The Ripple Effect of Personality on Social Structure

Self-Monitoring Origins of Network Brokerage

Oh, Hongseok
Kilduff, Martin

¹School of Business, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea
²Management Department, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin

Earlier versions of this article were presented at Texas A&M University, the University of Pittsburgh, the Intra-Organizational Network conference at the University of Kentucky, and the 2006 annual meeting of the Academy of Management, held in Atlanta, Georgia. We thank Emily Amanatullah, David A. Harrison, Frank Flynn, Ajay Mehra, Ray Reagans, and the members of the Korean Organizational Network Society for their insightful comments and suggestions. We also thank Inwon Lee, Jeehye Park, and Daegyu Yang for their support for data collection and the Yonsei Management Research Center at Yonsei University for its generous financial support. The research in this article does not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations supporting its preparation.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hongseok Oh, School of Business, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-Dong, Seoul, Korea 120-749. E-mail: [email protected]

Received January 20, 2006

Revision received October 26, 2007

Accepted January 16, 2008

Journal of Applied Psychology 93(5)-, September 2008.

Despite growing interest in social network brokerage, its psychological antecedents have been neglected. One possibility is that brokerage relates to self-monitoring personality orientation. High self-monitors, relative to low self-monitors, in adapting their self-presentations to the demands of different groups, may occupy positions as brokers between disconnected social worlds. For 162 Korean expatriate entrepreneurs in a Canadian urban area, the results showed that those high in self-monitoring tended to occupy direct brokerage roles within the Korean community—in terms of their direct acquaintances being unconnected with each other. Those high in self-monitoring also tended to occupy indirect brokerage roles—in terms of the acquaintances of their acquaintances being unconnected with each other. Finally, for recent arrivals, those high in self-monitoring tended to establish ties to a wider range of important non-Korean position holders outside the community. These results (which controlled for strongly significant effects of network size on individuals' brokerage within the community) suggest a ripple effect of self-monitoring on social structure and contribute to a clearer understanding of how personality relates to brokerage at different levels.