Strength matters: Tie strength as a causal driver of networks’ information benefits

Kim, Minjae; Fernández, Roberto

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.11.003

Cited by 78 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Stages of relationships determine the benefits they convey (Porter & Woo, 2015). As individuals move from early initiation stages to later stages of relationships, networking partners may share more information (Kim & Fernandez, 2017). Our measures did not assess dimensions of network contacts, such as length and closeness of the relationship, and whether they were primary or secondary contacts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Networkers can receive more than one of these proximal networking benefits from the same person (Cross & Sproull, 2004; Levin, Walter, & Murnighan, 2011). Strong ties (i.e., close friends, family members, or relatives) tend to facilitate more personal disclosure, problem reformulation, and transmission of useful information (Cross & Sproull, 2004; Kim & Fernandez, 2017; Lin, 2008). Weak ties (more socially distant ties such as acquaintances or friends of friends) provide more solutions, because distal networks provide information that is less redundant with closer circles (Cross & Sproull, 2004; Lin, 2008).…”

Section: Job Search Networkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Can job seekers achieve more through networking? The role of networking intensity, self‐efficacy, and proximal benefits

Wanberg

Hooft

Liu

et al. 2020

Personnel Psychology

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The authors develop and evaluate an online networking intervention, Building Relationships and Improving Opportunities (BRIO), built in conjunction with the networking literature and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1999). A field experiment using 491 unemployed job seekers shows that the intervention increases networking intensity, networking self-efficacy, and proximal networking benefits. Further, the intervention generates higher quality reemployment through its positive effects on networking self-efficacy. Individuals who completed the intervention and were also lower in extraversion showed the most positive improvements in networking self-efficacy and reemployment quality. The study advances the literature by uncovering the mechanisms through which a networking intervention may result in improved reemployment success, and demonstrating the moderating role of individual differences in affecting intervention outcomes. The study helps practice by providing a publicly available, research-based training to improve job search networking.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Job Search Networkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can job seekers achieve more through networking? The role of networking intensity, self‐efficacy, and proximal benefits

Wanberg

Hooft

Liu

et al. 2020

Personnel Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Erickson, 2001;Lin, 1999), whereas others stress the importance of close contacts and strong ties (e.g. Kim and Fernandez, 2017;Obukhova, 2012).…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The gender gap in job authority: Do social network resources matter?

Blommaert

Meuleman

Leenheer³

et al. 2019

Acta Sociologica

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Women generally have less job authority than men. Previous research has shown that human capital, family features and contextual factors cannot fully explain this gender authority gap. Another popular explanation holds that women's career opportunities are limited because their social networks comprise less beneficial contacts and resources than men's. Yet, the role of social networks has received little attention in empirical research seeking to explain the gender gap in job authority. This study examines to what extent gender differences in social networks exist and are related to the gender authority gap. Drawing on two strands of social network theory, we develop hypotheses about the role of network diversity and network status. We test these hypotheses using representative longitudinal data from the NEtherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study (2009-2013). Results reveal that women generally had less diverse occupational networks in terms of contacts' occupations and were less likely to know managers than men, network features which are found to be significantly related to job authority. Controlling for these gender differences in networks leads to a reduction of the observed gender authority gap that is statistically significant but modest in substantive terms.

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“…While weak ties may be the most important for successful social network recruitment, they can also be very difficult to motivate [13][14]. Furthermore, social network search often requires exploring several different paths of social links, and motivating weak ties may become increasingly difficult with increasing social distance [15].…”

Section: Motivating Weak Ties With Recursive Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recruiting Hay to Find Needles: Recursive Incentives and Innovation in Social Networks

Duhaime¹,

Bond

Yang

et al. 2019

SSRN Journal

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Finding innovative solutions to complex problems is often about finding people who have access to novel information and alternative viewpoints. Research has found that most people are connected to each other through just a few degrees of separation, but successful social search is often difficult because it depends on people using their weak ties to make connections to distant social networks. Recursive incentive schemes have shown promise for social search by motivating people to use their weak ties to find distant targets, such as specific people or even weather balloons placed at undisclosed locations. Here, we report on a case study of a similar recursive incentive scheme for finding innovative ideas. Specifically, we implemented a competition to reward individual(s) who helped refer Grand Prize winner(s) in MIT's Climate CoLab, an open innovation platform for addressing global climate change. Using data on over 78,000 CoLab members and over 36,000 people from over 100 countries who engaged with the referral contest, we find that people who are referred using this method are more likely than others both to submit proposals and to submit high quality proposals. Furthermore, we find suggestive evidence that among the contributors referred via the contest, those who had more than one degree of separation from a pre-existing CoLab member were more likely to submit high quality proposals. Thus, the results from this case study are consistent with the theory that people from distant networks are more likely to provide innovative solutions to complex problems. More broadly, the results suggest that rewarding indirect intermediaries in addition to final finders may promote effective social network recruitment.

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Strength matters: Tie strength as a causal driver of networks’ information benefits

Cited by 78 publications

References 75 publications

Can job seekers achieve more through networking? The role of networking intensity, self‐efficacy, and proximal benefits

Can job seekers achieve more through networking? The role of networking intensity, self‐efficacy, and proximal benefits

The gender gap in job authority: Do social network resources matter?

Recruiting Hay to Find Needles: Recursive Incentives and Innovation in Social Networks

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