Ties, Weak Or Strong

Networks: A Very Short Introduction

Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012

Caldarelli, Guido and Catanzaro, Michele

Word of mouth is a common way to obtain information about white-collar job openings. So if we are" looking for this kind of job, it is a good idea to spread the word between friends and relatives. Less obviously, it may be even better to inform distant acquaintances and people we do not see often. This is what Mark Granovetter suggested in 1973. This sociologist interviewed a sample of professionals in a Boston suburb who had recently relied on personal contacts to obtain their jobs. He asked them how often they saw the person before obtaining the job. The majority reported 'occasionally' and a significant fraction answered 'rarely'. Job offers are more likely to come from old college friends, past workmates, and previous employers, than from close friends. Chance or mutual friends were the channels by which these connections were rediscovered. Granovetter described this phenomenon as the strength of weak ties. 

He explained this result by depicting the circle of acquaintances of a hypothetical individual called Ego. Ego lives every day with his family and some close friends. Probably all these persons are also in close contact with each other. As a result, information travels fast in the group. So Ego is likely aware of all the news available in the group. On the contrary, weak ties connect him to faraway people. These individuals are not bounded by Ego's social surroundings. Therefore they open a whole set of new groups to him, each of them encapsulating information otherwise inaccessible. Missing the opportunity of weak ties causes difficulties in organizations, companies, or institutions. Information and skills become trapped in one group, without reaching those who need them. So these things have to be reinvented or paid for from outside things have to be reinvented or paid for from outside consultants. A former CEO of HP is reported to have lamented: 'If HP only knew what HP knows!  developed into the theory of social capital. This idea implies that the contacts of one person (and the contacts of these contacts) enable him or her to access resources that ultimately provide such things as better jobs and faster promotions. More generally, the position of an individual in his or her social network is crucial to determine future opportunities, constraints, outcomes, etc."  page 30

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I was going to write a brief review about this book. This is all I wanted to say:  Patrick Doreian's Review on the book