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The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of two types of negative ties, namely perceived negative ties and intended negative ties, on the two types of employee work outcomes, namely job performance and ethical voice. In addition, the chapter discusses the role of personal reputation as a mediator in explaining the relationship between negative ties and work outcomes. The study sample comprised of 103 blue-collar workers and their direct supervisors in a large cement factory in southern Iraq. The study used survey method as a mean to collect the data. Data analysis showed that perceived negative ties and intended negative ties influence participants’ job performance and ethical voice. The result also indicates that personal reputation mediates the relationship between negative ties and work outcomes. In light of the results, theoretical and practical implications are presented.

Social network theory can help management scholars to understand how the pattern of social ties between employees can lead to unpredictable consequences. Sometimes people occupying lower positions in organizations, like junior‐level secretaries, can be quite powerful and effective. Such consequences appear to be related to their status in the social networks they operate. The aim of this paper is to determine the level of the relationship between the network status and power of junior‐level office secretaries.

Two different methodological approaches were used to test the basic claims of this study. First, social network analysis was applied to network data gathered from 80 employees working in six academic departments and four administrative units, and then qualitative research techniques were used to explain the findings of the study. Interviews were carried out with 35 academicians.

The findings suggest that the secretaries have strong positions in terms of brokerage and network centrality. The results of interviews indicate that they use their social connections between academic and administrative departments to create various kinds of dependencies.

This research shows that secretaries may have high power potential in organizations, and those who are aware of their strong positions in a social network can use this for their self‐interests.

Social network theory and methodology have never been used to determine and explain the critical role of secretaries in organizations in the management literature. This study may give management scholars further ideas to explain how some organizational positions can provide advantage to the focal actors to construct social ties in organizations.

This study aims at developing a conceptual framework for the networking behaviour of firms having relational and non-relational competitive interactions. Initially the question of how negative ties change the meaning of competition for the rival firms was discussed and then how these types of interactions can change possible networking preferences of organizations were theoretically estimated.

This study suggests that relational rivalry is closely linked with negative ties and even the emergence of strong positive ties among firms is viewed as a consequence of dyadic negative interactions. Different types of competitive conditions were classified under non-relational and relational categories.

Not applicable.

A majority of the studies on interorganizational networks are mostly concerned with positive tie formation patterns and the consequences of these interactions. However, there is limited number of macro-level studies, which realized explanatory potential of the negative interfirm relations. Negative interorganizational relations may also make significant contributions to the discipline of economic sociology.

The purpose of this study is to suggest an unusual method that may help researchers to examine from the real-time movements of consumers among stores located on any kind of shopping location. We assumed shopping behavior of individuals as a complicated network representing their interactions with multiple types of stores – brands. Shopping malls were chosen to test this alternative method. Closely located stores in these organizations give researchers a chance to investigate patterns of interactions of customers in relation to brands. Therefore, we decided to develop an unusual method to examine customers' behavior in these organizations.

This study suggests that circulation patterns of customers in a shopping location may provide valuable information to decision makers. The applicability of this technique was tested on 700 consumers visiting stores of a supper-regional shopping mall, located in Ankara, Turkey. Paths of the customers in a specific type of mall were determined, and their interactions with the stores were analyzed by using social network analysis techniques. The brands having key positions in the network were compared with the brand configuration of high- and low-performer malls serving to similar markets.

The results of the network analyses were used to understand whether this method could be beneficial for the ideal tenant mix problem of shopping malls. Findings suggest that the performance of malls depends on fitness to customer paths, and the malls, which didn't have the key brands at the initial stage, could not adapt themselves later. Findings of the case study verified that this technique might offer a solution to this well-known dilemma of the retailing sector and may have several implications.

These types of data are very valuable, especially for retailing research and the industry, because very critical knowledge such as traffic among retail stores, key central brands, ideal location of stores, consumption tendencies of different customer groups and symbiotic or competitive relations among retailers can be obtained. This method may also have broad implications in other fields of research such as location analysis, decision support systems and property management as well as marketing and retailing.