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This study aims to investigate the relationships between the different strengths of ties (strong ties and weak ties), types of trust and project performance in megaprojects.

A questionnaire survey was conducted with various experts and professionals involved in megaprojects, and 350 valid responses were received. Data was analyzed by means of structural equation modeling.

The results show that both strong ties and weak ties have positive impacts on trust in megaprojects, but weak ties have a more significant positive effect than do strong ties. Unexpectedly, the introduction of interorganizational trust significantly weakens the effect of the strength of ties on project performance. The indirect influence of the strength of ties on performance has different paths. Weak ties have an indirect effect via calculative trust and relational trust. However, in a strong ties network, inferior stakeholders lack the information necessary to complete a megaproject, and they believe that calculative trust will not promote project performance until the megaproject is successfully delivered. Thus, the effect of calculative trust on project performance is not significant.

These findings provide evidence in regard to strength of ties governance being a part of the effective strategy in improving megaprojects’ performance. It also demonstrates the mediating function of trust and advances the current understandings of the underlying mechanism of the strength of ties on project performance, thus providing implications for researchers and practitioners. However, this study has some limitations. For example, the strength of ties and trust between organizations are a dynamic process in megaprojects. This study does not conduct in-depth analysis of the evolution mechanism and investigate the different levels of trust at different stages of the megaproject. Future research can be guided by these directions.

The main contribution of this study is fourfold. First, this study enriches the literature on strength of ties by accentuating the roles of trust in megaproject context. Second, this study contributes to the theoretical development of a conceptual model for explaining the interrelationships among strength of ties, types of trust and project performance. Third, this study responds to the call “which dimension (i.e. strong ties or weak ties) is more influential” by exploring the direct and indirect effects of strength of ties on project performance. Finally, this study breaks through the limitation of traditional cognition that megaproject management can be met by relying on rigid contracts. In other words, trust can supplement the weakness of rigid contract by forming contract flexibility with different strength of ties. Meanwhile, the specific strategies to establish and maintain trust are given, such as building information model (BIM) collaboration platform and reputation management mechanism.

This study aims to investigate how the strength of ties (i.e. strong ties and weak ties) in megaproject networks influences project performance in terms of types of conflicts.

A questionnaire survey was undertaken with professionals in Chinese megaprojects and 445 valid responses were received. A conflict-based theoretical model was developed and tested with structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that task conflict had a constructive effect on project performance, whereas relationship conflict and process conflict had destructive effects. Both strong and weak ties positively affected project performance, and that weak ties exerted greater effects on performance. The introduction of conflicts significantly weakened the effect of strong ties on project performance. Strong ties indirectly affected project performance via task conflict and relationship conflict, whereas weak ties affected performance only through task conflict. Task conflict had a constructive effect on project performance, whereas relationship conflict and process conflict had destructive impact.

This study identified the positive effect of strength of ties on project performance as well as the constructive and destructive roles of conflicts. Furthermore, the findings provided evidence that strength of ties and conflicts were critical factors for project performance. While, there are still limitations. There are other attributes of megaproject networks, such as network nodes’ characteristics and network structure, which may influence conflicts and project performance. Future research would be conducted to explore the role of these variables. Meanwhile, because different types of conflicts may mutually transform under certain conditions, future research would also address this issue in megaprojects.

As for the management strategies, project stakeholders should know the existence of project networks, exactly assess their resource endowment, especially their external and internal relationship network. In accordance with changes of the project network, stakeholders should share knowledge and learn techniques about how to respond to relationship disturbances, thus reducing relationship conflict and process conflict. Furthermore, stakeholders should place an emphasis on fostering and reinforcing communication and trust, thus effectively resolving task conflict, ambiguity and uncertainty engendered from network ties in a megaproject network.

The main contribution of this study is threefold. First, this study will enrich the literature on strength of ties by accentuating the roles of conflicts in megaproject context. Second, this study contributes to the theoretical development of a conceptual model for explaining the interrelationships among strength of ties, conflicts and project performance. Third, this study will respond to the call “which dimension, i.e. strong ties or weak ties, is more influential” by exploring the direct and indirect effects of strength of ties on project performance.

This study aims to explore the influence of the strength of ties (strong ties and weak ties) on contractual flexibility (term flexibility and process flexibility) and relationship quality among stakeholders in a megaproject network.

This study, via a questionnaire survey, collected 380 valid responses from megaproject professionals (including project managers, department managers and project engineers). The data were analyzed using least squares structural equation modeling.

