press). The Roles of Learning and Status Attainment in Successful Newcomer Socialization: Random Assignments to Complex Projects and Early Career Outcomes. Academy of Management Journal.

Abstract: Newcomers’ early work experiences in an organization can considerably affect their socialization. While much of the literature on this topic has documented how certain organization-wide practices succeed or fail in molding newcomers into “good citizens,” little is known about how differentiated early experiences lead to varied socialization outcomes. To this end, we systematically examine the impact of early project team assignments on newcomers’ career kick-offs. We propose two distinct but complementary mechanisms––learning and status attainment––to explain why some newcomers achieve superior performance and quicker promotions. We theorize that being assigned to complex projects offers newcomers opportunities to build competence and gain social recognition. Leveraging longitudinal archival data from a high-tech company where newcomers were randomly assigned to projects during their first two years, we found that those assigned to more complex projects obtained more professional certifications, reported higher levels of learning, and appeared more frequently in the company’s internal newsletters. These outcomes were, in turn, associated with higher promotion rates, increased monetary rewards, and better supervisor evaluations. Additionally, we demonstrated that prior same-industry experience amplified the positive effects of project complexity on learning and status attainment. Our findings underscore the pivotal role of early assignments in shaping newcomers’ career development.

The Importance of Project Status for Career Success: A Network Perspective

Li, S., Krackhardt, D., & Niezink, N. M. D. (2024). The Importance of Project Status for Career Success: A Network Perspective. Journal of Management, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063241282649

Abstract: Employees’ career trajectories in project-based organizations are closely associated with their project participation history. Yet, little is known about what features make a project stand out as a career booster for its participants and who obtains more career benefits than others from working on “hotshot” projects. In this study, we focus on a unique feature of projects – project status – and theorize about potential network-related sources from which it derives. Specifically, we develop arguments for how the pattern of a project’s social relations with other projects in the project network reflects the project’s status. Then, we deduce hypotheses regarding the impact of project status on employees’ career advancement and the moderating role of one’s hierarchical level in this relationship, drawing on the literature on status diffusion, endorsement, evaluative uncertainty, and attribution. Our empirical examinations entailed two studies. Study 1 provides evidence for the validity of using a network structural feature of a project to indicate its status using data from a high-tech company’s R&D projects. Study 2 tested our hypotheses by leveraging a sample of over 1000 IT specialists in a multinational accounting firm tracked over five years. We found that employees assigned to higher-status projects received faster promotions. This career advantage was moderated by a person’s organizational hierarchical level in a complex way such that middle-level people obtained more rapid promotions when assigned to high-status projects than their bottom- or top-level counterparts.

Do Your Friends Stress You Out? A Field Study of the Spread of Stress through a Community Network

Li, S., Krackhardt, D., & Niezink, N. M. D. (2023). Do your friends stress you out? A field study of the spread of stress through a community network. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(1), 100–116. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000415

Abstract: In this study, we seek to understand how stress changes in dynamic social systems. Where prior work on the interpersonal transmission of stress focused on pairs of individuals and small groups, we adopt a network perspective to investigate how the distribution of stress in an individual’s social environment influences their stress appraisal process. We conducted a six-month longitudinal study of 315 early- to mid-career adults in professional master’s programs as they encountered the stress of everyday academic life. We follow the dynamics of the participants’ networks and their concomitant stress at four key time points during those six months. We find that the perceived stress of one's social contacts affects their experience of stress in this setting. Yet, not everyone is equally susceptible to this social influence.  In particular, we find that social influence is substantially amplified under conditions of relative consensus among one’s social contacts. Also, a low level of neuroticism, a high level of conscientiousness, and a high level of internal control orientation help buffer the transmission of stress.  

Why Some People Are at Higher Risk of ‘Stress Contagion’

Shihan Li. Psyche. A short idea online article based on "Do Your Friends Stress You Out? A Field Study of the Spread of Stress through a Community Network."

[Title redacted for review; Topic: gender differences in network reputation]

Author(s): Shihan Li

Abstract: It is well-established that men and women build and utilize their professional networks differently. However, the possibility that gender stereotypes could lead colleagues to perceive and evaluate women’s network relationships less favorably than men’s remains underexplored. Studying these perceptual biases could provide deeper insights into the perpetuation of gender inequalities at work. I posit that women are less likely to be perceived as being sought after by high-status others for advice – so-called network reputation – than men due to stereotypical gender role expectations. Furthermore, even when women achieve network reputation comparable to men’s, the benefits are undercut by biased attributions. To empirically investigate these ideas, I conducted a year-long longitudinal field study with 800 employees, collecting data across four waves. I found that women typically held a lower network reputation than men, and the positive association between network reputation and perceived competence was significantly weaker for women, controlling actual network characteristics. These gender differences resulted in women receiving lower salary increases and supervisor evaluations than men. My findings also support that political skill effectively enables women to mitigate these inequities. When women exhibited high political skill, the gender gap in acquiring and leveraging network reputation was substantially reduced.

