Social media treats all users the same: trusted friend or total stranger, with little or nothing in between. In reality, relationships fall everywhere along this spectrum, a topic social science has investigated for decades under the theme of tie strength. Our work bridges this gap between theory and practice. In this paper, we present a predictive model that maps social media data to tie strength. The model builds on a dataset of over 2,000 social media ties and performs quite well, distinguishing between strong and weak ties with over 85 % accuracy. We complement these quantitative findings with interviews that unpack the relationships we could not predict. The paper concludes by illustrating how modeling tie strength can improve social media design elements, including privacy controls, message routing, friend introductions and information prioritization. Author Keywords Social media, social networks, relationship modeling, ties,

This paper argues that the value of external knowledge sharing increases when work groups are more structurally diverse. A structurally diverse work group is one in which the members, by virtue of their different organizational affiliations, roles, or positions, can expose the group to unique sources of knowledge. It is hypothesized that if members of structurally diverse work groups engage in external knowledge sharing, their performance will improve because of this active exchange of knowledge through unique external sources. A field study of 182 work groups in a Fortune 500 telecommunications firm operationalizes structural diversity as member differences in geographic locations, functional assignments, reporting managers, and business units, as indicated by corporate database records. External knowledge sharing was measured with group member surveys and performance was assessed using senior executive ratings. Ordered logit analyses showed that external knowledge sharing was more strongly associated with performance when work groups were more structurally diverse. Implications for theory and practice around the integration of work groups and social networks are addressed

In this paper, we review and analyze the emerging network paradigm in organizational research. We begin with a conventional review of recent research organized around recognized research streams. Next, we analyze this research, developing a set of dimensions along which network studies vary, including direction of causality, levels of analysis, explanatory goals, and explanatory mechanisms. We use the latter two dimensions to construct a 2-by-2 table cross-classifying studies of network consequences into four canonical types: structural social capital, social access to resources, contagion, and environmental shaping. We note the rise in popularity of studies with a greater sense of agency than was traditional in network research.

Scientific and engineering research increasingly involves multidisciplinary collaboration, sometimes across multiple organizations. Technological advances have made such crossboundary projects possible, yet they can carry high coordination costs. This study investigated scientific collaboration across disciplinary and university boundaries to understand the need for coordination in these collaborations and how different levels of coordination predicted success. We conducted a study of 62 scientific collaborations supported by a program of the United States National Science Foundation in 1998 and 1999. Projects with principal investigators (PIs) in more disciplines reported as many positive outcomes as did projects involving fewer disciplines. By contrast, multi-university, rather than multidisciplinary, projects were problematic. Projects with PIs from more universities were significantly less well coordinated and reported fewer positive outcomes than projects with PIs from fewer unive...

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 strong support in each of the three companies surveyed. First, the link between strong ties and receipt of useful knowledge (as reported by the knowledge seeker) was mediated by competence- and benevolence-based trust. Second, once we controlled for these two trust dimensions, the structural benefit of weak ties became visible. This latter finding is consistent with prior research suggesting that weak ties provide access to non-redundant information. Third, we found that competence-based trust was especially important for the receipt of tacit knowledge. We discuss implications for theory and practice. 2

similarities may be useful for some purposes (see Frost & King, 2001 [chapter 1]), but abstractions may present problems in actually accomplishing collaborative work. Second, the natural tendency to establish local territories may interfere with co-workers' identification with the larger collective, such as the distributed project group. Ambiguity of membership reduces group identity (Brown & Wade, 1987; see also Armstrong and Cole, 2001 [chapter 7]). Effects of Spontaneous Communication Distances between offices and work locations possibly have their highest impact on group functioning through their effect on informal, spontaneous communication opportunities (Brockner & Swap, 1976; Ebbesen, Kjos, & Konecni, 1976, Hays, 1985; Kraut & Streeter, 1995; Newcomb, 1981). That is, people who work in proximate offices run into one another at the water cooler, coffee machine, and copier. They see one another come and go to meetings. They meet in the lunch room. These casual encounters increase ...

Research in organizational learning has demonstrated processes and occasionally performance implications of acquisition of declarative (know-what) and procedural (know-how) knowledge. However, considerably less attention has been paid to learned characteristics of relationships that affect the decision to seek information from other people. Based on a review of the social network, information processing, and organizational learning literatures, along with the results of a previous qualitative study, we propose a formal model of information seeking in which the probability of seeking information from another person is a function of (1) knowing what that person knows; (2) valuing what that person knows; (3) being able to gain timely access to that person’s thinking; and (4) perceiving that seeking information from that person would not be too costly. We also hypothesize that the knowing, access, and cost variables mediate the relationship between physical proximity and information seeking. The model is tested using two separate research sites to provide replication. The results indicate strong support for the model and the mediation hypothesis (with the exception of the cost variable). Implications are drawn for the study of both transactive memory and organizational learning, as well as for management practice.

Because of the increasing interests on knowledge management (KM), various researches have been accomplished. Many conceptual research frameworks have been proposed and thus empirical researches are required to provide practical benefits. However, most current empirical researches have dealt with the relationship of knowledge management enablers, processes or performance in isolation. Accordingly, an integrated view of knowledge management is missing and thus how to perform knowledge management to improve organizational performance is not clear. In order to alleviate these limitations of the previous researches, this study analyzes the current research frameworks and finds their relationships. An integrated research model is built by incorporating knowledge management processes into organizational performance. The model is tested empirically to investigate the relationship between knowledge management processes and enablers such as organizational structure, culture, and information technologies. The correlation between knowledge management processes and organizational creativity is also identified. Both non-financial and financial performance measures are adopted to measure the impact of knowledge management. The findings of this study imply that knowledge management processes are significant predictors for

Virtual teams are becoming apreferred mechanism for harnessing, integrating, and applying knowledge that is distributed across organizations and in pockets of collaborative networks. In this article we recognize that knowledge application, among the three phases of knowledgemanagement,hasreceivedlittleresearchattention. Paradoxically, this phase contributes most to value creation. Extending communication theory, we identify four challenges to knowledge integration in virtual team environments: constraints on transactive memory, insufficient mutual understanding, failure in sharing and retaining contextual knowledge, and inflexibilityoforganizationalties.Wethenproposeknowledge management system (KMS) approaches to meet these challenges. Finally, we identify promising avenues for future research in this area.

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