Structural Redundancy and Robust Organizations

We introduce the concept of structural redundancy as a qualitatively different kind of reconciliation between two long-standing focuses of organizational and groups research - heterogeneity and homogeneity in organizations' personnel. Redundancy captures the structural arrangement whereby similarity - in peoples' backgrounds, for instance - exists among people across different organizational levels. We propose the benefits of redundancy are threefold. First, the non-zero amount of interpersonal similarity (i.e., homogeneity) inherent to redundant structures should improve trust, social integration, and coordination by providing a supportive, cross-level subgroup for individual members of an organization or collective. Second, because homogenous sub-groups span organizational levels, the kind of homogeneity facilitated by structural redundancy should not present the same degree of disruption as homogeneous sub-groups in organizations where redundancy is not present. Third, in settings where heterogeneity among individuals in a single organizational level is beneficial - for instance, by fostering flexibility or creativity and thereby positively affecting performance - redundancy engenders robust heterogeneity by allowing for cross-level substitution and improves long-term group performance by distributing tacit knowledge across multiple individuals. We identify and explore the effects of structural redundancy using panel data on team performance from the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the 1986-2008 seasons