We renovate a classic experiment to define a research platform that provides data on network behavior and the causal effect of access to structural holes. Our hypothesis is that people are perceived to be leaders when they behave as network brokers, which is to say, when they coordinate information across structural holes. We focus on the perception of leadership to connect with the many field studies in which access to structural holes predicts success measures keyed to leadership. Our hypothesis is clearly supported. The broker-leader association we report is very similar in strength and form to broker-success associations reported in previous research. At the same time, it is also clear that people adapt to their randomly assigned network, re-shaping it to suit preferences that in some part emerge in team deliberations or outside the experiment. A modification to our hypothesis — at least for these small laboratory teams — is that monopoly brokerage is key to being cited as team leader. Leadership is ambiguous when multiple people are positioned to be brokers unless one person emerges by his or her network behavior as a monopoly broker. Our summary conclusion is that access to structural holes can be causal to the perception of leadership, a characteristic implicit in many success measures used to document the broker-success association.

我们翻新了经典实验，定义了一个研究平台，该平台提供了有关网络行为和访问结构漏洞的因果关系的数据。我们的假设是，当人们充当网络经纪人时，也就是说，当他们跨结构漏洞协调信息时，人们被视为领导者。我们专注于对领导力的理解，并与许多实地研究相联系，在这些研究中，进入结构漏洞可以预测成功的关键因素。我们的假设得到明确支持。我们报告的经纪人-领导者协会的实力和形式与先前研究中报道的经纪人-成功协会非常相似。同时，很明显，人们会适应他们随机分配的网络，对其进行重塑以适应某些在团队讨论中或实验之外出现的偏好。对我们的假设（至少对于这些小型实验室团队而言）的修改是，垄断经纪是被引为团队负责人的关键。当多个人被定位为经纪人时，领导权是模棱两可的，除非一个人因其网络行为而成为垄断经纪人。我们的总结性结论是，进入结构漏洞可能是对领导力感知的原因，领导力是用来记录经纪人与成功协会的许多成功措施所隐含的特征。