Power and Individual Innovation: When do Brokers Act on Their Structural Advantage?

摘要: Brokers are posited to have a privileged position in terms of access to non-redundant information that is conducive to higher innovation. However, brokers do not always exploit such structural opportunity since occupying open positions does not systematically translate into higher innovation. We adopt a contingency approach and theorize that the relationship between brokerage and individual innovation is contingent on individuals’ perception of power over alters, an important aspect of individuals’ representation of the situation they are in. Using a social network analysis at a consulting and training organization in The Netherlands, we found support for our theory: employees perceiving higher power over alters achieved higher innovation in brokering network positions than employees in these positions who perceived lower power over alters. For closed networks, while we expected employees perceiving lower …