E-mail networks and leadership performance

Online communication is an indispensable tool for communication and management. The network structure of communication is considered to affect team and individual performances, but it has not been not empirically tested. In this article, we collected a set of 1-month e-mail logs of a company and conducted an e-mail network analysis. We calculated the network centralities of 72 managerial candidates, and investigated the relationship between positions in the network and leadership performance with partial least squares structural equation modeling. Betweenness and in-degree network centralities of those middle managers are correlated with their leadership performance; on the other hand, for this management group, out-degree has no correlation, and PageRank is a negative indicator of leadership. Leaders with high performance are trusted in their communities as a hub of the information channel of the communication network.