Senior Managers’ Network Tie Use: The Effect of Performance Below Aspiration and Elite Social Identity

While the importance or even necessity to build and maintain resourceful social networks appears as a forthright fact, there is still a lack of certainty as to who benefits from the resources that can be accessed through senior managers’ networks, and under what conditions. In this paper, we contribute to answering this puzzle with a sample constituted of senior managers from Denmark and their network ties, and investigate both economic and sociological conditions of
senior managers’ tie use. Our results show that the greater the distance between aspiration level and actual firm performance, the more likely it is that senior managers will use their network ties to access resources that benefit chiefly the individual rather than the organization. In addition, we demonstrate that this rapport is moderated by senior managers’ social identity as a member of the
corporate elite, so that a strong identification to this social group actually plays out in the firm’s favor.