Stage: Revise and resubmit at Administrative Science Quarterly

[Title redacted for review; Topic: intervention and intergroup relations]

Author(s): Shihan Li & Nynke M. Niezink

Abstract: The increasingly demographically diverse college population provides students with the opportunity to establish social relations across racial and national boundaries. Yet, various personal, social, and structural factors, such as people’s intrinsic preference for homophily and minorities’ overrepresentation in specific extracurricular activities, make that segregation between social groups remains a salient and persisting issue. Our study shows that a short-term, intentionally designed intergroup contact intervention at the beginning of students’ enrollment can dramatically revert this unfavorable situation. Our findings suggest that when students of different races or from different countries are assigned to the same orientation squad, they are more likely to befriend outgroup squadmates than outgroup members from other squads. Adopting an evolutionary perspective of gender differences in ingroup and outgroup attitudes and behaviors, we argue that females react more positively to the intergroup contact intervention than males. We indeed find evidence that the facilitating effect of the orientation squad on the formation of inter-racial or inter-national friendship ties with squadmates is more substantial for female than for male students.

Stage: Under review at Journal of Higher Education

[Title redacted for review; Topic: friends’ turnover and organizational commitment change]

Author(s): Shihan Li & Nynke M. Niezink

Abstract: Organizational commitment plays a pivotal role in employee retention. Yet, while many have considered how commitment affects retention, little is known about how colleagues’ turnover influences the organizational commitment of those who remain. Building upon the turnover event model, we theorize that when a person’s friends decide to quit, their organizational commitment dynamics strongly depend on the pre-exit organizational commitment of their turnover friends. We model the simultaneous dynamics of friendship networks and affective commitment based on longitudinal data collected in four survey waves among approximately 300 employees in the core R&D working units of a high-tech firm. We find that stayers’ affective commitment was more likely to decrease following the turnover of highly committed friends and to increase after the turnover of friends with low commitment. Additionally, women exhibited more substantial changes in organizational commitment in response to friends’ turnover events than men. Our findings highlight the nuanced interplay of social network dynamics and employees’ commitment dynamics, offering valuable insights for management practices aimed at employee retention.

Stage: Under review at Academy of Management Journal

[Title redacted for review; Topic: team structural composition and performance]

Author(s): Brandy Aven* & Shihan Li*

Abstract: Research on team diversity focuses on demographic or functional differences among members and often points to members’ network variations as the main explanatory mechanism. Yet, these studies neglect to measure and account for social network roles as originally conceived by network scholars. Adopting the measure of brokerage role diversity (BRD), which is characterized by variations in team members’ brokering capabilities in inter-team networks, we contend that it provides a more proximal measure of the performance benefits for diverse teams. While BRD enhances performance by integrating resources from brokers and non-brokers, it can also create collaboration challenges due to competing external pressures and expectations. Analyzing five years of archival data from an international consulting firm, encompassing 60,088 employees and 26,855 projects, our results demonstrate that teams with high BRD not only achieved higher profits but also secured more follow-on client business, particularly when team members had prior experience with high BRD teams. These findings highlight the importance of structural roles in leveraging team diversity for improved performance in knowledge-intensive work.

Stage: Under review at Administrative Science Quarterly

Gender and Interracial Relationships: Evidence From a Decade of Harvard Roommate Outcomes and a Laboratory Experiment

Author(s): Catherine Shea, Arjun Chakravarti, Shihan Li, Elisabeth Honka, & Tanya Menon

Abstract: When organizations create diverse groups, a key question is whether they are sustainable. We consider the phenomenon of male and female differences in sustaining interracial relationships. We collected and analyzed a decade of data, in which university administrators randomly assigned incoming first-year students to roommates, and months later, students chose their own second-year roommates. This decade coincides with an increase in one minority population (Asian) and a stable level of a second minority group (Black). Prior to the diversification, female interracial pairs exhibited higher rates of dissolution. However, as population-level diversity increased, male interracial pairs involving the growing Asian group only dissolved at higher rates, equal to female pairs. Given that female inter-racial relationships were initially more likely to disband, we highlight the need for deeper theorizing about how women’s stronger relational orientation can pose challenges for interracial relationships. We discuss implications for building and sustaining diverse groups, and the importance of targeting different mechanisms than currently utilized in organizational diversity initiatives. 

