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Purpose: This study examines how parental divorce impacts the social support network dynamics of adult children. Research has explored long-term consequences of divorce and the impact of biographical disruption on network dynamics. Despite the long-term impact of parental divorce on social networks, these literatures have not been integrated.

Design/methodology/approach: Using survey data from 21- to 30 and 50- to 70-year-old adults in the San Francisco Bay area through the University of California Social Networks Study, or UCNets, the author explores hypotheses related to biographical disruption and characteristics of social support networks.

Findings: The impact of parental divorce is varied. Parental divorce is unrelated to total number of network ties but is significantly related to number of confidant network ties and marginally related to practical help network ties. Parental divorce is associated with higher overlap across network dimensions, or multiplexity, but this association is stronger for younger compared to older adults.

Research limitations/implications: This study is limited to compositional network dynamics. Future research should explore the impact of parental divorce on clusters of social support and their relationship to network multiplexity in addition to constrained versus preferential multiplexity. These findings are limited to perception of social support in networks, as questions vary by recall period and behavior.

Originality/value: This chapter extends research on long-term consequences of parental divorce and extends biographical disruption models in social networks to processes in family structure, highlighting how age effects shape how parental divorce impacts support strategies, perceptions, and experience at the network level in early compared to later adulthood.

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.

Dyadic multi-dimensionality informs the variation that exists within and between network ties and suggests that ties are not all the same and not all equally strategic. This chapter presents a model of dyadic evolution grounded in dyadic multi-dimensionality and framed within actor-level, dyadic-level, endogenous, and exogenous contexts. These contexts generate both strategic catalysts that motivate network action and bounded agency that may constrain such network action. Assuming the need to navigate within bounded agency, the model highlights three strategic processes that demonstrate how dyadic multi-dimensionality underlies the evolution of strategic network ties.

Traditionally, organizational theory has been a receptacle of methods and mechanisms from network theory. In this paper, we argue that organizational theory can also be an active contributor to network theory’s conceptual development. To that end, we make explicit a theoretical strategy that has only been used informally by network theorists so far, which – following Vaughan (2002) – we refer to as analogical theorizing. Using the basic correspondence between dyadic relationships as the most minimal form of “organization,” we show that processes and mechanisms extracted from various theoretical strands of organizational theory can be mapped onto the dynamics of social relationships. This allows us to build novel theoretical insight as it pertains to issue of relationship emergence, maintenance, and decay in social networks.

We conceptualize corporate social capital within the context of Chinese guanxi culture. We assert that the formation and mobilization of corporate social capital are culturally and institutionally contextualized. Building upon a relational approach to corporate performance, we examine culture-sensitive properties of Chinese guanxi and compare guanxi social capital with non-guanxi social capital. We then explain why guanxi-based corporate social capital is of growing significance to the Chinese transitional economy in an era of increasing market competition and institutional uncertainty. We conclude by proposing a research agenda about the roles that guanxi-based corporate social capital plays for boosting corporate performance.

This paper aims to focus on how different types of knowledge are exchanged within innovation networks in the German energy industry. External factors such as market pressure through liberalization, de-carbonization and decentralization challenge established actors in the industry. Answers to these challenges cannot be found by single actors but require networks to gather and concentrate innovation activities. This implies a need for knowledge transfer among energy providers. The authors aim at exploring knowledge exchange relations in-depth by treating them as multidimensional flows which can comprise technological, market, managerial or regulatory knowledge. In detail, the authors examine patterns of knowledge exchange on network-, dyad- and firm-level. Furthermore, first, empiric results are provided on how two of these patterns, namely, a firm’s propensity to form multiplex instead of uniplex ties as well as the composition of externally acquired knowledge concerning the four types, influence organizational innovativeness.

The authors address their research questions by conducting an in-depth investigation of the largest network of municipal utilities in Germany. The analysis is based on quantitative data collected via standardized online questionnaires drawing on socio-metric methods to reconstruct knowledge exchange networks as well as traditional approaches from socio-empiric research to evaluate firm innovativeness.

The findings indicate that while technological, market, managerial and regulatory knowledge represent different types of knowledge with different exchange patterns, these transfers are interdependent. In particular, the analysis reveals non-hierarchical relations of complementarity. The authors furthermore provide evidence for the existence of ideal profiles for attaining different types of innovation. One central tendency across all of these profiles is that outperformers acquire regulatory knowledge to a significantly lesser degree than other firms and focus more on the other types instead.

This paper solely focusses on the largest network of municipal utilities whereby it is questionable how representative it is for the whole industry. Additionally, due to the cross-sectional design, the paper cannot fully rule out issues of endogeneity in the quantitative analysis.

