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This study explores the influence of organizational structure on relationship formation and tacit knowledge sharing within a family business context.

Utilizing a single case study approach, data were collected through interviews and questionnaires from 12 participants at a family-owned advertising and communication firm in Beirut, Lebanon.

The research highlights the critical role of organizational structure in enhancing organizational effectiveness through knowledge transfer. It underscores how both intraorganizational and interorganizational ties influence knowledge sharing processes and demonstrates the varying impacts of tie strength on tacit knowledge distribution.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the interdependence between organizational structure, tacit knowledge transfer and tie strength in family businesses. By analyzing these elements across internal and external boundaries, the study offers a fresh perspective on network dynamics. The research highlights that traditional definitions of network ties may not fully capture the unique environment of family firms, where structural nuances impact knowledge sharing and performance. Practically, the findings provide actionable insights for managers to design organizational structures that optimize tacit knowledge flow, fostering innovation and competitiveness. This work challenges existing frameworks and offers guidance for improving knowledge management in family businesses, supporting sustainable growth and success.

The role of inventors' creativity is crucial for technological innovation within enterprises. The mobility of inventors among different enterprises is a primary source for companies to acquire external knowledge. The mechanism of “learning-by-hiring” is widely recognized by companies. Therefore, it is important to determine how to allocate network resources to enhance the creativity of inventors when companies hire mobile inventors.

The study suggests an analytical framework that analyzes alterations in tie strength and structural holes resulting from the network embeddedness of mobile inventors as well as the effect of the interaction between these two variables on changes in inventor’s creativity after the mobility. In addition, this paper examines the moderating impact of cognitive richness of mobile inventors and cognitive distance between mobile inventors and new employers on the correlation between network embeddedness and creativity.

This study found that: (1) The increase of tie strength has a significant boost in creativity. (2) Increasing structural holes can significantly improve the creativity of mobile inventors. (3) When both the tie strength and the structural holes increase, the creativity of the mobile inventors significantly increases. (4) It is important to note that when there is a greater cognitive distance, stronger tie strength promotes the creativity of mobile inventors. Additionally, cognitive richness plays a significant role in moderating the relationship between changes in structural holes and the creativity of mobile inventors.

These findings provide theoretical guidance for firms to effectively manage mobile inventors and optimize collaborative networks within organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how knowledge distance, which encompasses cognitive and geographic distance, influences efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model reconfiguration (BMR), and the moderating role of tie strength.

The authors analyze a sample of 132 Tunisian incumbent firms by multiple hierarchical regressions.

First, the effect of knowledge distance on novelty-centered BMR may differ depending on whether the firm introduces novelty within or outside its organizational boundaries. Specifically, the authors introduce two new types of novelty-centered BMR: intra-novelty and extra-novelty, which respectively take into account whether the reconfigured activities are governed within or outside the focal firm’s boundaries. Second, cognitive distance has an inverted U-shaped effect on efficiency-centered and intra-novelty-centered BMR. Third, tie strength has a moderating role, with varying effects depending on the type of BMR pursued.

This study provides guidance for managers on structuring alliances and collaborations when pursuing BMR. It provides recommendations on partner characteristics, as well as relationship tie strength, that are most beneficial for different types of BMR.

This paper answers the call for research on how knowledge obtained from distant sources can contribute to BMR. Additionally, the paper introduces a previously absent distinction in the BMR literature. The findings suggest that studying the antecedents of BMR should not be limited to the level of design themes but also encompass the level of design elements such as governance.

This study aims to examine the relationship between tie strength and poor asnaf student’s normative commitment and its impact on behaviour.

A sample of 129 poor asnaf students participated in this study. SMART-PLS 3.2.8 was used to analyse the data.

The findings show that the tie strength dimension (trust, emotional intensity, mutual confiding and relational exchange) positively relates to poor asnaf student’s normative commitment. Also, the result shows that poor asnaf students’ normative commitment is positively related to recipient behaviour.

This study focuses on poor asnaf students receiving zakat financial education aid.

The findings provide valuable information on the factors that encourage poor asnaf students’ normative commitment. Related parties, such as the zakat institution, could use these findings to plan further action to enhance the poor asnaf student’s normative commitment and behaviour.

The study showed that the social tie strength framework could be used to determine the variables affecting poor asnaf student’s normative commitment and behaviour.