Stage: Manuscript prepared for submission

Harnessing Incubator Networks: The Critical Roles of Passion, Experience, and Gender in Driving Angel Funding Success

Author(s): Shihan Li

Abstract: While incubators are renowned for their critical role in providing networking opportunities for participants, little is known about the variation in social capital cultivated through these opportunities and the factors influencing participants’ ability to capitalize on it. I propose that incubator participants who occupy brokerage positions in networks with external resource providers—introduced through incubator events—gain performance benefits. These benefits are more pronounced for participants who are perceived as passionate and possess extensive prior industry experience, as these attributes signal commitment and competence to external resource providers. Such signaling is particularly vital for female entrepreneurs to combat evaluation bias rooted in gender stereotypes. Such signals are particularly crucial for female entrepreneurs in combating evaluation bias rooted in gender stereotypes. I used a five-year archive of networking event participation records from 2,861 solo entrepreneurs in a mid-sized Chinese incubator to empirically examine these ideas. I found that entrepreneurs in brokerage positions are more likely to secure and obtain larger amounts of angel funding. Perceived passion and prior industry experience amplified the positive effect of brokerage on funding outcomes, especially for female entrepreneurs. My study underscores the importance of strategic networking and effective signaling in entrepreneurial financing and addressing gender disparities.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Genderization of Advice Networks: Disambiguating Advice Networks to Reveal Unequal Information Flows and Reputational Signals for Men and Women

Author(s): Catherine Shea & Shihan Li

Abstract: Professional women are encouraged to seek advice from prominent individuals in their social networks as a mechanism to obtain valuable information (i.e., networks as pipes) and reputational benefits (i.e., networks as prisms). However, emerging evidence suggests that the reputational benefits of networks are different for men and women, requiring women to manage a social perceptual hurdle when extracting information from networks. Merging literature on social perception, advice, and advice networks, we develop finer-grained advice network generators to examine whether participating in different advice network types influence (1) third party perceptions and (2) performance metrics. We link participation in different advice network types to differing social perceptions and demonstrate when and how these social perceptual penalties predict performance. Specifically, seeking advice related to hierarchy ascension leads to increased perceptions of dominance, which leads to a performance decrease for women and a performance increase for men. This suggests that the information garnered in this network cannot be leveraged to overcome the social perceptual backlash experienced by women. However, while seeking advice related to current task leads to decreased competence, an effect heightened for women, women’s performance is not impacted, suggesting that the information garnered in this network can be used to improve performance. We conclude that extant methods for eliciting advice networks are overly broad, shielding important variance that can explain why men and women see differential returns from professional networks.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Balancing Pipes And Prisms: The Gendered Effect of Outdegree-Indegree Balance in Advice Networks on Employee Performance Outcomes

Author(s): Shihan Li & Nynke M. Niezink

Abstract: The dual roles of networks as "pipes" and "prisms" are well-documented, with consistent evidence showing that outdegree centrality enhances access to valuable resources but may diminish status recognition, whereas indegree centrality elevates social standing but can impede resource retention. However, the trade-off between outdegree and indegree has received limited attention, particularly concerning their combined impact on performance outcomes. In this research, we introduce the outdegree-indegree balance index to capture these competing dynamics and propose a curvilinear relationship between outdegree-indegree balance in advice networks and individual performance outcomes. Further, we suggest that this curvilinear relationship is moderated by gender due to differing expectations of network behaviors for women and men. Empirically, we analyzed longitudinal data from four survey waves among approximately 300 employees in the core R&D units of a high-tech firm, modeling the coevolution of employees' advice networks and performance outcomes. Results revealed that employees' performance initially increased as they approached a balance between advice-seeking (outdegree) and advice-giving (indegree), peaking at optimal balance, then declined as imbalance grew. Notably, the optimal balance point differed by gender: women's performance peaked when indegree slightly exceeded outdegree, aligning with communal expectations for women to provide support to others rather than seek resources for their own advancement, as well as the need to reinforce a competence signal at work. Conversely, men's performance maximized with a slight tilt toward outdegree, aligning with societal expectations for men to be self-focused, ambitious, agentic, and assertive in the professional context. Finally, we found that women’s performance was more sensitive to deviations from balance, underscoring the heightened challenges women face in social capital cultivation. This greater sensitivity reflects increased vulnerability to role expectancy violations and an elevated need for competence recognition compared to men.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Cross-Domain Brokerage and Innovation: Unpacking the Roles of Brokerage Orientation and Organizational Identification

