Goldenberg, Libai & Muller (2001) achieved two outcomes: empirical support for a fundamental theory of communications, known as the “strength of weak ties” (Granovetter 1973), and an explication of small-worlds simulations in marketing. Where Goldenberg et al found that weak-ties had as much or more effect on information dissemination than did strong ties, a near-exact replication, reported in ...

Background : Controlling global epidemics in the real world and accelerating information propagation in the artificial world are of great significance, which have activated an upsurge in the studies on networked spreading dynamics. Lots of efforts have been made to understand the impacts of macroscopic statistics (e.g., degree distribution and average distance) and mesoscopic structures (e.g., ...

Recent research suggests that people obtain useful knowledge from others with whom they work closely and frequently (i.e., strong ties). Yet there has been limited empirical work examining why this is so. Moreover, other research suggests that weak ties provide useful knowledge. To help integrate these multiple findings, we propose and test a model of two-party (dyadic) knowledge exchange, with...

Theoretical approaches as well as empirical results in the area of social capital accumulation on social networking sites suggest that weak ties/bridging versus strong ties/bonding social capital should be distinguished and that while bonding social capital is connected to emotional support, bridging social capital entails the provision of information. Additionally, recent studies imply the not...

This paper employs comparative longitudinal case study research to investigate why and how strong dyadic interfirm ties and two alternative network architectures (a ‘strong ties network’ and a ‘dual network’) impact the innovative capability of the lead firm in an alliance network. I answer these intrinsically cross-level research questions by examining how three design-intensive furnishings ma...

Based on more than 14 months' ethnographic research in China, this article brings in culture and symbolic interactionism to understand the social embeddedness of economic transactions. First, an analytic frame linking tie strengths to defining principles, relational properties, and interactions is constructed and applied to changes in life insurance transactions in China. The data suggest that ...