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Srivastava, Sameer

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Srivastava

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Sameer

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Srivastava, Sameer

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2011 - 20132

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.d152486a-a310-4b79-9df1-4351f1b7d83d

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    Social Capital Activation during Times of Organizational Change
    (2013-02-26) Srivastava, Sameer; Marsden, Peter V.; Stuart, Toby
    This dissertation contributes to our understanding of how people build and use social capital – resources embedded in social relations – in organizational settings. Whereas the extant literature has tended to focus on the structure of interpersonal networks within organizations and the link to various indicators of individual attainment, this dissertation instead uncovers the dynamics of network action. I tackle two central questions: (1) During times of organizational change, how do organizational actors use the social resources accessible to them by virtue of their position in the structure? and (2) What organizational interventions can help people forge valuable new connections in the workplace? Core to this investigation is the concept of social capital activation – that is, the conversion of latent social ties into active relationships. Three empirical studies illuminate different facets of social capital activation during commonly experienced forms of organizational change: (1) an organizational restructuring; (2) large-scale transformations that create individual-level threat or opportunity; and (3) the introduction of a novel employee cross-training program. Because organizational change is often accompanied by significant shifts in resources and power, network activation choices in these periods can have significant consequences for individual attainment and organizational performance. I draw on unique data from three disparate settings – a global information services firm; a large health care organization; and a software development lab based in Beijing, China. Multiple research methods, including a large panel data set of archived electronic communications, qualitative interviews, experimental studies conducted with samples of working professionals, and a longitudinal field experiment, are used to identify how organizational actors marshal social resources through individual-level network activation choices. Findings from these studies contribute to research on: (1) organizational social capital; (2) the structural dynamics of organizational change; (3) ascriptive inequality in organizations; (4) cognition and social networks; and (5) workplace practices and network change.
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    Culture, Cognition, and Collaborative Networks in Organizations
    (SAGE Publications, 2011) Srivastava, Sameer; Banaji, Mahzarin
    This article examines the interplay of culture, cognition, and social networks in organizations with norms that emphasize cross-boundary collaboration. In such settings, social desirability concerns can induce a disparity between how people view themselves in conscious (i.e., deliberative) versus less conscious (i.e., automatic) cognition. These differences have implications for the resulting pattern of intra-organizational collaborative ties. Based on a laboratory study and field data from a biotechnology firm, we find that (1) people consciously report more positive views of themselves as collaborative actors than they appear to hold in less conscious cognition; (2) less conscious collaborative–independent self-views are associated with the choice to enlist organizationally distant colleagues in collaboration; and (3) these self-views are also associated with a person’s likelihood of being successfully enlisted by organizationally distant colleagues (i.e., of supporting these colleagues in collaboration). By contrast, consciously reported collaborative–independent self-views are not associated with these choices. This study contributes to our understanding of how culture is internalized in individual cognition and how self-related cognition is linked to social structure through collaboration. It also demonstrates the limits of self-reports in settings with strong normative pressures and represents a novel integration of methods from cognitive psychology and network analysis.