The results show that both strong ties and weak ties have positive effects on relationship quality. The introduction of contractual flexibility can help improve relationship quality by combining the positive effects of the strength of ties. Interestingly, the indirect influence of strong ties on relationship quality is mainly due to term flexibility. However, the influence of process flexibility is not significant, while weak ties have an indirect influence through term flexibility and process flexibility.

This study, while helpful to megaproject management both in theory and practice, is nevertheless subject to several limitations. First, this study only considers the impact of the strength of ties on contractual flexibility and relationship quality; other factors, such as environmental uncertainty, are not explored. Second, the sample data are limited to just a few regions of China. Future research should cover other influencing factors, in order to make the model more substantial; data should also be collected from different cultural and industrial sources, thereby extending and further verifying the results.

This study makes three contributions to extant megaproject literature. First, this study provides a deep and nuanced understanding of the strength of ties. With the distinction between strong ties and weak ties clearly explained, this research furnishes a subtler understanding of relationship governance than has previously been achieved. Second, by precisely identifying the mechanism of how contract flexibility improves contract control and coordination functions, this research offers a complementary view of how contractual flexibility positively contributes to cooperation and relationship quality. Third, this study identifies which dimension of the strength of ties is more influential. This brings a new explanation for the previous controversy and offers some insight into the determinants of how to improve relationship quality in Chinese megaprojects.

This study aims to examine the underlying mechanism of buyer–seller ties and salespeople’s performance. Also examined was the moderating effects of the density of the customer network in which the salesperson is embedded.

The study developed a framework incorporating five key variables: strength of ties, network benefits, network density, sales effectiveness and sales revenue. The framework was tested using data from insurance companies in China.

Process regression and stepwise regression results indicated that information, influence and solidarity benefit will mediate the effects of strength of ties on sales effectiveness both when taken as a set and separately. Information, influence and solidarity benefit will mediate the effects of strength of ties on sales revenue when taken as a set, but only influence will mediate the effect separately. In addition, the positive relationship between strength of ties and solidarity benefit is weaker when network density is high.

Sales managers should initiate trainings and workshops about how to obtain high-quality information from customers, improving influencing power and establishing solidarity with customers. Moreover, salespeople should avoid conducting business with a group of customers if they are densely connected to one another.

On the one hand, this study contributes to the underlying mechanism research on buyer–seller ties and sales performance. On the other hand, it contributes to the contingency research on sales performance and the development of social network theory.

The paper aims to examine the strength of ties that entrepreneurs use during three critical phases of the international new venture's (INV) development; pre-founding, start-up and early internationalization.

The paper uses in-depth interviews to track the development of five INVs to provide nuanced and detailed findings relating to tie strength during these three critical phases. By focusing on proces, the paper captures in detail the strength of these ties and the dynamics of how they evolve.

While the existing literature considers strength of ties to be two separate entities, the paper develops a continuum with three different levels of strength by using entrepreneurs' actual relationships. The paper found that stronger relationships predominate and that they play an important broker role to link with other unconnected networks.

Since relationships are crucial for recognizing and developing business opportunities, entrepreneurs need to invest time and resources to create and develop relationships. The study indicates that entrepreneurs have stronger relationships during the early phases of firm development mainly because they focus on essential relationships and cull unnecessary ones that form a distraction.

The paper refines theory by identifying a distinct category the “equally strong as weak relationship” that is not yet mentioned in the extant literature but could be useful for international entrepreneurs to position themselves inside a network in foreign markets. In such relationships entrepreneurs experience the co-existence of importance and uncertainty.

Strategic alliances have a low success rate despite the profusion of literature on this topic in the last 20 years. To understand the factors that determine performance of partnership relations, the purpose of this paper is to study the roles of control and the strength of interorganizational ties in businesses ability to manage strategic alliances.

The authors have examined 10,377 partnership relations formed as part of strategic alliances to analyze the capacity of a business to manage its alliances. The authors built a structural equations model (PLS) based on observation of 4,242 alliances.

This research identifies two determinants of the success of alliance management. First, the impact of weak ties and strong ties is identical when the business does not control the alliance. Second, weak ties are a more effective means than strong ties when a business controls the alliance.

The main contribution of this study thus lies in our analysis of interorganizational relations and of their tangible impact on strategic trade-offs. The field of public procurement is particularly well-suited to evaluating this phenomenon, given the subtlety of alliances at play.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the association between the strength of different types of ties with the sharing of different kinds of knowledge.

