金學堂英語的部落格

【By PHYLLIS KORKKI／聯合報／陳世欽譯】

Who really makes the changes in an organization? It’s not always the people with the highest executive titles. A growing body of research has pointed to the importance of informal leaders known to researchers as “brokers,” who have the gift of connecting employees in productive new ways.

New research by Raina A. Brands of the London Business School and Martin Kilduff of University College London has uncovered a bias surrounding brokerage roles.

Professor Brands and Professor Kilduff examined what are known as “friendship networks” within organizations. In this sense, friends are the people you turn to for help, advice and information, whether or not they are in your work group. Simply put, you like and trust them, Professor Brands says. It’s within these friendship networks that much of an organization’s work gets done, Professor Brands says.

In a study of two separate groups — employees of an electronic- components distributor and a cohort of M.B.A. students — she and Professor Kilduff identified brokers based on the high level of connectivity they displayed. They also identified the people who were perceived by their colleagues to be brokers.

Researchers asked members to evaluate their colleagues, including the actual and perceived brokers. This is where gender differences emerged. The researchers found that people tended to ignore the activities of female brokers and to exaggerate how much men served as brokers. If women were recognized as brokers, they were perceived more negatively.

“ They incurred reputational penalties,” Professor Brands says. “They were seen as more competent, but less warm.” Other research, she says, has shown that men who take on brokerage roles tend to receive benefits in the form of compensation and promotions, whereas female brokers’ careers are negatively affected.

Professor Brands and Professor Kilduff also analyzed the performance of the brokers’ teams. They found that women who were thought by their teams to be brokers tended to perform well individually, but at the expense of their overall team’s performance.

The professors noted that men are traditionally defined by words like aggressive, forceful, independent and decisive. Women are expected to be kind, helpful, sympathetic and concerned about others.

Women are thought to excel in the social realm — so you would think that they would be seen as good work brokers, the researchers said. But “despite the widespread notion of women as social specialists, perceptions of the network position of women will be distorted because of the expectation that brokerage is man’s work,” they wrote.

Much of this distortion may be below the level of conscious awareness, Professor Brands says, and simply bringing it to employees’ attention could help minimize the reputational bias that women incur at work.

中譯

真正能在一個組織中促成改變的人是誰？不見得總是擔任最高階主管職務的人。越來越多的研究顯示，非正式領導者的重要性不容忽視。研究人員稱這些人為「中間人」，特質是具有以積極的新方法把企業員工結為一體的稟賦。

倫敦商學院教授蕾娜‧布蘭德斯與倫敦大學學院教授基爾杜夫的研究發現，人們對中間人扮演的角色存有偏見。

布蘭德斯與基爾杜夫檢視一個團隊內部所謂的「友誼網絡」。此處所謂朋友指的是你尋求協助、意見與訊息的對象，無論對方是不是你工作團隊的成員。布蘭德斯表示，簡單的說，你喜歡並信任對方。她說，一個團隊有許多工作是在這些友誼網絡內完成的。

她與基爾杜夫對兩組不同的人進行研究，分別是一家電子零組件經銷商的員工及企管碩士班學生。兩人根據他們展現的高度連結性挑出中間人。他們還挑出被工作夥伴視為中間人的那些人。

研究人員要求這些成員評估他們的夥伴，包括實際上與感知的中間人。這是性別差異出現的地方。研究人員發現，一般人傾向於忽略女性中間人的活動，同時誇大男性充當中間人所發揮的作用。如果女性被視為中間人，給人的觀感往往比較負面。

布蘭德斯教授說：「她們會在聲譽方面遭受懲罰。人們會認為，她們或許能力比較強，卻不那麼和藹可親。」她又說，另有研究顯示，扮演中間人的男性往往會獲得津貼與升遷等實質的好處，女性中間人的職業生涯卻反會受到不利的影響。

兩位教授還分析中間人所屬工作團隊的整體表現，結果發現，被團隊成員視為中間人的女性往往個人的表現比較突出，卻會影響整個團隊的表現。

他們指出，傳統上人們描述男性所用的形容詞不外乎積極進取、強有力、獨立且果斷。對女性的期待則是親切、對別人有幫助、富有同情心及關心別人。

研究人員說，一般認為，女性在社交領域略勝一籌。因此你會認為，她們會被視為良好的工作中間人。不過他們在研究報告中指出：「雖然多數人認為，女性是社交領域的專家，有關女性的團隊網絡觀感卻會受到扭曲，因為一般人認為，扮演中間人是男性的工作。」

布蘭德斯教授說，許多扭曲可能是不自覺的，如能使它引起企業員工的注意，或許有助於將女性在職場遭受的聲譽偏見降到最低程度。