Author(s): Shihan Li* & Rebekah Hong*

Abstract: Occupying brokerage positions in networks has been widely recognized as providing innovation advantages to employees by granting broad and timely access to diverse, nonredundant information, along with bargaining and arbitrating power to secure valuable resources. However, this established understanding is challenged when brokers span across distinct domains—a phenomenon we term cross-domain brokerage. In these situations, the social contacts bridged by brokers belong to different domains, characterized by divergent knowledge paradigms, norms, languages, and practices. We propose that cross-domain brokerage imposes substantial challenges on brokers, as the cognitive and social burdens arising from bridging incompatible or even conflicting social groups hinder brokers’ ability to effectively integrate diverse ideas and perspectives. Our study further investigates the strategic behaviors that brokers employ and the organizational contextual factors that enable the successful capitalization of cross-domain brokerage positions. Using two-wave longitudinal data from a high-tech Chinese firm, we found that cross-domain brokerage was negatively associated with innovative performance. However, this negative association was mitigated by brokers’ high separation and mediation orientations, particularly when the average organizational identification of the social contacts they bridged was low. Conversely, a tertius iungens orientation enhanced innovative performance when the social contacts’ average organizational identification was high. Our findings contribute to the networks and innovation literature by underscoring the unique challenges and contingencies of cross-domain brokerage, offering a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which this form of brokerage fosters positive innovative outcomes.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Navigating the Novelty-Feedback Paradox: How Seeking Advice Can Hinder Novel Idea Development

Author(s): Rebekah Hong* & Shihan Li*

Abstract: Seeking feedback is widely recognized as essential for refining and advancing novel ideas in organizations. However, we argue that feedback-seeking can be a double-edged sword: while it helps improve ideas, it can also diminish their originality, creating what we term the novelty-feedback paradox. This paradox arises because the perceived novelty of an idea shapes creators’ choices of feedback providers and, subsequently, the idea’s trajectory. We theorize that as creators perceive their ideas to be more novel, they develop heightened needs for instrumental resources (e.g., expertise and knowledge) and affective resources (e.g., emotional support and encouragement). These distinct resource needs influence whom creators seek out for feedback and shape the balance between sustaining idea novelty and improving idea usefulness. We tested these ideas through a multi-wave survey of employees in a high-tech organization. Our findings showed that creators with high perceived idea novelty were more likely to seek feedback from high-status colleagues when they prioritized instrumental resources, which enhanced idea usefulness but dampened novelty. In contrast, creators who sought affective resources gravitated toward lower-status colleagues, which preserved novelty but limited practical refinements. Additionally, psychological ownership moderated these dynamics: creators with strong psychological ownership prioritized instrumental resources, whereas those with lower ownership relied more on affective resources. Our study contributes to the creativity and innovation literature by shedding light on the nuanced effects of feedback-seeking behaviors in shaping the development of novel ideas. We emphasize the critical role of psychological ownership in influencing feedback choices and offer practical insights for organizations aiming to foster creativity without compromising originality.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation

Does Eigenvector Centrality Really Reveal Status

Author(s): David Krackhardt* & Shihan Li*

Abstract: We explore eigenvector centrality on different types of networks to determine the extent to which they portray status in an organizational context. First, we elicit informal network ties from participants in a set of departments in a mid-sized high-tech firm at four time periods.  Second, we explored Breiger's (1974) fundamental duality insight that relating persons with the variety of groups they belong to can lead to additional structural understandings. We obtained individual-by-project two-mode data from the company records for these same four time periods. We calculated eigenvector centrality on three different network structures: 1) Individual-level informal networks within departments; 2) Person-by-person projection of the individual-by-project two-mode network; and 3) Project-by-project projection of the individual-by-project two-mode network. For individual-level status assessment, we obtained peer evaluations of each employee's status in the organization. For project-level status assessment, 21 senior managers ranked the status of all projects' extent at the time of the ranking.  We found that most eigenvector-based measures positively predicted status. However, the strength of these predictions varied considerably. On average, individual-level status was only weakly predicted by eigenvectors of their informal network ties.  By far the strongest predictors of status were found between project-level status and eigenvector centrality scores in the project-by-project projections. Commensurate with this result, we found that the most robust predictor of individual-level status was obtained by weighting the eigenvector centrality of the projects that an individual participated in by the amount of time the individual spent on each project.

Stage: Manuscript in preparation