This paper delivers valuable insights for managers in the energy sector who seek to either enter and manage inter-organizational networks or apply external knowledge to foster innovation. In particular, the authors reveal benchmark profiles for external knowledge acquisition which may serve as templates for strategic collaboration and innovation management.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents the first innovation-related network analysis in the energy industry. Rather than operationalizing knowledge transfer as a simplex flow relation, the authors examine different types of knowledge, their patterns of exchange and their distinct effects on process, product and administrative innovations.

Drawing upon Cabrera and Thomas-Hunt's (2006) theoretical framework for the advancement of executive women, we identify gender differences in social networks as an important determinant of the relative perceived credibility of men and women and the opportunities for hire and promotion available to them. A review of the existing research literature on gender and social networks is presented and several potentially fruitful avenues for future research in this area are discussed.

This paper introduces “virtual fun at the virtual workplace” and conceptualizes its impact on virtual socialization and the formation of virtual professional ties. The conceptual model also recognizes the moderation of a few variables: “awareness of being observed,” “diversity in the virtual workplace” and “virtual impression management.”

The paper takes a theoretical approach to develop a conceptual framework of virtual fun in the virtual workplace, drawing on social exchange theory (SET) and social network theory (SNT).

The study extends the tenets of the SET and extends the applicability of SNT to a virtual workplace. The study suggests that managers should introduce semi-organized virtual fun during scheduled breaks within work hours to aid in virtual socialization, which further aids in the formation and strengthening of “professional ties” in the virtual workplace.

This study is the first of its kind to conceptualize a model for virtual fun in the virtual workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to address the idea of “opting out” for married professional women by presenting a conceptual investigation into the impact that a woman's identity and social networks have in shaping her decisions surrounding career exit. A model is developed and intended to help researchers in this area move beyond existing frameworks when attempting to explain and predict women's career exit.

Research from the identity, social networks, turnover, and careers literatures was analyzed and integrated to put forth a new theoretical lens, represented by the conceptual model developed in this paper, that helps to explain married professional women's career exit.

Development of the model reveals a complex, reciprocal relationship between a woman's identity and her social network and depicts how these factors act in concert to shape women's decisions regarding career exit or “opting out.” This model also highlights the importance of structural constraints shaping a woman's social network, moderators impacting the relationship between a woman's identity and career exit behaviors, and outcomes of career exit.

Although identity is a fundamental element of career development and relationships with others serve as an origin of self and source of self‐understanding, the integration of these perspectives has been conspicuously absent from research on women's career exit. Examining the convergence of identity and social networks and the reciprocal relationship these constructs have on career phenomena advances our knowledge of why married professional women choose to “opt out” or exit their careers.

The extant literature highlights the notable lack of a consensus among operations and supply chain management scholars regarding the theoretical underpinnings and associated empirical evidence for the performance impact of supply chain quality management (SCQM) practices on quality. The purpose of this paper is to redress this imbalance in the literature through empirical examination of the relationship between SCQM practices and quality performance outcomes.

In accordance with the research aim, a quantitative approach was adopted, and a multi-item scale Web-based survey was designed to collect primary data. A total number of 325 questionnaires were collected from a sample of UK-based manufacturing companies. Factor analysis, internal consistency and multivariate regressions were used to validate the multi-item scale and test the hypotheses.

The findings confirm the proposed hypotheses and reveal statistically significant results for the performance impact of SCQM practices on quality at an aggregate level. However, the results of the individual level analysis of SCQM practices appear to vary from practice to practice. Of various SCQM practices, customer focus with the highest beta value (i.e. ß = 0.303; t-value = 6.120; p = 0.000) was found to have the greatest impact on quality performance.

The findings encourage managers to place high priority on both inter-firm and intra-firm relationships as prerequisites for achieving superior quality performance. The propositions and the results of the study provide managers with some guidelines about effective management of upstream, midstream and downstream supply chain networks and awareness of the potential synergies arising from the combined effects of SCQM practices that could bring about desired quality performance outcomes across the entire supply chain network.

Real and sustainable quality performance often requires an equal focus on both intra- and inter-firm relationships among supply chain partners. Therefore, effective management of quality across the entire supply chain is deemed essential if a firm is to smoothly supply high-quality products and services to customers. But little research has been devoted to understanding conceptual underpinnings of SCQM as well as empirical support and validation for the conceptualisation and measurement of SCQM practices. Based on the insights gained from social network theory, this paper makes an attempt to address this gap and examine the impact of SCQM practices on quality performance.