The prevalence of independent contractors in the US workforce is growing. This research examines the social environment and career outcomes of labor and employment arbitrators, a unique profession of high-skilled and high-status independent contractors who play a significant role in facilitating organizational justice. Previous research has focused on the employment relationships that independent contractors have with hiring organizations and the characteristics of individuals who become independent contractors; however, little attention has been given to how relational factors influence the career outcomes of high-skilled independent contractors or how such influences differ by gender. Building upon theories of social networks and unequal network returns (UNR), our study investigates the informal social relationships among arbitrators, the association between interpersonal relationship patterns and arbitrators’ career success, and how these associations vary based on gender.

A social network survey is used to collect the social networks, attitudes and fee information of 407 labor and employment arbitrators working in North America. A multi-level regression analysis was used to examine the proposed relationships among social networks, gender and career outcomes of the arbitrators.

We discovered that occupying a central position within advice networks is positively associated with occupational satisfaction. On the other hand, having strong ties is associated with achieving high employment arbitration fees. Notably, we found that the advantages of strong ties for arbitration fees are comparatively weak for female arbitrators relative to their male counterparts.

This research examines the relationship between social networks and career outcomes for independent contractors in the unique context of arbitrators. It further highlights inequalities experienced by female arbitrators in a male-dominated profession where their social networks offer fewer rewards relative to their male counterparts.

Social commerce (s-commerce) has gained widespread popularity as a social platform where customers engage in resource-sharing activities such as information exchange, advice-seeking and expressing their opinions on mutual interests. However, existing studies have not fully comprehended the drivers of electronic customer-to-customer interaction (eCCI) and how such behavior contributes to the customer “stick” on s-commerce sites. This study develops the Motivation–Opportunity–Ability (MOA) theory and investigates the impact of MOA factors on eCCI, which in turn affects customer stickiness.

A survey was used to acquire data from 455 valid respondents, and the research employed a combination of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and structural equation modeling.

The results revealed associations between perceived self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, tie strength with other customers, eCCI and customer stickiness.

Considering the limited availability of complete eCCI frameworks in existing scholarly works, the authors present valuable perspectives on the role of consumer characteristics as both antecedents and consequences of eCCI. Additionally, this study proposes a research agenda for the field of eCCI on s-commerce sites.

There are often relational interactions in teams that lead to and drive the spread of work engagement. Despite the potential social impacts on work engagement, such as coworker support and organizational citizenship behaviors within teams, they have rarely been studied from a social perspective using social network analysis (SNA). This review draws on the crossover model and conservation of resources theory to suggest that the effects of social diffusion and the exchange of resources can impact Well-Being, specifically work engagement, in teams and that SNA can help measure those social interactions. Linking several network concepts – closeness centrality, density, degree centrality, and tie strength – to work engagement propositions related to the spread of work engagement as well as the number and quality of network ties, this review elucidates the potential for integrating SNA methodology to the field of Well-Being for teams.

To clarify divergent conclusions on the impact of alliances on green innovation (GI), this study aims to examine the non-linear relationships between dual alliance and GI, as well as the mediation of green knowledge reconstruction (GKR) and the moderation of alliance tie strength.

Based on the theory of knowledge-based view, a moderated intermediary model is constructed by introducing GKR and alliance tie strength. The hypotheses are validated by using hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping method, with questionnaire survey data collected from 316 manufacturing firms in China.

Empirical results show that both exploratory alliance and exploitative alliance have an inverted U-shaped effect on GI, in which GKR plays a mediating role in the above relationship. Moreover, alliance tie strength weakens the intermediary role of GKR in the relationship between exploratory alliance and GI, whereas it enhances the intermediary role of GKR in the relationship between exploitative alliance and GI.

Findings reveal the non-linear effects of dual alliance on GI and clarify the inconsistent conclusions by proposing the moderated intermediary effect model. Moreover, this research reveals the mechanism of dual alliance on GI through the mediation of GKR and enriches the boundary conditions by integrating the moderating role of alliance tie strength.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused a slowdown of economic activity across the globe, which has resulted in high levels of disruption to labour markets. This study seeks to examine how the outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted the search strategies of students seeking for an internship, and whether these have changed since the start of the pandemic. The study utilises the strength of weak ties hypothesis, social capital theory and status attainment theory to explore the changes in securing a position since the outbreak of COVID-19.

This study draws on data from two cohorts of MBA students seeking to secure internships: one before the outbreak and one during. A multinomial regression is employed to examine how students have used network ties to secure internships and how this has changed since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The multinomial regression results indicate that there was little difference in the strategies employed by students before the crisis compared to those that secured them during, potentially indicating that students are unwilling to deviate from typical job search strategies, especially in times of uncertainty.

This study provides insights into how network ties are used by job seekers during a period of economic and environmental uncertainty.

In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.