Threat, Opportunity, and Network Interaction in Organizations

Abstract

This article examines how uncertain situations of threat or opportunity influence people’s choices to interact with their colleagues in an organization. The threat/opportunity lens encompasses two conceptually distinct dimensions, gain/loss and control/limited control, which are hypothesized to produce different patterns of network interaction. Two experimental studies — one involving 158 leaders in a health care organization and the other involving 129 employees in a range of smaller establishments — provided support for the proposed conceptualization. The studies found that (1) people chose to interact with more network contacts under loss than under gain; (2) those with an internal (external) locus of control chose to interact with more (fewer) network contacts under limited control than under control; and (3) the tendency to interact with more network contacts in loss rather than gain was greater for low-ranking actors, relative to high-ranking ones. These findings contribute to our understanding of the interplay between individual cognition and organizational social networks.

Keywords: uncertainty, cognition, threat, opportunity, networks, locus of control, loss aversion, personal control