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THE RELATIONSHIP OF NETWORK TIE AND BREAKTHROUGH INNOVATION: IMPLICATIONS OF STRONG AND WEAK TIE POSITION

In this volume, both qualitative and quantitative scholars describe their findings on the networks of migrants and their descendants and explore the content of their social ties for educational and labor market success in seven European countries. Some contributions cover decades of work in this field, making this one of most comprehensive books on this topic, both theoretically and empirically. Almost without exception, the authors, although describing various ethnic groups, different geographical and professional contexts and different time periods, are critical of a number of the main arguments about the networks of migrants developed in the field of migration studies. Central in their critique is the question about the importance of co-ethnic or inter-ethnic ties and networks, and their importance to enter the labor market and move up. In the field of migration studies, concepts like integration and assimilation have greatly influenced the thinking of its scholars. The idea that newcomers only become fully integrated in a society when they gain a similar economic position and are in contact with people without migration background, or, in other words, become part of the mainstream, has been a strong and dominant view in our field (Alba & Nee, 2003; Alba, 2009; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Portes & Zhou, 1993). People who largely interact with co-ethnics and or work in labor market sectors that are dominated by co-ethnics (ethnic niches) are usually seen as not (yet) fully integrated into their new society. And when this also translates to the native-born children (so-called ‘second generation decline’), this is seen as problematic (Ganz, 1992). In this broader framework on integration and assimilation, Granovetter’s (1973) idea of strong and weak ties has entered the field of migration studies. Lang and Schneider, in this volume, rightly state that it is questionable whether the idea of strong ties – for co-ethnics – and weak ties – for ties with people without migration background – was originally intended by Granovetter to be used in this way. But what is clear, however, is that this idea fitted perfectly with broader theories on integration and assimilation. The importance for newly arrived migrants of strong co-ethnic ties in ethnic networks is generally considered one of the starting pieces of the puzzle laying out the process of assimilation in its first phase. The idea of weak ties, also in its symbolic emphasis on ‘weak’, perfectly suited the still scarce and superficial contacts with people of native descent in the early stages of the assimilation process. Since the concept of weak and strong ties fitted so well with the dominant theories about integration and assimilation (classical, neo and new assimilation), much of what was happening with migrants, and even their descendants, in the labor market was seen through, what many would call, an ethnic lens (Crul, 2016; Dahinden, 2016; Wimmer, 2013). Migrants gained a first foothold in the labor market through strong co-ethnic ties and were slowly moving up through their weak ties, making use of information and resources of people of native descent with whom they had only superficial contact. The idea of strong ties also resonated with the notion that their relations with co-ethnics were more meaningful and profound. There was also a dark side to strong ties. Under some conditions, because of the limited information and resources in the co-ethnic network, for some the strong ties could lead to an ethnic mobility trap.

