Weak Ties

1 Integrationsförderung der Stadt Zürich Fachtagung Integration vom 15. Oktober 2008 Referat von Prof. Dr. Janine Dahinden Maison d'analyse des processus sociaux (MAPS), Université de Neuchâtel Die Mobilität von hochqualifizierten Fachkräften 1 Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, ich möchte meinen Vortrag gern mit der Geschichte und den Worten einer kürzlich interviewten Person beginnen. Diese Frau verkörpert gewissermassen die Thematik, die uns heute interessiert, nämlich die Einwanderung von hochqualifizierten Fachkräften. Frau Manghini stammt aus Italien, hat einen Hochschulabschluss in Kommunikationswissenschaften und arbeitet seit 2004 in Neuenburg. Warum kam sie in die Schweiz? Sie war bereits in Italien für die Firma tätig, wo deren Hauptsitz liegt. Sie hatte deshalb um eine Versetzung in die Schweiz gebeten, kam zunächst für 6 Monate und erhielt anschliessend die Möglichkeit zu bleiben. Frau Manghini ist verantwortlich für die Weiterbildung der Mitarbeitenden dieser Firma, in der Schweiz wie in ganz Europa. Sie arbeitet für ein Unternehmen, das Luxusgüter, Bijouterie, Parfums, etc. produziert. Wir haben Frau Manghini gefragt -wie auch andere in dieser spezifischen Studie -welche verschiedenen Gruppen sie in Neuenburg identifizieren würde. Wir wollten ganz einfach wissen, welches aus ihrer Sicht die marginalisierten Gruppen oder die Gruppen mit besonderer Verankerung in dieser Stadt seien. Sie antwortete: "Vraiment, je ne sais pas. Je ne connais pas ce monde. Même si je travaille dans ce monde-là. Les sociétés multi nationales, c'est autre chose que les fabriques locales. […] Je ne sais pas. Je ne connais pas Neuchâtel sur ce plan là. C'est difficile pour moi de dire quelque chose que je ne connais pas. Je ne vis pas beaucoup à Neuchâtel. Je voyage beaucoup et quand j'ai congé je rentre à Rome où j'ai mon ami ».

Este artigo debate o conceito da inevitabilidade digital no contexto da ciberguerra e está organizado em quatro partes. Os quatro temas discutidos são: o enquadramento internacional do novo tipo de guerra, a contextualização histórica do Stuxnet, os conceitos e princípios da análise de redes em ciências sociais e, por fim, a apresentação do conceito de inevitabilidade digital.
O conceito de inevitabilidade digital envolve três princípios: a força dos laços fracos, a convergência das redes na rede e o poder motivador da curiosidade como motor do comportamento humano. A análise deste conceito é feita sobre o caso real da rede de disseminação do Stuxnet, desde a sua concepção até à entrada na rede privada e segura da central nuclear de Natanz.

This article argues about the concept of digital inevitability, in the cyber war framing, and it is organised in four parts. The four topics discussed are: the new kind of war in the international context, Stuxnet’s historical context, the concepts and principles of network analysis in social sciences and the introduction of the digital inevitability concept.
The concept of digital inevitability involves three main principles: the strength of weak ties, the convergence of networks into the network and the motivating power of curiosity as a drive for human behaviour. The analysis of this concept is made on the real case of Stuxnet’s network of dissemination, since its conception until its entrance in Natanz nuclear facility’s private and secure network.

This dissertation describes and analyzes six themes that emerged during the first three years' development of Catalytic Communities, a community development organization meant to operate strictly in cyberspace, thus reaching a global audience, though legally based in the US and Brazil. I founded this organization with minimal experience and, through this dissertation, describe my learning during its pilot and maturation phase, as an idea was transformed into a viable organization, from September 2000 through December 2003.

My basic question was: what can be learned about a new type of civil society institution - the Dot Org - during its early years? The six themes that naturally surfaced, and which I then explore, fall into three broad categories: (1) those that explain its creation (the history of technology, the Brazilian reality, social network theory); (2) those that help describe what the organization came to look like (the concept of the Dot Org, the effect of the development of a physical space on the virtual organization); and (3) those that describe the management processes used to keep and develop such an organization (staff management and fundraising lessons).

Rather than attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of Catalytic Communities, I describe the results of a learning process, providing more qualitative and deep knowledge that only the protagonist in an academic function can provide. This dissertation is therefore a study of "learning by doing," for which the lessons learned are not only those referring to the six themes that surface but also those that help define a new research approach that I call Protagonist Action Research (PrAR).

