At the origin of network centrality: How to design jobs to make employees central

Abstract

Network centrality is vital for employees to attain superior performance or desired outcomes and yet we still know little of what makes employees develop central positions. A major challenge is that employees feel discomfort forming networks for opportunistic purposes that benefit them directly. This challenge can be overcome once we focus on the requirements raised by jobs. This paper posits that employees will be motivated to form networks in order to acquire the information capacity needed to satisfy the information requirements raised by the characteristics of their jobs. The study explores how the five enriching job characteristics influence the central position an employee occupies in the organizational network. Interestingly, not all job characteristics benefit networks. Evidence shows that task autonomy, task variety and task significance exercise a positive effect on network centrality but task identity and feedback from the job exercise a negative effect. Network centrality then mediates the relationship between job characteristics and performance. While dispositional determinants explain only between 3% and 5% of variance in network centrality, the model presented explains up to 32% of variance, thereby offering a solid answer to the core question of what determines network centrality.