Communication Ties Across the National Network of Local Health Departments

1. IntroductionThis study is an analysis of process of successful diversification from perspective of (Granovetter, 1973).Despite increasing pessimism about competitiveness of Japanese machinery industry, which has played a leading role in Japanese economic growth, there is growing interest in diversification into medical industry, which is seen as a next-generation source of growth. This study takes example of a firm that successfully diversified from automotive industry into medical equipment industry, and from perspective of ties, it observes process of how company succeeded in this diversification effort over a moderately long period.Ties can be classified into and (Granovetter, 1973). There are well-known analyses of effectiveness of strong ties in automotive industry. Strong ties between automobile manufacturers and their suppliers have contributed to competitive advantage of Japan's auto industry (Clark & Fujimoto, 1991; Fujimoto, 1997). At same time, effectiveness of weak ties in acquiring useful new information is also well known (Granovetter, 1974). This aspect is known as the strength of weak (Granovetter, 1973). Strong ties promote incremental innovation, such as quality improvements and finely tuned responses to delicate needs, while weak ties tend to promote radical innovation through new information and revolutionary ideas (Wakabayashi, 2009). Weak ties can thus be useful in diversification in that they bring about new information and raise potential for entry into new markets.According to prior research that analyzed relationship between ties and management performance, it is not enough for a firm to have only strong ties or only weak ties. Moreover, firms having a proper balance of both have best performance (Uzzi, 1996, 1997; Uzzi & Gillespie, 1999). These studies suggest that both strong and weak ties are necessary for diversified companies to generate good performance.However, little research has been done on how firms can form weak ties and leverage them in diversification process, as well as at what point do strong ties become necessary.2. MethodThe analytical method used in this study is a single case study that examines process of how a company achieved diversification and what kind of ties were formed in doing so. It has been pointed out that Granovetter's (1973) definitions of strong and weak ties are ambiguous and that there are some logical leaps on his theoretical development (Takahashi & Inamizu, 2014). This study refers to Granovetter (1973) in defining ties as being based on the amount of spent in relationships and engaged in the reciprocal services, with lots of time spent indicating strong ties and little time spent indicating weak ties.This study focuses on following two points. First, how did a company that had grown in automotive industry, where strong ties were prevalent, form weak ties?Second, were both weak ties and strong ties necessary for successful diversification? At what point did strong ties become necessary? How did strength and role of these ties change over time?The analysis in this study focuses on Tokai Buhin Kogyo Co. Ltd. (hereinafter, Tokai Buhin), a rare example of successful diversification among small- and medium-sized parts manufacturers. The firm was founded in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1947 as a manufacturer of screws and developed into a screw manufacturer for automobiles. However, company entered medical equipment industry in 2003 because it was concerned about having over-reliance on automobiles.Data for this analysis was gathered from industry publications and newspapers, as well as through interviews with Nobuyuki Morita, company's president, Mitsuteru Hirano, its factory director, and Katsunori Ueda, director of Pharma Valley Center, an organization that promotes medical industry in Shizuoka Prefecture. …

Information flow through strong and weak ties in intraorganizational social networks

The contribution of strong and weak ties to resilience: The case of small-scale maize farming systems in Mexico

1. IntroductionMany of us have heard the phrase it's not what you know but who you know. While this may not be strictly true, approximately one half of workers in the United States do find employment through friends, relatives, and other social contacts (Granovetter 1995). Further, in a seminal paper, Granovetter (1973) argues that, for the purpose of finding jobs, it is acquaintances, not close friends, who are most important in helping individuals find employment. He claims that friends whom one knows well are likely to be close in social space. Close friends know one's other close friends and tend to have social networks similar to each other. Thus, any information held by a given close friend may be obtained from other close friends as well; the job information of close friends is often redundant. In contrast, acquaintances tend to have less similar social networks and know different people from one's close friends. Granovetter argued that acquaintances also are more likely to have different information about available jobs, which makes them valuable job contacts. Granovetter labeled acquaintances as weak ties as opposed to close friends, who are known as strong ties.In this article, I am defining weak and strong ties as Granovetter (1983) did. Weak ties are acquaintances and strong ties are close friends. The important point of these definitions is the idea that, on average, acquaintances are less likely to know one's other friends than strong ties. On average, the social network of strong ties has more overlap than the social network of weak ties. As I will explain in more detail below, the lack of overlap of acquaintances implies that a social network with more weak ties will be larger (will have more range) than a social network with fewer weak ties.Since Granovetter's article, much work has been done by other scholars to validate the importance of weak ties in labor markets by answering two questions: First, researchers asked whether weak ties are a common source of finding employment. These studies have been successful in demonstrating that weak ties are indeed an important source of finding employment. For instance, in Granovetter (1973), of the people finding jobs through referral sources (such as friends, family, and other personal contacts), 27.8% use weak ties, 16.7% use strong ties, and the majority, 55.6%, use ties of moderate strength in between weak and strong. Others have replicated the finding that weak ties are a common means of finding employment.1 In summary, this line of research has demonstrated that, as Granovetter claimed, weak ties do play an important role in matching workers and jobs. Second, because weak ties appear to be important in locating jobs, researchers have asked if the use of weak ties as a job-finding method increases income (Bridges and Villemez 1986; Marsden and Hurlbert 1988; Wegener 1991). The findings of these studies suggest that there is little evidence of a relationship between weak ties and income. (Note that the hypothesized link between weak ties and income was not a part of Granovetter's hypothesis, as he makes clear in Granovetter [1983].)The present article can be seen as an extension to this second line of questioning. In this article, I use an example to show that previous methods used to measure the effect of weak ties on income will underestimate the effect, if it exists. I then provide a new method of estimating the effect of weak ties on income that directly considers the social network of individuals. Granovetter's idea that weak ties are more likely to provide novel information rests on the idea that weak ties are less likely to overlap than strong ties, on average. In other words, weak ties know a smaller fraction of one's other friends compared with strong ties, on average. I use this idea to show that less overlap in friendships increases the range of an individual's social network. …