Dissertation Supervisor: Seymour Mandelbaum
Title: Professor of City and Regional Planning
University of Pennsylvania

Awards:
2005 Winner of the Gill-Chin Lim Award for the Best Dissertation on International Planning.
2004 Nominee for the Barclay Gibbs Jones Award for the Best Dissertation in Planning.

Attachment theory has been extremely successful at stimulating research on the formation and quality of emotional bonds and the complex interplay between individual-level and relationship-level processes in all phases of the lifespan . In this chapter, we review and assess some of the empirical findings and propose integrative ideas concerning both normative and individual-difference aspects of personal relationships in adulthood. First, we present a theoretical model of the activation and psychodynamics of the attachment behavioral system in adulthood and describe the intrapsychic and interpersonal manifestations of the sense of attachment security and the regulatory strategies of hyperactivation and deactivation. Next, we focus on romantic relationships, the site of some of the most important emotional bonds in adulthood, and explore implications of variations in attachment-system functioning for the formation and maintenance of these relationships. Specifically, we discuss (a) the contribution of these variations to relationship quality in different stages of a romantic relationship (initiation, consolidation, and maintenance) and (b) the interpersonal processes that explain this contribution. Finally, we extend our theoretical analysis to other kinds of relationships, such as relationships within family systems, friendships, therapeutic relationships, and both intra-and intergroup relations.

When we buy our daily cup of coffee, sometimes we engage in a social interaction with the barista, and sometimes we are in a rush. Every day we have opportunities to transform potentially impersonal, instrumental exchanges into genuine social interactions, and the happiness literature suggests that we may reap benefits by doing so; in other words, treating a service provider like we would an acquaintance (i.e., weak tie) might make us happier. In the current study, people who had a social interaction with a barista (i.e., smiled, made eye contact, and had a brief conversation) experienced more positive affect than people who were as efficient as possible. Further, we found initial evidence that these effects were mediated by feelings of belonging. These results suggest that, although people are often reluctant to have a genuine social interaction with a stranger, they are happier when they treat a stranger like a weak tie.

A wide variety of networked systems in human societies are composed of repeated communications between actors. A dyadic relationship made up of repeated interactions may be reciprocal (both actors have the same probability of directing a communication attempt to the other) or non-reciprocal (one actor has a higher probability of initiating a communication attempt than other). In this paper we propose a theoretically motivated index of reciprocity appropriate for networks formed from repeated interactions based on these ...

Improvements and innovation in health service organization and delivery have become more and more important due to the gap between knowledge and practice, rising costs, medical errors, and the organization of health care systems. Since training and education is widely used to convey and distribute innovative initiatives, we examined the effect that following an intensive Teach-the-Teacher training had on the dissemination of a new structured competency-based feedback technique of assessing clinical competencies among medical specialists in the Netherlands. We compared this with the effect of the structure of the social network of medical specialists, specifically the network tie strength (strong ties versus weak ties).

The Italian community in Finland is relatively small
compared to other larger Italian communities abroad.
Despite the quantitatively restricted dimensions,
there are multiple reasons to study the phenomenon.
First of all, the two countries represent the geographical
extremes of the European Union as well as two
very diff erent realities in terms of historical, cultural
and social background. These two member states
of the EU in fact are very diff erent in terms of multiculturalism
/ multiethnicity and for their role in the
European unifi cation process. Studying the migration
fl ows between the two countries is therefore important
not only to understand the bilateral relationship
between Finland and Italy but it can also off er a more
general perspective on how the European integration
process is actually proceeding. This essay examines
the decision-making process of Italians planning to
move to Finland through a semantic analysis of the
posts (or web messages) sent to the message board
of web newsmagazine La Rondine by Italians looking
for a relocation in Finland. The collection and analysis
of the semantic universe provide the list of motivators
at the basis of Finland as chosen destination and an
outlook on how Finland is perceived by Italians. As
a conclusion of the semantic analysis on the source
material, a map on the opportunities and threats that
Italians attribute to Finland, will be drawn.

Key Words: emigration, immigration, Italy, Finland,
expectations.

