Page - (000232) - in Knowledge and Networks

227 Independent Variables Trust Brokerage To assess the extent to which an individual occupied a brokerage position in the trust network, we used the social network software UCINET VI (Borgatti, Everett, & Freeman, 2002) to calculate Burt’s measure of “network con- straint” (for the mathematical formula and an extended discussion of the measure, see Burt, 1992, pp. 50–81; Borgatti, Jones, & Everett, 1998). Network constraint can range from 0 to 1. A summary index, constraint “measures the lack of brokerage opportunities” (Burt, 2007, p. 125) within a network. The more that a person’s con- tacts are directly tied to one another, the higher is the constraint on the individual. This measure has been widely used to assess structural brokerage in prior studies (e.g., Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001). We reversed the sign of the measure so that the index can be directly interpreted as representing the presence of brokerage opportunities (rather than the absence of brokerage opportunities). Self-Monitoring We used the revised 18-item, true-false version of the self- monitoring scale to code self-monitoring orientation (Snyder & Gangestad, 1986). Scale items included “I would probably make a good actor,” and “I would not change my opinions (or the way I do things) in order to please someone or win their favor” (reverse coded). The 18-item scale has higher internal consistency than the original 25-item measure. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale in this study was .80. Research suggests that self-monitoring is a stable aspect of personality through the lifespan (Gangestad & Snyder, 1985; Jenkins, 1993, p. 84). A meta-analytic review of the literature on self-monitoring in the workplace concluded that this scale has sound psychometric properties, as evidenced by high levels of internal consistency, reliability, and predictive validity (Day, Schleicher, Unckless, & Hiller, 2002). Dependent Variables Leadership Perceptions The construct of leadership has been conceptualized and measured in a number of different ways in the organizational literature (see R. Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994). Nonetheless, a longstanding distinction relevant to our investigation is between leadership effectiveness and leadership emergence (Lord, De Vader, & Alliger, 1986). Whereas leadership effectiveness is conceptual- ized in terms of group and organizational performance, leadership emergence “is based on the extent to which an individual is viewed as a leader by others and is, therefore, inherently tied to others’ perceptions” (Day & Schleicher, 2006, p. 693). We assessed the extent to which respondents perceived others to be leaders by counting the number of times each individual was nominated as a leader. Specifically, we asked each respondent to look down a list of names of employees and place a check next to the name of the individuals whom they perceived to be leaders. We explained on the questionnaire that individuals perceived as leaders “may or may 11 Brokering Trust to Enhance Leadership