Collaborative team networks and implications for strategic HRM

Using longitudinal data from a graduate course (with 97 students grouped into 18teams) we analyze the emergence of collaborative working patterns and the influenceof personal traits on team performance and individual team member satisfaction.We find a positive effect of global centrality measures on individual satisfaction,while local centrality measures did not have a significant impact. Moreover, ourresults indicate that the aggregation of power within working teams is detrimentalfor team performance. When some individuals are in a position that allows them toexert power over others, the performance of teams suffers. On the contrary,betweenness centralization, which could enable some people to broker informationacross unconnected actors, could actually be beneficial for teams and increases overallperformance. We conclude that combining information on team demographics andsocial networks might allow inferences into why certain teams perform better thanothers and into which areas human resource measures should be directed to improveteam performance