The Influence of Social Networks on the Team’s Psychological Safety
André Escórcio Soares, Miguel Pereira Lopes · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2012
We attempted to explain how the members’ interactions influence the team psychological safety using a social network analysis lens. We propose a model based on social contagion, in which the psychological safety of the central node has a key role for the psychological safety of the whole team. We also advance with some variables that mediate the influence of central node psychological safety on the team psychological safety. So we suggest that there are two groups of variables that mediate this relationship. First we considered central node’s characteristics, composed by node’s personal characteristics proximity and value of central node as source of information. Second, we advanced that there are two variables at the networks’ characteristics level that mediate the influence of the central node on team psychological safety – strength of ties and network density. Finally, the interaction opportunities, a variable at the context level, is considered to influence the strength of the ties.