In this article, we question how new technological traits can penetrate cohesive social groups and spread. Based on ethnographic narratives and following studies in sociology, the hypothesis is that not only weak ties are important for linking otherwise unconnected groups and introducing new techniques but also that expertise is required. In order to test this hypothesis, we carried out a set of field experiments in northern India where the kiln has been adopted recently. Our goal was to measure the degree of expertise of the potters distributed between early and late adopters of the kiln. Our results are discussed in the light of oral interviews. Our conclusions suggest that expertise is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for weak ties to act as bridges and thereby for new techniques to spread. As an example, they explain how turntables could have been adopted by potters from the northern Levant during the third millennium BC.

Recent years have witnessed the return of individuals of Indian or Chinese origin from developed markets to their home countries to start new ventures. Returnee Entrepreneurs (REs) facilitate both direct technology transfer and indirect technology spillovers to local firms, thus contributing to the technological development of emerging economies. Much previous work is based on the integration of ethnic entrepreneurs in their host countries or business activities of transnational entrepreneurs that traverse their host and home countries. This study explores the role of social ties in venture creation by REs. Based on twenty case studies in India, the findings show that (1) local ties are indispensable for venture creation, and (2) the heterogeneity in the way REs leverage social ties across the host and home countries is contingent on the location of their intention to start up and generation of idea for their venture. The implications of these findings are discussed. ß

This paper examines the organizational structure and operations of Taiwanese organized crime and youth gangs in Southern California. In-depth interviews were used as the principle method of research. In contrast to transnational criminal conspiracy claims and the La Cosa Nostra model of vertically integrated organizations, our findings suggest that these criminal groups consist of discrete local Taiwanese youth gangs which operate as largely independent economic units that show no substantive and operational ties to criminal organizations in Taiwan. The formation of Taiwanese criminal organizations and gangs in Southern California is primarily governed by the availability of financial opportunities. Furthermore, both the inter-gang relations and intra-gang structures exhibit a distinct form of contractor arrangement which consists of market-like weak ties that are simultaneously circumscribed by the criminal embeddedness. We argue that that these economic weak ties, which seem to render conventionally understood criminal organizational boundaries administratively less meaningful, still function as an operationally significant governance mechanism of the organizational structures of American Taiwanese youth gangs. In addition, the paper discusses the implications that the embeddedness has on the somewhat paradoxical and incoherent organizational structure.

This study examines whether the Internet is increasingly a part of everyday neighborhood interactions, and in what specific contexts Internet use affords the formation of local social ties. Studies of Internet and community have found that information and communication technologies provide new opportunities for social interaction, but that they may also increase privatism by isolating people in their homes. This paper argues that while the Internet may encourage communication across great distances, it may also facilitate interactions near the home. Unlike traditional community networking studies, which focus on bridging the digital divide, this study focuses on bridging the divide between the electronic and parochial realms. Detailed, longitudinal social network surveys were completed with the residents of four contrasting neighborhoods over a period of three years. Three of the four neighborhoods were provided with a neighborhood email discussion list and a neighborhood website. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to model over time the number of strong and weak ties, emailed, met in-person, and talked to on the telephone. The neighborhood email lists were also analyzed for content. The results suggest that with experience using the Internet, the size of local social networks and email communication with local networks increases. The addition of a neighborhood email list further increases the number of weak neighborhood ties, but does not increase communication multiplexity. However, neighborhood effects reduce the influence of everyday Internet use, as well as the experimental intervention, in communities that lack the context to support local tie formation.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to offer agent-based modelling (ABM) as an alternative approach to advance research in entrepreneurship. It argues that ABM allows entrepreneurship researchers (i.e. the designers) to find better ways in generating entrepreneurial outcomes by understanding alternative histories and examining a plausible future.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper begins with an overview of ABM, and discusses the shared conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship and ABM as the motives for the adoption of ABM as an appropriate methodology to study entrepreneurship. It offers a roadmap in using ABM approach for entrepreneurship research and illustrates this using a contemporary research question in entrepreneurship: the study of success/failure in business venturing.

Findings – This paper suggests the shared foundations between ABM and entrepreneurship as the basis for bringing the methodology and research domain closer. It offers a roadmap for advancing entrepreneurship research using agent-based simulation approach and explains the contribution of ABM to further advance entrepreneurship research.

Originality/value – This paper addresses the methodological gap in entrepreneurship research and develops the argument for a wider adoption of ABM simulation approach to study entrepreneurship. It bridges the gap by examining the possibility of formalizing entrepreneurship processes by grounding an agent-based model on empirical facts and generally-accepted foundations of entrepreneurship. It offers a contribution to the literature by showing that ABM is a useful and appropriate methodological approach for entrepreneurship research in addition to the conventional variance and process approach.

