Interactive effect of leader–member tie and network centrality on leadership effectiveness

We examined the influences of the structural properties of a social network on leadership effectiveness, using a power bases perspective, and proposed that the interaction of friendship/ advice network centrality and leader–member tie would influence the members’ evaluation of leadership effectiveness. We used a whole-network survey to gather data on the friendship and advice networks of 173 respondents in 29 groups (144 members and 29 leaders) employed by a manufacturing firm in China. UCINET was used to calculate in-degree centrality and regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Results showed that when members were at the central position of an advice/friendship network, leader–member tie was more positively correlated with leadership effectiveness, and this was considered more salient for central members in a friendship network. Results were compared with those of previous researchers and the contributions and implications of our findings for academia and practice, study limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.