reviewers.

reviewers.

1 A central theoretical debate in this dead body of work is whether the clew sources of influence are an individual's direct interaction partners or, instead, structurally equivalent others who have possession of similar roles and thus succor as the appropriate referents (Burt 1982 1987) As discussed in more detail below, we did not address this distinction in any stillest part because the data set did not bestow itself to positional analysis.

2 Closenes centrality scores were also comput Correlations In their seminal article, Salancik and Pfeffer (1978) posited that attitudes and perceptions derive from the social words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following in which they are formulated. Arguing that finding meaning in a piece of work environment is an information-processing activity, they remind ofed that people develop attitudes as a function of the information available to them in consequence of their social relationships and adapt their beliefs to the reality of their be in possession of situation. While social-information-processing (SIP) theory has spawned a wealth of research and theorizing (see Blau and Katerberg, 1982; Thomas and Griffin, 1983; Zalesny and Ford, 1990 for reviews), a customary critique is that it "has not articulated the mechanisms by way of which social information flows to and from individuals" (Contractor and Eisenberg, 1990: 7)

This paper joins a growing corpse of organizational research (e.g., Dean and Brass, 1985; Hartman and Johnson 1989; Rice, Schmitz, and Torobin, 1990; Burkhardt, 1991; Rice and Aydin, 1991)in arguing that social network theory and [i]modus operandi[/i]s provide the necessary tools for elucidating explanation social-information-processing mechanisms. Instead of comparing the weights of cohesion and structural equivalence (Burt 1982 1987) forward attitude similarity, however, this research explores the relationship between network interaction and perceptions of work-related conditions. In particular, we tender that the effects of sum of two units different network-mediated substantive processes ne to be untangled: (1) systemic power meanings by which individuals' locations in their organization's informal hierarchy shape their access to and command over resources and thus affect positive or negative evaluations of workplace features and (2) localized social influence processe that effect attitude convergence among socially proximate pairs of individuals. The former emphasizes power differentials associated with differences in network centrality, as they affect people's organizational experiences along general dimensions; the latter focuses in succession specific social influence transmitted between the sides of particular relationships. We propose that the two types of mechanisms need to be investigated jointly in order to arrive at an improved understanding of the ways in which social networks affect information processing.

In investigating either mechanism, a critical question that has been ignored make anxiouss what types of social relationships or interaction networks are pertinent (Salancik and Pfeffer 1978; Marsden and Friedkin, 1993) Perceptions are shaped on the opinions of salient or relevant others (Rice, 1993) Salience or relevance, however, may be based onward different criteria, including interpersonal similarity and closenes or, instead, power differentials and obeisance which are associated with different tokens of informal networks. Further, the possibility that different network mechanisms may be important for different symbols of network relationships has not been previously investigated.

This research applies a social network perspective to the studious mood of job-related perceptions, in particular, perceptions of conditions reported as facilitating or inhibiting innovation and creativity in an advertising firm. Following Marsden and Friedkin (1993) we attempt to elucidate the substantive processe underlying claims that network interaction patterns affect perceptions, while simultaneously considering the impact of personal characteristics and formal positions forward SIP. As such, the cogitation addresses two central questions: (1) Are there empirically distinguishable SIP processe undergirding the impact of network interaction onward individuals' perceptions?, and (2) Do network factors exercise an validity on perceptions above and beyond that accounted for from individual attributes and formal positions?

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING

Social-information-processing theory was lay opened to explain attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs about organizational phenomena. Noting that individual attributes and objective piece of work characteristics have generally failed to explain long of the variance in people's reactions to workplace features, Salancik and Pfeffer (1978) argued that attitudes and perceptions are socially formed SIP theory posits that the social environment provides rods that make certain dimensions of the workplace more salient and more important or desirable than others, furnishes information forward other people's evaluations of those dimensions, and regulates direct evaluation of the work setting along positive or negative dimensions. Social information processing plays a particularly important character in shaping perceptions under conditions of uncertainty or ambiguity: When wisdoms are problematic, people are more likely to arrive at socially derived interpretations of issues (Festinger, 1954). The earliest stream of research cited in support of SIP compared the utility of individual characteristics (eg sex education, and personality)and structural variables indicative of social words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following (e.g., subunit affiliation and hierarchical level) in explaining individual piece of work attitudes (Herman and Hulin, 1972; Herman, Dunham, and Hulin, 1975; O'Reilly and Roberts, 1975; Pfeffer 1981) consequence s of these studies strongly indicated that "affective rejoinders to work are predominantly associated with organizational characteristics rather than individual ones" (O'Reilly and Roberts, 1975: 148-149)