This case study explores the entangled history of the constructivist network in the course of the 1920s and 1930s in light of the interpersonal relationships between some of its representatives. In order to analyse the evolution and influence of such relationships on the functioning of the network, I present data and details of two seemingly distant areas, namely Poland and the Low Countries, and of the dynamics between chosen members of Polish, Dutch and Belgian avant-garde formations such as Zwrotnica, Blok, Praesens, De Stijl, Het Overzicht and Cercle et Carré. Based on tangible traces of direct and indirect relationships left in avant-garde magazines and private correspondence between the artists, I describe how particular ties were formed, maintained and terminated, and how they influenced the exchange between the analysed nodes. This analysis is partially based on Granovetter’s renown theory of ‘strong and weak ties’, which examined the nature of interpersonal connections within and between given circles of individuals, with specific focus on the so-called ‘marginal’ individuals, particularly relevant for the description of avant-garde artists and their formations.

The technology acceptance model (TAM) has been widely used to study user acceptance of new computer technologies. However, it does not incorporate social structure and influence as a significant factor. In this study, we ask the following questions: (i) What are the limitations of the existing TAM for studying virtual community? (ii) What is effect of social networks on user acceptance of technology for virtual community? and (iii) How can the influence of different types of social ties serve as a basis for exploring the user acceptance of technology in a virtual community? Here, we explore the possibility for extending TAM to incorporate the influence of the different types of social ties as a new theoretical construct. Preliminary analysis of data from a virtual community results show that weak and strong ties influence technology acceptance. The findings enable HCI researchers to account for influence of social ties in future investigations using TAM.

Le fait de s'identifier aux personnages est souvent avancé pour expliquer le plaisir et l'intérêt pris à suivre une série télévisée. Ce terme a pourtant une histoire si longue et un sens si peu clair du point de vue de la théorie cinématographique que plusieurs philosophes analytiques du cinéma préféreraient que l'on s'en passe. L'exposé entend présenter certaines de leurs raisons en introduisant une sorte de paradoxe de l'attachement aux personnages fictifs, avant de dénoncer les présupposés de cette approche analytique en lui opposant la démarche post-analytique de Stanley Cavell et en réhabilitant la notion d'identification aux personnages. Les exemples seront tirés de quelques séries reconnues à la fois d'un point de vue populaire et critique, à savoir The Sopranos (D. Chase, HBO, 1999-2007), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon, Fox, 1997-2003), Dexter (James Manos Jr., Showtime, 2006-2013) et The Walking Dead (R. Kirkman, AMC, 2010-).

To elucidate the significance of the creative economy and its diffusion into “creative” suburbs and exurbs across the globe, this literature review examines the academic discourse related to creative capital theory, the latest addition to the “toolkit for urban innovators” (Landry 2000). It investigates the broader developer’s trinity to understand the manifold uses of “capital” and includes critiques and ethnographies. In doing so, the review reasserts the vital role of anthropologists vis-à-vis other social science disciplines within the “development-lite” of the creative economy in advanced capitalism.

This article considers four major movements which the author believes would have an impact on the future of pricing and revenue models. First, the inclusion of the customer and other
stakeholders for value co-creation would have an impact on pricing. Second, value in future services would reside within a complex service system with multiple stakeholders gaining and contributing to the system and pricing models would need to evolve to incorporate systems thinking. Third, future payments will be payment for rights, rather than in exchange for ownership and finally, an understanding of the context of use and the
way services and goods are used in combination within the context would lead to new mechanisms for pricing, bundling and new revenue opportunities.

En este trabajo presentamos algunos resultados de nuestra investigación doctoral, dedicada al análisis de los procesos de génesis, circulación y recepción del documento del episcopado católico argentino Iglesia y comunidad nacional (1981). Para ello hemos articulado los aportes de dos campos disciplinares: a) la sociología de redes: que nos permitió explorar los actores, grupos e instituciones que participaron tanto en la producción como en la recepción del texto; b) la crítica genética: que nos proveyó de herramientas para dar cuenta del proceso de redacción a partir de la evidencia textual de cinco etapas redaccionales. El problema teórico que abordamos es el de las relaciones entre génesis textual y recepción discursiva. Para ello formulamos un interrogante de tipo práctico: ¿Qué continuidades se puede establecer entre las opciones descartadas durante el proceso de redacción de Iglesia y comunidad nacional y los efectos de reconocimiento producidos en diferentes actores provenientes de redes diversas?

