The role of social networks for the management and performance of frontline employees

© 2016 Dr. Miriam GuentherThis dissertation explores the ways in which the social relationships that frontline employees form with both supervisors and co-workers affect employee and team performance. Generally, social relationships permit the exchange of instrumental resources and the exercise of influence, making them relevant for the management of frontline employees in two ways: First, the social environment (i.e., the social networks), in which frontline employees are embedded, may offer useful resources that can assist in managing employee and team performance. Second, in their social relationships frontline employees may be exposed to a variety of influences that exist in parallel and that may interfere with supervisors’ influence. Using data from an Australian bank and healthcare provider comprising nearly 500 frontline employees (including more than 50 supervisors), this dissertation draws on social network analysis to systematically study the role of the social environment for employee and team performance. The results of two studies show that social effects are intricate and can pose both a chance and a challenge for managing the performance of frontline employees. Specifically, Paper 1 demonstrates that team performance can be enhanced when frontline employees are able to access instrumental resources, such as information, feedback, and assistance, in advice relationships with their immediate supervisor and their co-workers. However, the results suggest that the more supervisors engage in building advice relationships with employees, the less inclined become employees to form advice relationships with co-workers, which impedes team performance. In addition, employees who forged an advice relationship with their supervisor do not seem to share the input which they receive from their supervisor with their personal contacts, and hence these employees restrict the flow of important resources within the team. Paper 2 analyzes the regional friendship networks of a healthcare provider to examine the parallel influence of supervisors and co-workers on the customer orientation (CO) that frontline employees report (CO values) and the customer-oriented behaviors that they show (CO behaviors). The results of an analysis of friendship pairs suggest that frontline employees align their CO values to supervisors but also to co-workers who are popular. However, the influence of supervisors and popular co-workers on employees’ values does not translate to influence on employees’ CO behaviors. Rather, the tentative results of an exploratory analysis indicate that employees’ CO behaviors are influenced by less popular co-workers who are likely to be able to commit more time to sharing meanings of CO values with employees than supervisors and popular co-workers. This dissertation extends existing research, which has typically focused on the role of supervisors for employee and team performance, by considering the impact of frontline employees’ whole social environment to contribute toward building greater knowledge of environmental factors that can enhance or disrupt employee and team performance. Developing such knowledge can help explain why some managerial efforts may fail to produce the desired outcomes and increase the effectiveness of the management of frontline employees