What Makes Weak Ties Strong?

Abstract

We raise two challenges concerning the validity of arguments underlying Granovetter's strength of weak ties (SWT) thesis: ( a) whether weak ties are actually bridges, i.e., they help reach more socially distant actors than strong ties, and ( b) whether weak ties transmit information effectively enough so that weak ties’ alleged structural properties make them more useful than strong ties. In the course of reviewing subsequent research that has made progress in addressing these challenges, we identify both potential limits and possibilities for the SWT thesis. We argue for the importance of identifying how actors’ agency—i.e., the way people use their ties—may affect social networks’ value. We conclude by summarizing some outstanding questions that progress on the SWT thesis has generated. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 49 is July 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The not-so-forbidden triad: Evaluating the assumptions of The Strength of Weak Ties

“…Theorizing a link between tie strength and bridges allowed Granovetter to use insights from one field to make contributions in another. However, the concept of bridging ties is now well-known and widely-used in mainstream sociology (Kim and Fernandez, 2023). Second, identifying bridging ties in networks, especially large networks, was quite challenging at the time, whereas measuring the strength of a given relationship was relatively straightforward using conventional data collection methods.…”

“…Empirical evidence for SWT has remained mixed (Kim and Fernandez, 2023), with numerous studies reaching conclusions that are contrary to SWT's predictions. Turning first to the context of job seeking, where SWT received its earliest empirical support, Bian (1997) found that in China "jobs are acquired through strong ties more frequently than through weak ties" (p. 366).…”

“…2 Indeed, Granovetter explicitly acknowledged that "weak ties...are certainly not automatically bridges" (Granovetter, 1973(Granovetter, , p. 1364. Nonetheless, theoretical and empirical applications of SWT often incorrectly claim that, or study whether, weak ties are more likely to be bridges (Takahashi and Inamizu, 2014;Kim and Fernandez, 2023;Van der Leij and Goyal, 2011). Due to this frequent misunderstanding, few direct tests of H2 exist.…”

“…In contrast, H3 makes a claim about all ties in a network, and therefore offers a more comprehensive test of the SWT logic. Some studies have explored related ideas under other names (Kim and Fernandez, 2023), however the most comprehensive and direct test of the diversitybandwidth tradeoff yielded mixed results. Focusing on email exchanges among employees of an executive recruiting firm, Aral and Van Alstyne (2011) measured tie strength (they call it channel bandwidth) as an employee's mean number of emails received per contact, and measured tie bridgeness (they call it network diversity) as the lack of constraint among an employee's contacts.…”

A process perspective on the expatriate social capital – knowledge transfer and expatriate adjustment relationships

“…All of the above suggests that strong and weak ties are both important, in that while strong ties can fill the basic need of support and information, and impose greater interpersonal influence than weak ties, weak ties, on the other hand, provide access to information and resources that are previously unavailable in personal networks. Indeed, Kim and Fernandez (2023) posited that weak ties can provide more versatile information above and beyond what strong ties can do. In the expatriate context, expatriates are the valuable boundary spanners between headquarters and overseas units (e.g.…”