The Effects of Promotion on Intra-and Inter-team Higher-and Lower-rank Social Network Changes: The Moderating Roles of Machiavellian Personality and Goal Orientation

Abstract

This study investigates how promotion affects changes in intra-and inter-team higher-and lower rank tie formation and decay across employees in an organization. It also investigates the moderating roles of Machiavellian personality and goal orientation in the relationship between promotion and interteam tie formation. When promotion creates new opportunities, newly promoted employees make choices with whom they form new ties and with whom they dissolve their existing ties based on the evaluations of ties. The empirical data was collected from 566 employees working in a chemical firm in two waves: two weeks after a promotion announcement and six months after the announcement. The findings show that promotion is not related to social network changes within teams. However, it is significantly related to newly promoted employees’ tie formation with inter-team higher-and lowerrank employees and is simultaneously related to their tie decay with inter-team higher-and lower-rank employees. The findings also show that Machiavellian personality positively and significantly moderates the relationship between promotion and inter-team tie formation with higher-rank employees. And learning goal orientation and performance avoidance goal orientation positively and significantly moderate the relationships between promotion and inter-team tie formation with lowerrank employees. This study employs a negative binomial regression model and adopts an instrumental variable technique to check the robustness of the findings. Employees actively use and shape their social relationships when they face new challenges.