Performance feedback as a determinant of ego-network stability in collaboration networks

Collaboration networks are not intrinsically unstable and fragile, ego-network stability cannot be taken for granted. Extant research has highlighted the determinants of ego-network stability; nevertheless, it is still unclear how behavioral factors affect a firm’s ego-network stability in a collaboration network as a consequence of a decision-maker’s bounded rationality. Drawing from the behavioral theory of the firm and attention-based view, this paper explores how ego-network stability is affected by performance feedback and investigates the influence of CEOs’ information advantage and power on firms’ responses to performance feedback. Using longitudinal data on Chinese publicly listed firms in the pharmaceutical industry from 2007 to 2020, we find that the magnitude of a firm’s outperformance relative to its aspirations harms its ego-network stability. The magnitude of a firm’s underperformance relative to its aspirations has a U-shaped relationship with its ego-network stability. Moreover, CEOs’ social capital and power strengthen the negative relationship between the magnitude of a firm’s outperformance relative to its aspirations and its ego-network stability, and CEOs’ social capital flattens the U-shaped effect of the magnitude of a firm’s underperformance relative to its aspirations on its ego-network stability.