Contingent bridge supervision: New evidence and cautions for network theory

Abstract

Bridge supervision occurs when manager and boss operate in separate social worlds, a condition increasingly likely as managers work more often from locations outside the office. The concept of bridge supervision was proposed using evidence from managers balkanized into product and geographic silos. Silos facilitate managers segregated from the boss. We here try to test support for bridge supervision hypotheses in a cohesive population of HR managers, where bridge supervision would be more difficult. Cohesion does limit the evidence of bridge supervision, but we nevertheless confirm the phenomenon's central hypotheses: bridge supervision is associated with role segregation between manager and boss, and manager performance is unaffected. More, by explicitly considering a broader set of network indicators of bridge supervision, we replicate Burt and Wang’s (2022) focus on just two: mutual contacts, and manager-exclusive density. We close with key features of bridge supervision now replicated, cautions on how easily the phenomenon can be undetected in a cohesive study population, and implications for future research.