Prior network-based research on open source software (OSS) development has focused on the benefit of network ties and assumed all network ties play the same role. We adopt a fine-grained view of network relations to investigate the impact of network ties on the success of OSS development. Through examining the development of OSS projects hosted by SourceForge, we find that co-membership among p...

While most advocate that foreign firms should utilize managerial ties to conduct business in China, recent literature cautions that such ties may offer only conditional value. This study examines three sources of heterogeneity that may condition the value of ties: firm ownership (foreign vs. domestic), competition, and structural uncertainty. Results from a survey of 280 firms in China indicate...

This article examines the role of migrant social networks in international migration and extends prior research by testing the strength of tie theory, decomposing networks by sources and resources, and disentangling network effects from complementary explanations. Nearly all previous empirical research has ignored friendship ties and has largely neglected extended-family ties. Using longitudina...

In Asian nations, family ties are considered important. However, it is not clear what happens among older people with no such ties. To investigate the association, we used longitudinal data from the Aichi Gerontological Evaluation Study (AGES) project. Functionally independent older people at baseline (N = 14,088) in 10 municipalities were followed from 2003 to 2013. Social ties were assessed b...

We use a sample of publicly available data on Twitter to study networks of mostly weak asymmetric ties. We show that a substantial share of ties lie within the same metropolitan region. As we examine ties between regional clusters, we find that distance, national borders and the difference in languages all affect the pattern of ties. However, Twitter connections show the more substantial correl...