Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential influence of friendship on entrepreneurial teams (ETs) and on venture formation and development. The theoretical framework is built on the literature around friendship ties, the interaction of friendship ties and professional ties, and ETs.

Taking an interpretative methodological approach, the authors carried out qualitative interviews with ten business founders in Paris, France.

The authors identified different four profiles or types of ETs according to how friendship ties interact with professional ties among team members, which the authors designate as “fusion” and “separation”, and describe the orientation of this interaction, which the authors label as “affective” or “strategic”. These profiles affect the emergence of the idea and the choice of members in the formation of teams. They also shape the functioning of teams in terms of decision-making processes, recruitment and investment.

The findings underline the difficulties of studying friendship in ETs empirically and recommend longitudinal approaches for further research.

Findings offer insights in to why and how ETs based on friendship ties approach the pre-launch, launch and development phases of businesses as well as in to the interactions between professional and friendship ties, which is helpful to both practitioners and academics. The authors also discuss the consequences and implications of the different team types in terms of their risks and strategies for mitigating these risks.

This is one of the first empirical studies to examine how friendship and professional ties may combine and evolve in ETs, and their influence on the entrepreneurial process as it relates to venture formation and development.

This chapter analyzes the ways that individuals develop person-to-group ties. The chapter reviews the development and evidentiary basis of the theory of relational cohesion, the affect theory of social exchange, and the theory of social commitments.

We survey twenty-five years of published literature on these theories, and review unpublished theoretical tests and extensions that are currently in progress.

The research program has grown substantially over the past twenty-five years to encompass more varied and diverse phenomena. The findings indicate that structural interdependencies, repeated exchanges, and a sense of shared responsibility are key conditions for people to develop affective ties to groups, organizations, and even nation-states.

The research implies that if people are engaged in joint tasks, they attribute positive or negative feelings from those tasks to their local groups (teams, departments) and/or to larger organizations (companies, communities). To date, empirical tests have focused on microlevel processes.

Our work has practical implications for how managers or supervisors organize tasks and work routines in a way to maximize group or organizational commitment.

This research helps to understand problems of fragmentation that are faced by decentralized organizations and also how these can be overcome.

The chapter represents the most complete and comprehensive review of the theory of relational cohesion, the affect theory of social exchange, and the theory of social commitments to date.

A multiplex relation occurs when actors share different roles, actions, or affiliations that overlap in a relationship, such as co-workers who are also friends outside of work. Although multiplex relations are as varied as they are pervasive and often problematic, we know surprisingly little about when, under what circumstances, and exactly how overlapping ties affect social relations. Do they strengthen or weaken relationships? When do relationships become multiplex? How do they affect networks at large? In this chapter, we review notable studies that exist on this topic and suggest key questions and issues for future research. Our goal in particular is to suggest how exchange theory could contribute to these efforts.

This paper theorizes the role of shared responsibility in the development of affective group attachments, interweaving ideas from social exchange and social identity theories. The main arguments are that (1) people engaged in task interaction experience positive or negative emotions from those interactions; (2) tasks that promote more sense of shared responsibility across members lead people to attribute their individual emotions to groups or organizations; and (3) group attributions of own emotions are the basis for stronger or weaker group attachments. The paper suggests that social categorization and structural interdependence promote group attachments by producing task interactions that have positive emotional effects on those involved.

Entrepreneurs and individual sellers heavily leverage their social ties embedded in social media, expressive or instrumental, to penetrate the market and achieve business success. However, the extant social commerce literature offers limited understanding on how different forms of buyer−seller social ties embedded in social media affect buyers' purchase behaviors. The study draws on the theoretical lens of social ties and proposes an integrative theoretical framework to understand the direct and indirect influences of expressive and instrumental ties (ExTSM and InTSM) between buyers and sellers on buyers' purchase intention (PI) in social commerce.

The authors first validated the measures of ExTSM and InTSM with survey data from 166 Weibo commerce buyers. They then tested their theoretical framework and hypotheses with survey data from 246 buyer−seller dyads in WeChat commerce.

