The Strain of Spanning Structural Holes: How Brokering Leads to Burnout and Abusive Behavior

This paper benefited from feedback received from seminar participants at ESSEC Business School Management department, UCL School of Management reading group, the Rotterdam School of Management. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2018 INSEAD Network Evolution Conference (NEC), at the 2017 and 2019 Academy of Management (AOM) Conferences, at the 2020 European Group for Organisational Studies (EGOS) Conference. The authors thank all those who provided comments that improved this paper, and they particularly thank Associate Editor Marissa King and three anonymous reviewers at Organization Science for their insights and guidance. The data used in Study 1 are derived from a larger research project “Predicting early stages of burnout,” which received funding from the University of Los Andes. Two of the authors, Eric Quintane and Camila Umaña Ruiz, are also grateful to Viviola Gómez, Sebastián Segura, and Andres Escobar for their contribution to the research project as well as to Claudia Estevez for her research assistance.