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how focal firms in supply networks manage weak and strong ties for exploration and exploitation innovation in mature industries. In doing so, the paper extends the understanding of how focal firms manage open innovation (OI).Design/methodology/approachThe empirical base is a multiple case study conducted on three companies operating in mature industries in Europe.FindingsFindings of this study reveal, analyze and explain a diverse set of OI practices in the supply networks of mature industries in which the focal firms integrate strong and weak supply ties to enhance innovation outcomes. This study provides a fine-grained view of the benefits of the additive and interactive effects of strong and weak ties in OI. More specifically, the analysis reveals an enhancing role of strong supply ties in exploration, which previously was associated solely with weak ties. Moreover, this study sheds light on the dominant and orchestrating roles of focal firms.Practical implicationsThe findings provide insights to enhance OI practices beyond the limited role of the weak ties of the supply network and highlight the essential role of the strong supply ties in mature industries.Originality/valueWhile previous studies have associated exploration with weak ties, findings of this study reveal that exploration-oriented activities in mature industries also extend to strong ties. In the strong ties of mature industries, this study finds there is not only the exploitation of existing knowledge but also the reconfiguration and innovation of products.

Though word-of-mouth (w-o-m) communications is a pervasive and intriguing phenomenon, little is known on its underlying process of personal communications. Moreover as marketers are getting more interested in harnessing the power of w-o-m, for e-business and other net related activities, the effects of the different communications types on macro level marketing is becoming critical. In particular we are interested in the breakdown of the personal communication between closer and stronger communications that are within an individual's own personal group (strong ties) and weaker and less personal communications that an individual makes with a wide set of other acquaintances and colleagues (weak ties). We use a technique borrowed from Complex Systems Analysis called stochastic cellular automata in order to generate data and analyze the results so that answers to our main research issues could be ascertained. The following summarizes the impact of strong and weak ties on the speed of acceptance of a new product: ••The influence of weak ties is at least as strong as the influence of strong ties. Despite the relative inferiority of the weak tie parameter in the model's assumptions, their effect approximates or exceeds that of strong ties, in all stages of the product life cycle. ••External marketing efforts (e.g., advertising) are effective. However, beyond a relatively early stage of the growth cycle of the new product, their efficacy quickly diminishes and strong and weak ties become the main forces propelling growth. The results clearly indicate that information dissemination is dominated by both weak and strong w-o-m, rather than by advertising. ••The effect of strong ties diminishes as personal network size decreases. Market attributes were also found to mediate the effects of weak and strong ties. When personal networks are small, weak ties were found to have a stronger impact on information dissemination than strong ties.

Background: Studies have acknowledged that social media enables students to connect with and learn from experts from different ties available in the students’ personal learning environment (PLE). Incorporating experts into formal learning activities such as scaffolding problem-solving tasks through social media, allows students to understand how experts solve real-world problems. However, studies that evaluate experts’ problem-solving styles on social media in relation to the tie strength of the experts with the students are scarce in the extant literature. This study aimed to explore the problem-solving styles that the experts portrayed based on their ties with the students in problem-based learning (PBL) on Facebook. Methods: This study employed a simultaneous within-subject experimental design which was conducted in three closed Facebook groups with 12 final year management students, six business experts, and one instructor as the participants. The experts were invited by the students from the weak and strong ties in their PLE. Hinging on the Strength of Weak Ties Theory (Granovetter, 1973) and problem-solving styles (Selby et al., 2004), this study employed thematic analysis using the ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software to map the experts’ comments on Facebook. Results: The experts from strong and weak ties who had a prior relationship with the students showed people preference style by being more sensitive to the students' learning needs and demonstrating firmer scaffolding compared to the weak ties' experts who had no prior relationship with the students. Regardless of the types of ties, all experts applied all manner of processing information and orientation to change but the degree of its applications are correlated with the working experience of the experts. Conclusion: The use of weak or strong ties benefited the students as it expedited their problem-solving tasks since the experts have unique expertise to offer depending on the problem-solving styles that they exhibited.

