Collaborative Preference: The Role of Homophily, Multiplexity, and Advantageous Network Position across Small and Medium-sized Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to examine collaboration between individuals across organizations. While both for profit and not-for-profit organizations utilize collaborative efforts, the factors that are important for bringing individuals and businesses together for collaboration still remain somewhat unresolved. In this paper, colleague similarity, the quality of pre-existing relationships, and the relative power of the other colleague are all examined for their correlation with the desirability of collaboration with that individual. In a study of pastors of small and medium sized churches in a southwestern protestant conference, we examined these areas through the lenses of homophily theory, multiplicity theories, and network positioning theories and found support for each of our hypotheses. Implications for management as well as future research directions are also presented.