“Network structures, individual behavior and performance in organizations.”
By Vanina Torlò, Christian Steglich, Alessandro Lomi, and Tom A.B. Snijders, 2007.
In George T. Solomon (ed.), Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, ISSN 1543-8643.

Relational approaches to organization typically ignore processes of network formation while studying network consequences, and, symmetrically, ignore the implications of network structures and flows while studying network antecedents. In this paper we address these symmetric weaknesses in the organizational literature on networks consequences and antecedents by specifying dynamic models for the joint representation of network selection and influence processes. We estimate our models using a set of longitudinal data that we have collected on a sample of graduate students enrolled in a professional management degree. We report clear evidence of influence on individual performance of a variety of network motifs defined over interpersonal relations of advice seeking, communication, and contribution to individual learning. Controlling for a variety of different sources of homophily (like, for example, age and gender) and for a number of endogenous local network effects (like, for example, transitivity and reciprocity) we find that performance of individual subjects tends to be assimilated to the performance of others who contribute to their learning, whom they communicate with, and from whom they seek advice. We also find evidence in support of our contention that models accounting for the co-evolution of network structures and individual behavior are statistically more informative than models that specify these two processes separately. Finally we document how individual performance is both the outcome of local network-based processes as well as a basis for social selection in the advice and communication networks, but not in the contribution-to-learning network.