Background: Studies have acknowledged that social media enables students to connect with and learn from experts from different ties available in the students’ personal learning environment (PLE). Incorporating experts into formal learning activities such as scaffolding problem-solving tasks through social media, allows students to understand how experts solve real-world problems. However, studies that evaluate experts’ problem-solving styles on social media in relation to the tie strength of the experts with the students are scarce in the extant literature. This study aimed to explore the problem-solving styles that the experts portrayed based on their ties with the students in problem-based learning (PBL) on Facebook.Methods: This study employed a simultaneous within-subject experimental design which was conducted in three closed Facebook groups with 12 final year management students, six business experts, and one instructor as the participants. The experts were invited by the students from the weak and strong ties in their PLE. Hinging on the Strength of Weak Ties Theory (Granovetter, 1973) and problem-solving styles (Selby et al., 2004), this study employed thematic analysis using the ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software to map the experts’ comments on Facebook.Results: The experts from strong and weak ties who had a prior relationship with the students showed people preference style by being more sensitive to the students' learning needs and demonstrating firmer scaffolding compared to the weak ties' experts who had no prior relationship with the students. Regardless of the types of ties, all experts applied all manner of processing information and orientation to change but the degree of its applications are correlated with the working experience of the experts.Conclusion: The use of weak or strong ties benefited the students as it expedited their problem-solving tasks since the experts have unique expertise to offer depending on the problem-solving styles that they exhibited.

Research Summary This paper uses formal modeling and simulation to develop a more robust theory of how entrepreneurs gain access to human capital resources through their strong and weak social network ties. Whereas prior work focuses on the informational context in which an endeavor operates (i.e., is it risky or uncertain), the models developed in this paper introduce untested assumptions implicit in prior work regarding strong tie superiority, the effects of social media, and human capital heterogeneity. Through a series of simulation analyses, the paper explores a broad range of values for these alternative assumptions and identifies the conditions under which strong and weak ties are the most likely source of human capital for entrepreneurial endeavors. Managerial Summary Entrepreneurs often need to enlist the support of others to achieve their objectives. This paper develops a better understanding of how entrepreneurs can access the human capital their endeavors require through their social network ties. The paper explores a broad range of conditions to identify when an entrepreneur's strong social network ties are the most likely source of human capital—and when the entrepreneur's weak ties are the most likely source. This paper challenges the assumption that strong ties have an inherent advantage over weak ties in entrepreneurial settings, investigates the impact of social media networks, and highlights the challenges entrepreneurs face when attempting to enlist the support of individuals with different types of human capital.

Certains entrepreneurs ont plus de réussite que d’autres dans la création d’une entreprise et sa croissance, ce qui a amené de nombreux chercheurs à en rechercher les causes dans les pays développés, mais peu de recherches existent sur les pays africains. Dans cette perspective, l’objet de cette étude portant sur le Cameroun est double. D’une part, nous analysons l’effet combiné du capital psychologique et du capital social de l’entrepreneur sur la performance de son entreprise nouvellement créée. Le capital social de l’entrepreneur à travers les liens faibles et forts est considéré comme un modérateur de la relation entre son capital psychologique et la performance de sa firme. D’autre part, nous cherchons à identifier d’éventuelles différences entre les entrepreneurs ayant atteint un niveau d’hypercroissance et les autres dans un contexte où l’innovation n’est pas prépondérante.Les résultats des analyses économétriques montrent que le capital psychologique de l’entrepreneur et le capital social ont un effet positif sur la performance des entreprises nouvellement créées pris séparément. Mais, lorsque le capital social est combiné au capital psychologique, l’effet est encore plus fort. D’où le rôle modérateur positif joué par les forces de liens forts et faibles du capital social de l’entrepreneur.De plus, nos résultats stipulent que l’hypercroissance de certaines entreprises s’explique en partie par le niveau élevé du capital psychologique de leurs fondateurs, mais également par une combinaison effective de ce capital psychologique avec le capital social, intégrant les liens faibles et les liens forts. C’est cette combinaison qui leur permet de tirer un meilleur parti des liens forts et des liens faibles constitutifs de leur capital social, et d’atteindre l’hypercroissance. Au regard de nos résultats, des recommandations ont été formulées.

Social media, especially social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook have grown rapidly in popularity in the last ten years. [...]

Strong versus weak ties in migration