With a buyer-centric view, (1) ExTSM and InTSM, respectively, had a direct negative and a positive influence on PI; (2) both trust and perceived product value displayed inconsistent mediation effects on the negative relationship between ExTSM and PI; and (3) only perceived product value mediated the positive influence of InTSM on PI. From sellers' viewpoint, (1) their ExTSM and InTSM with buyers were mixed up, and (2) the mingled social ties negatively impacted buyers' purchase intention.

The findings of the study advance the theoretical understanding of social commerce and offer practical guidance for small and medium-sized enterprises to effectively utilize social media for business purposes.

Applying social commitments theory, this paper aims to study the effect of shared responsibility as a structural characteristic of project teams to foster tacit knowledge sharing with the mediating role of affective bonding. Besides, the moderating effect of normative conformity is also examined.

The quantitative method was applied through surveying senior auditors representing 263 audit teams in Vietnam to examine the model.

This study found that in the joint projects, when team members perceive high shared responsibility for both success and failure, the affective bonding among them are generated. The affective bonding becomes salient to tacit knowledge sharing only when the team members perceive high obligations to conform the general knowledge sharing norms and the serial reciprocity norms.

This study provides the evidence for partial confirmation and expansion of the social commitments theory. The practical takeaways are provided for managers of project-based organizations in the social aspects for facilitating sharing culture.

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how four enterprise social media (ESM) affordances (visibility, association, editability and persistence) affect social network ties (instrumental and expressive), which, in turn, influence the in-role and innovative job performance of employees.

A survey of 251 ESM users in the workplace in China was conducted.

All four affordances are positively associated with instrumental ties, yet only the association and editability affordances are positively related to expressive ties. Although instrumental and expressive ties are positively related to in-role and innovative job performance, instrumental ties exert stronger effects on in-role job performance, whereas expressive ties show stronger effects on innovative job performance.

First, additional relevant affordances should be included in an expanded model. Second, future research could examine how patterns of affordances use (unrelated, or hierarchically or sequentially related) affect organizational network ties. Third, there are likely (many) other exogenous factors affecting the model’s relationships. Fourth, the data collected are self-reported.

This study advances the theoretical understanding of the role of ESM affordances in the workplace, especially through their influences on network ties. The findings can guide organizations on how to emphasize ESM affordances to foster instrumental and expressive ties to improve the job performance of employees.

First, it provides novel views on affordance theory in ESM contexts by empirically testing four central affordances, thereby further providing preliminary evidence for prior theoretical propositions by confirming that social media affordances might be associated with or influence relational ties. Second, the study integrates an affordance lens and a social network perspective to investigate employees’ perceived performance behavior. Including social network ties can offer a more detailed understanding of the underlying processes of how ESM affordances can and do affect job performance. Third, it supports the validity of distinguishing instrumental and expressive ties in ESM contexts, thus offering a possible explanation for the inconsistencies in prior research on the impact of social networks on employee outcomes. Finally, it also shows how two kinds of organizational performance (in-role and innovative) are somewhat differentially influenced by affordances and network ties.

The aim of this paper is to examine social networks from a Western and Eastern view.

The paper uses case study methodology to gather evidence of how world pioneering firms from Asia and Europe measure and report their social connections from a Western perspective.

It is examined the basic indicators firms use to measure these networks and the major issues managers should consider when measuring and reporting these knowledge‐based resources. These indicators can be classified into four categories: customer description, customer portfolio, stakeholder capital and social networks. In total the study finds 29 relevant indicators for organizational social connections.

The paper provides great value both for academics and executives interested in the analysis of social networks both from a Western and Eastern view.

This chapter utilizes a network perspective to show how the totality of one’s social connections impacts well-being by providing access to resources (e.g., information, feedback, and support) and placing limits on autonomy. We provide a brief review of basic network concepts and explain the importance of understanding how the networks in which leaders are embedded may enhance or diminish their well-being. Further, with this greater understanding, we describe how leaders can help promote the well-being of their employees. In particular, we focus on four key aspects of workplace networks that are likely to impact well-being: centrality, structural holes, embeddedness, and negative ties. We not only discuss practical implications for leaders’ well-being and the well-being of their employees, but also suggest directions for future research.