The potential of a Networked Learning (NL) space comes into being when participants establish communication, build connections among each other, and create a dialogic space. Moving from this premise, this article poses a complex question: How to design for the materialization of a NL space? It bases its theoretical framework on Bakhtin's idea of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the concepts of network core and periphery, as well as the idea of the strength of weak ties. Through these lenses, the article presents a cross-case analysis of two projects aiming at technology education in Denmark. Forces, connections, and movements are exposed and analyzed, showing the importance of unstructured communication processes that nurture a networked community. These results lead to new speculations for future educational design of NL spaces.

Der Prozess der Globalisierung stellt auch eine Internationalisierung unserer Lebenswelt dar, bei der soziale Beziehungen nicht mehr durch den geographischen Ort an sich determiniert sind, sondern sich über wachsende Distanzen erstrecken. Die vorliegende Thesis untersucht, wie sich soziale Beziehungen in der Distanz zueinander gestalten und welche Eigenheiten und Qualitäten der sozialen Interaktion und des Miteinanders sich daraus ergeben. Eine ethnographische Untersuchung der Fernbeziehungen ehemaliger Teilnehmer der Jugendsprachkurse des Goethe-Instituts führt die Erhaltung ihrer sozialen Beziehungen basierend auf den subjektiven Sichtweisen der Teilnehmer aus. Daraus resultierend werden allgemeine Erklärungen, Deutungsansätze und mögliche Typen sozialer Beziehungen in der Distanz herausgearbeitet. Diese verdeutlichen insbesondere Motive hoher Emotionalität, Verbundenheit sowie der Akkumulation sozialen und kulturellen Kapitals.

The vulnerability of those aging out of residential and foster care has become widely recognised in recent years. Much attention has been given to the structural measures required to buffer care-leavers from this vulnerability. However, the resilience of care-leavers is less well documented. This paper draws on data from those who have left the residential care of Girls and Boys Town in South Africa. Using grounded theory research, four social processes in which young men engage emerge. These include Striving for authentic belonging, Networking people for goal attainment, Contextual responsiveness and Building hopeful and tenacious self-confidence. This paper provides a brief overview of all four processes, followed by closer attention to the ways in which the study participants interact with their social environment to increase their resilience. The importance of addressing resilience at the interface between people and their environments, thus an ecological perspective, is emphasised.

Current literature argues that firms should have strong ties to customers to benefit from increased customer retention and loyalty. Strong ties, however, have also shown to prevent innovation, suggesting that firms should also develop weak ties to other customer groups. This paper focuses on the potential for strong ties to facilitate, rather than prohibit, innovation. It is based in a 7-year longitudinal research project with Adidas, a global sporting goods company. From the case, we find that the paradox of tie strength results from an overly simplified view of the nature of company–customer relationships. Contrary to the established literature, we find that strong ties in the Adidas case supported significant innovation. In fact, the involvement resulted in the development of a new product with a radically different product architecture and led to one of the most successful product launches in the company's history. To explain these findings, we introduce the nature of customer participation in a firm's value creation processes as a new dimension of the constitution of firm–customer ties and discuss how such a kind of relationship can develop.

The purpose of the study was to analyze networked expertise, i.e., expertise that arises from social interaction, knowledge sharing, and collective learning within a communi-ty of professionals. We examined patterns of knowledge sharing and distribution within and between teams of 120 workers at a Finnish telecommunication company by applying social network analysis and interviewing key actors. Networking practices between the participants were studied by examining to what extent persons provided pieces of advice and new information to each other or engaged in informal interaction or mutual collaboration. The perspective is enriched by interviews that are focused on key actors, e.g., frequently asked team members traced by social network techniques.
The results of the study indicated that the teams varied in terms of cognitive centrality (e.g., producing high versus low amount of knowledge for the other teams) and densi-ty of internal interaction (loosely coupled versus intensively interacting teams). The interviews of team leaders and key actors provided rich descriptions of collective learning and, simultaneously, indicated that there was a close association between networking practices of a team and the way the team members themselves understood their team's mission. Both strong and mutual links and a great number of (weak) ex-change ties among the professionals indicate their complementary strengths as medi-ating knowledge in an organizational context.

Línea de investigación: Procesos políticos, representación y democracia Seminario de tesis: Procesos de sociología política: representación, gobernanza y control social Ciudad de México, agosto de 2020 Esta maestría fue realizada gracias a una beca otorgada por el Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt, México).