In this paper the association of ties with the sharing of different types of knowledge was measured by a specifically created and developed web survey that was made available to 22 units in the subject organization. Multiple Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure (MRQAP) was used to examine the resulting data in order to address the following questions: first, is there a significant association between strength of business ties and the sharing of public knowledge? Second, is there a significant association between strength of social ties and the sharing of private knowledge?

Findings in this paper show that the strength of business relationships rather than the strength of social relationships contributed most significantly to the sharing of public and private knowledge in this organization. Specifically, the frequency of business interactions predicted the sharing of public non‐codified knowledge, while the closeness of business relationships predicted the sharing of private non‐codified knowledge and the sharing of public codified knowledge. Unexpectedly, neither business nor social ties predicted the sharing of private codified knowledge.

The paper shows that one organization belonging to a certain type of business was studied, and these results might be more relevant in the setting of similar business organizations that have similarities in their contexts and profiles with this organization.

The results in this paper may assist organizations in rethinking the ways of approaching certain types of knowledge sharing in their strategic and infrastructural decisions and their application. Organizations might invest in promoting inter‐unit exchanges and in creating meaningful social nets for more innovative products and better performance.

This paper makes a distinct contribution to the available body of research on how social networks in organizations operate in sharing knowledge. The paper provides answers to a number of research questions that have not been addressed thus far in the literature; this study also provides fresh insights into the investigation of patterns of association and prediction.

Despite changes in international trade agreements and the introduction of new technologies that facilitate international business, many firms, especially SMEs, still do not diversify into international markets. In this paper, we suggest that an important factor that can influence the international diversification decision is social networks. We hypothesize that both the strength of the ties to international firms and the size of a SME’s international network influence its decision to diversify internationally. Our analysis suggests that the strength of international network ties significantly influences SME international diversification, but that the size of the international network does not. These results have important implications for researchers, managers, and public policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to test the transfer of good practices under the effect of various aspects of personal networks. Whereas, the majority of former work considers a direct effect of networks on knowledge transfer, the authors examined two intermediate mechanisms: the access to strategic resources and the individual's absorptive capacity.

A quantitative study was used to collect data, via a face‐to‐face questionnaire with key individuals in small and medium entreprises members of consortia in Tunisia. Data were analysed with a structural equations approach, based on partial least squared‐path modelling techniques.

Results emphasize the impact of network size, strength of ties and absorptive capacity on the strategic resource access and the impact of indirect ties, strength and range of ties on the absorptive capacity. Moreover, while absorptive capacity positively impacts good practice transfer, no support was found to the effect of resource access.

The main limitation of this study concerns the measuring of good practice transfer, since in literature there are often imprecise proxies. Also, while the authors have investigated the global impact of strategic resources, future research needs to treat them separately. Finally, a longitudinal study allows better capture of the evolution of the phenomenon studied.

Top management and directors at a consortium level need to pay careful attention to the social context within which knowledge transfer efforts occur. Resources exchanged and the absorptive capacity developed through social interactions must be designed to increase knowledge flows between firms.

The paper links two bodies of research often studied separately in inter‐organizational research: literature on social networks and that on inter‐organizational learning. It is hoped that the paper contributes to a cross‐fertilization of the two fields.

The purpose is to evaluate the effect of positive and negative traditional word-of-mouth (PWOM and NWOM) on price-based quality perceptions of middle-range wine (price comprised between US$4 and US$12), considering the moderator role of type of relationship between source and receiver –in terms of the strength-of-tie – and the wine expertise of the source.

A between-subjects experimental design was employed to test the hypotheses. The dependent variable, perceived quality, was analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent samples t-tests.

(1) WOM significantly affects price-based wine quality perceptions only when the source is perceived as expert, and independently on the type of relationship between source and receiver. (2) WOM has no “additive effect” on price-based quality perceptions for all but one condition (PWOM about high-priced wine from a close and expert source). (3) WOM results more useful than price to assess quality mainly in “contradictory” situations.

The main limitation is related to the fact that is an experiment, specifically the manipulation of strength-of-tie and source expertise. Although manipulation checks show good results for the procedure, future research should try to design better ways to manipulate these variables, or different procedures to capture similar data.

Managerial efforts aimed to the encouragement of PWOM will be more efficient in markets with a high proportion of experts. Also, the marketing strategy of stimulating PWOM would be more effective for wines in the low-price category.

This study contributes to understand the impact of WOM on wine quality perceptions by examining if WOM affects priors price-based quality perceptions. In particular, we determine if price-based quality perceptions are able to be modified by PWOM and NWOM, a “competing” approach that is novel within the wine literature in which price is usually the most used cue to elaborate quality perceptions.