The effect of proactive personality and perceived organizational support on Tertius Iungens Orientation and the moderating role of organizational openness

Abstract

Abstract:

Tertius iungens orientation (TIO) is a strategic, behavioral orientation towards closing structural gaps in one's social network and it relates to creating ties between unfamiliar parties. The purpose of this study is to clarify the effect of both proactive personality (PRO) and perceived organizational support (POS) on TIO. Similarly, the effect of functional area is studied and in this case from the perspective of sales function. In addition, this thesis studies the moderating effect of organizational openness (OPEN) on these three relationships. TIO has been held as an important contributor to and facilitator of the innovativeness of an individual.

The data was collected through survey that was part of the Innonets II -project of Aalto University School of Business' Marketing department. The data collected with web-questionnaire consisted of 34 companies from different industries. The survey had two separate questionnaires for different hierarchical levels; one for middle management and one for their subordinates. The data consisted of 191 supervisor responses and 1004 employee responses and constructed hypotheses were analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM).

The results of this study show that PRO and POS have positive relationships with TIO. Additionally, TIO seems to be stronger among people working at sales function. The moderating effect of OPEN was also studied. OPEN did not seem to have a positive moderating effect on the PRO - TIO or POS - TIO relationships. On the other hand, OPEN did strengthen the positive association between sales tasks and TIO.

The presented results enable organizations to develop innovativeness through management and supervision issues. This thesis offers new information regarding the facilitating factors that may increase the voluntary and collective networking among employees. This is especially important among knowledge intensive industries.

Keywords: Tertius iungens orientation, proactive personality, perceived organizational support, organizational openness, sales, innovation, knowledge network