The paper represents a modest attempt to conceptualise the threefold problem situated at the intersection of the several research fields such as corruption, social capital and the information society. These studies or discourses are the main source for the critical agenda and preliminary analysis of the phenomenon of the informal networking in the Internet era. The most likely continuation of this analysis should be the evaluation of the recent technological development and its logic affecting the nature of interpersonal and inter-group connections, social ties and networking. The paper represents initial reflections on the topic as a part of a theoretical and analytical framework for further studies.

The tele-cocooning hypothesis posits that mobile communication increases interaction with communication rich ties, while simultaneously weakening interaction with communication weak ties. In this study, we demonstrate how smartphones can be used to mitigate tele-cocooning behavior by stimulating interaction with communication weak ties. Using a smartphone application to collect non-identifying mobile communication log data, we conducted a field experiment with 193 Japanese participants. The treatment consisted of onscreen reminders designed to stimulate interaction with communication weak ties. The results indicate that the treatment promoted the activation of communication weak ties and the acquisition of information through those ties, suggesting that smartphones can be utilized to promote access to social capital. Mobile communication can facilitate increased interactions with homogenous bonding ties, which decreases feelings of loneliness and provides emotional support (e.g., Hampton, Sessions, & Her, 2012). However, this increased communication with bonding ties may come at the expense of interaction with weaker ties, with whom interaction tends to be less frequent and intimate (

This article examines the reactivation of dormant ties in Japan and the United States. Using the institutional approach to culture developed by Yamagishi et al., it is hypothesized that respondents living in Japan will be less likely to reconnect with dormant ties when prompted than respondents living in the United States. It is further hypothesized that interaction with kin and work ties will help to explain lower levels of reconnection in Japan than in the United States. To examine these hypotheses, we developed a field experiment in which 95 adults living in Japan and 68 adults living in the United States were prompted by a smartphone application to reconnect with dormant ties. The results of this study show strong support for the hypothesis that respondents living in Japan are less likely to reconnect with dormant ties than respondents living in the United States when prompted. There is also mixed support for the hypothesis that interaction with kin and work ties helps to explain lower levels of reconnection in Japan than in the United States.

The move towards offering Product-Service Systems (PSS) requires the involvement of stakeholders from different companies, possessing knowledge about the different product lifecycle phases. This setting poses unique challenges for traditional product manufacturers, which need to rearrange transaction-based relationships into long-term relationships of co-development. Knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries is, therefore, considered as a key enabler for the development of profitable PSS. The paper is based on ...

This thesis takes an individual-based approach on the role of social space and social network structure on the diffusion of linguistic innovation, a process that facilitates language change and variation. An agent-based model (ABM) that generates random graphs of interconnected collectives was devised to evaluate the effects of individual and collective variables on innovation adoption time. Significant findings include the phenomenon that individuals with relatively low degree ties (first through fourth) to the source of an innovation tend to adopt innovations much more quickly when they have a larger amount of weak ties. This supports J. Milroy‘s (1992) notion of a speaker-innovator—a fringe member of a collective characterized by a relatively large number of weak ties. This notion is based on Granovetter‘s (1973, 1982) ―strength of weak ties‖ theory, which asserts that it is through weak ties that innovations travel beyond the innovator‘s local network to external networks. However, the model is not without weakness and several ways in which the model may be extended are provided.

Drawing on nationally representative survey data, this article examines the implications of Internet use and online communication for strong and weak ties in Americans’ social networks. In line with the existing literature, this research shows that frequent Internet use and online communication are associated with a larger core discussion network and a more extensive position-generated network. More importantly, this research provides a finer tuned analysis by disaggregating the overall network into strong and weak ties. First, Internet use—but not online communication—is positively related to weak-tie based network extensity in the position-generated networks. Second, Internet use and online communication are positively related to the number and the proportion of strong ties in Americans' core discussion networks. These results help reconcile some of the conflicting findings and interpretations based on different …

The purpose of this study was to investigate where Japanese firms have invested, what kind of business activity profiles have developed, and to determine the different types of business activities by structural characteristics of investment. The business activities of 3,089 Japanese affiliated firms in each of 167 regions were analysed. Combinations were identified on the mix of manufacturing, research and service components. Regions were classified with five types based on their business activity profiles: two types were dominated by service activities, two by advanced manufacturing and one by manufacturing activities. In contrast to previous research, the importance of services and manufacturing are identified and their interrelationships with other Japanese business activities such as research and development are clarified. Service regions tend to be dominant in central locations in individual countries, whereas manufacturing regions are more dispersed.

