Expectations for Help Within and Across the Formal Boundaries of Executives' Professional Advice Networks.
| Verfasser | Miller, Stewart R. |
| Posten | RESEARCH ARTICLE |
1 Introduction
Managers' abilities to obtain help from other professionals is an important determinant of their ability to succeed as leaders of their respective organizations. Scholars who focus on the upper echelons in organizations have recently turned their attention to the provision and receipt of help among senior executives. Prior studies in this area have shown that executives' abilities to access help from professional contacts in their advice networks (e.g., advice regarding strategic issues) impacts executive effectiveness (McPherson et al. 2001; Perry-Smith 2006; Sykes et al. 2014; Zou and Ingram 2013), innovation (Alexander et al. 2010; Kijkuit and van den Ende 2010), competitiveness (Wu 2008), and even firm-level performance (Geletkanycz and Hambrick 1997; McDonald et al. 2008).
Given the important consequences of executives' expectations for task-related help, it becomes important to understand the significant drivers of executives' expectations for help from professional contacts in their respective networks. In this paper, we will define these contacts as the individual actors that executives rely on to do their job, both internal and external to the firm. While this issue has received some attention in prior work (Farh et al. 2010; McDonald and Westphal 2010; Nebus 2006), there is a general need for more research in order to enhance our understanding of the factors that influence executives' expectations for help from their professional contacts, and in particular, the impediments to expectations for help. Some prior research on the provision and receipt of advice in multinational settings has emphasized geographic distance and social identity-related factors as potential barriers to information and advice sharing (Farh et al. 2010; Nebus 2006). Related work on knowledge sharing in organizations has examined the effect of physical proximity and (dis)similarity of individuals (Haas and Cummings 2015; Tallman and Phene 2007). This body of work suggests that national boundaries might prevent executives from helping each other. However, other work by Gupta and Govindarajan (2002) and Murtha et al. (1998) indicates that national boundaries may not be an impediment to expectations for help among executives who possess a so-called 'global mindset'. These disparate views on the potential implications of national boundaries further reinforce the need for research in this area.
Organizational boundaries may also impede expectations for help amongst executives. For example, some scholars have argued that help might be more readily available from professional contacts within the organization (Brass et al. 2004; Katz and Allen 1982). Yet, others contend that colleagues inside the organization are perceived as a greater competitive threat than outsiders (Menon and Pfeffer 2003; Menon et al. 2006). As a result, people expect to receive less help from professional contacts within the organization than from external contacts. Prior work that has examined efforts to obtain advice from external contacts in an executive's network (Geletkanycz and Hambrick 1997; McDonald and Westphal 2003) has not systematically examined the expectations for help from contacts outside versus inside the organization (e.g., Farh et al. 2010). Inter-organizational knowledge sharing among lower-level employees has been shown to be difficult (Darr et al. 1995). Nevertheless, executives have accumulated skills and experience and wrestle with complex issues that likely affect expectations for help in different ways than lower-level employees. For example, the demands of the executive suite require a sense of who is able to provide value-added advice that is in the best interests of the focal executive. Hence, research findings regarding entry-level employees or middle managers of the organization may not be readily transferable to the issue of senior executives' expectations for help from professional contacts in their advice networks.
The characteristics of the relationships between executives and their contacts may also affect executives' expectations for help with their work. This is important because relational characteristics may influence expectations for help within and across geographic and organizational barriers. For example, prior research suggests that relational duration plays an important role in the willingness of individuals to share information (Inkpen and Tsang 2005). Yet, this variable remains under-researched in work on executives' expectations for help. Moreover, prior research has underscored the role of trust in individuals' relationships (Levin et al. 2006; Nebus 2006), including the mediating role of trust in relationships that span organizational and national boundaries (Evans 2015; Levin and Cross 2004). Yet, we do not know if trust might affect senior executive relationships differently. It has also been suggested that relational duration influences the trust between knowledge sources (Coulter and Coulter 2002; Levin et al. 2006), which calls into question how this variable affects executives' expectations for help.
We seek to address the outstanding theoretical and empirical issues outlined above and hence consider the following research questions: First, how do national and organizational boundaries affect executive's expectations for help from professional contacts in their advice networks and, second, does relational duration influence these associations? These questions are practically important, in part, simply because many executives rely on professional contacts who reside in other countries or who work for other organizations (Hansen and Lovas 2004; Mors 2010). Moreover, the available evidence suggests that, because executives from other nations or organizations are more likely to provide non-redundant information and alternative perspectives on task-related issues (e.g., Burt 1992; McDonald and Westphal 2003), accessing their views can be especially beneficial to a focal executive (Beckman and Haunschild 2002; Zou and Ingram 2013).
We test the predictions derived from our theoretical model using a unique primary dataset that includes survey responses from senior executives in a US-headquartered multinational professional services firm regarding their expectations for help from their professional contacts. Access to help has been shown to be especially important for performance in professional services firms (Evans 2015; Faulconbridge and Muzio 2016). Contrary to some existing theory, our findings suggest that, in general, national boundaries do not affect executives' expectations for help from professional contacts in their advice networks. In general, our results support the prediction that organizational boundaries negatively affect expectations for help. However, in supplemental analysis, we examine expectations for help based on the type of help to be provided, i.e., expectations for help from career sponsors, as well as help with knowledge development and knowledge sharing. These supplemental results indicate that executives' expectations for knowledge development and knowledge sharing help is affected only by organizational boundaries, where outsiders are expected to be less helpful. This result also holds for career sponsors, but for career sponsor contacts we also find that the partners expect their nonlocal contacts to be helpful. This is likely because these are contacts that are committed to supporting them in their careers, regardless of geographic boundaries. Finally, we show that relational duration mitigates the effects of outsider status on perceived expectations for help from a contact.
Our study makes a number of contributions to the nascent literature on senior executives' expectations for help from professional contacts in their advice networks. A core contribution of this paper is that it is one of the few studies to systematically consider the effects of national boundaries (local versus nonlocal professional contacts) and organizational boundaries (insider versus outsider professional contacts) on executives' expectations for help. These findings are especially noteworthy given that Alexander et al. (2010) found that professional contacts both inside and outside organizations help with innovations. Although we find geographic boundaries do not influence expectations for help, in general, a supplemental analysis consisting of only nonlocal professional contacts reveals that geographic distance-rather than culture distance-adversely affects expectations for help, which sheds new light on the role of distance in the liability of foreignness (Zaheer 1995). In another supplemental analysis, our results suggest that executives' expectations for help may be influenced by the type of help from outsiders and nonlocals. Further, we contribute to the understanding of executives in professional services firms by considering how the type of help influences the roles played by organizational and national boundaries in determining executives' expectations for help. Considering the different types of help allows us to reveal nuances in the relationships. In particular, we are able to show that there are boundary conditions for an executive's expectation for knowledge sharing help, which extends recent work by Wu (2008). Finally, we build on and extend recent work that has considered how relational characteristics influence the effects of national and organizational boundaries on expectations for help by executives (Wu 2008). In particular, we show that relational duration moderates the effects, whereas trust mediates the relationship.
2 Theory Development
Our theoretical framework examines a focal executive's expectations for help from professional contacts in their advice networks. As we take the executive's perspective, we refer to the advice seeking literature, which has examined focal actors' proximity and (dis)similarity to their professional contacts (e.g., Farh et al...
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