This article proposes updated approaches to 2 key areas of communication research: diffusion of innovations and fragmentation modeling. Exploring a possible gap in node modeling may provide insights for updated approaches to these and other areas of communication research. A case is made here for further research into the implications digitized communication technologies and platforms and their users have on the explanatory and predictive nature of traditional diffusion as well as their impact on social networks bound by strong and weak ties. Against the backdrops of network theory—particularly strong and weak ties—and a related fragmentation model, this article urges scholarly exploration of updated network behaviors and their possible influence on at least one related area of communication research.

Community structure is an important feature in many real-world networks. Many methods and algorithms for identifying communities have been proposed and have attracted great attention in recent years. In this paper, we present a new approach for discovering the community structure in networks. The novelty is that the algorithm uses the strength of the ties for sorting out nodes into communities. More specifically, we use the principle of weak ties hypothesis to determine to what community the node belongs. The advantages of this method are its simplicity, accuracy, and low computational cost. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm both on real-world networks and on benchmark graphs. We also show that the distribution of link strength can give a general view of the basic structure information of graphs.

The only constant in our world is that things change. Today's society is changing faster than ever, from civil rights to social media, from education to the environment. But why does it happen? How does an idea, a person, or a belief transform society? This course explores those questions. When we think change "just happens,” we are passive observers, surprised (or dismayed) at the changes around us but powerless to respond. But, if we grasp the what, why, who, and how of change, if we understand change as a process that people create, together, we are empowered to impact our communities as informed advocates for a different (and hopefully better) world.

Information and communication technology, ICT, has introduced new styles of working. Based on ICT, these styles have a strong virtual flavour, ranging from flexwork, hot-desking and telework to virtual teams and virtual organizations. The virtuality of the styles has impacts on how employees within an organization perform their task and how they interact with colleagues, clients and supervisors, but the

This paper deals with the issue of the relationship between social capital and "weak ties" in the poor communities' context. I suggest that the concept of social capital refers to the interaction density within a community; as such it must be seen as a collective property (J. Coleman 1990). On the other hand, weak ties can be defined as connections between the poor community and the institutional actors as local public agencies, politicians and altruistic NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations). These connections (weak ties) relating the community with the public local agencies may be of two kinds: the first one is the connection made by the civic associations coming from the community. In this case, it is clear that there is a stock of social capital being used; the second one, are the connections (weak ties) articulated by "rent-seeking" leaderships or politicians, through patron-client ties, looking for winning, for example, elections. In this case we think that there is no social capital in action, but individual social capital that is being used for providing collective goods or public benefits to poor communities. The research's methodology is mainly a qualitative one, but we also work with some descriptive quantitative data.

The recent literature on "complex contagions" challenges Granovetter's classic hypothesis on the strength of weak ties and argues that, when the actors' choice requires reinforcement from several sources, it is the structure of strong ties that really matters to sustain rapid and wide diffusion. The paper contributes to this debate by reporting on a small-N study that relies on a unique combination of ethnographic data, social network analysis, and computational models. In particular, we investigate two rural populations of Indian and Kenyan potters who have to decide whether adopting new, objectively more efficient and economically more attractive, technical/stylistic options. Qualitative field data show that religious sub-communities within the Indian and Kenyan populations exhibit markedly different diffusion rates and speed over the last thirty years. To account for these differences, we first analyze empirically observed kinship networks and advice networks, and, then, we recreate the actual aggregate diffusion curves through a series of empirically-calibrated agent-based simulations. Combining the two methods, we show that, while single exposure through heterophilious weak ties were sufficient to initiate the diffusion process, large bridges made of strong ties can in fact lead to faster or slower diffusion depending on the type of signals circulating in the network. We conclude that, even in presence of "complex contagions", dense local ties cannot be regarded as a sufficient condition for faster diffusion.

The move towards offering Product-Service Systems (PSS) requires the involvement of stakeholders from different companies, possessing knowledge about the different product lifecycle phases. This setting poses unique challenges for traditional product manufacturers, which need to rearrange transaction-based relationships into long-term relationships of co-development. Knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries is, therefore, considered as a key enabler for the development of profitable PSS. The paper is based on ...