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The world is not small for everyone / Jasjit Singh in Management science, Vol. 56 N° 9 (Septembre 2010) 

Public ISBD [article]  in Management science > Vol. 56 N° 9 (Septembre 2010) . - pp. 1415-1438 Titre : The world is not small for everyone : Inequity in searching for knowledge in organizations Type de document : texte imprimé Auteurs : Jasjit Singh, Auteur ; Morten T. Hansen, Auteur ; Joel M. Podolny, Auteur Année de publication : 2010 Article en page(s) : pp. 1415-1438 Note générale : Management Langues : Anglais (eng) Mots-clés : Social  networks  Small  world  Search  Homophily  Knowledge  sharing  Inequity  Gender  Tenure  Status Index. décimale : 658 Organisation des entreprises. Techniques du commerce Résumé : We explore why some employees may be at a disadvantage in searching for information in organizations. The "small-world" argument in social network theory emphasizes that people are, on average, only a few connections away from the information they seek. However, we argue that such a network structure does not benefit everyone: some employees may have longer search paths in locating knowledge in an organization—their world may be large. We theorize that this disadvantage is the result of more than just an inferior network position. Instead, two mechanisms—periphery status and homophily—jointly operate to aggravate the inefficiency of search for knowledge. Employees who belong to the periphery of an organization because of their minority gender status, lower tenure, or poor connectedness have limited awareness of who knows what and a lower ability to seek help from others best suited to guide the search. When they start a search chain, they are likely to engage in homophilous search by contacting colleagues like themselves, thus contacting others who also belong to the periphery. To search effectively, employees on the periphery need to engage in heterophilous search behaviors by crossing social boundaries. We find support for these arguments in a network field experiment consisting of 381 unfolding search chains in a large multinational professional services firm. The framework helps explain employees' unequal access to the knowledge they seek, a poorly understood yet important type of organizational inequity in an information economy. DEWEY : 658 ISSN : 0025-1909 En ligne : http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/9/1415 [article] The world is not small for everyone : Inequity in searching for knowledge in organizations [texte imprimé] / Jasjit Singh, Auteur ; Morten T. Hansen, Auteur ; Joel M. Podolny, Auteur . - 2010 . - pp. 1415-1438. Management Langues : Anglais (eng) in Management science > Vol. 56 N° 9 (Septembre 2010) . - pp. 1415-1438 Mots-clés : Social  networks  Small  world  Search  Homophily  Knowledge  sharing  Inequity  Gender  Tenure  Status Index. décimale : 658 Organisation des entreprises. Techniques du commerce Résumé : We explore why some employees may be at a disadvantage in searching for information in organizations. The "small-world" argument in social network theory emphasizes that people are, on average, only a few connections away from the information they seek. However, we argue that such a network structure does not benefit everyone: some employees may have longer search paths in locating knowledge in an organization—their world may be large. We theorize that this disadvantage is the result of more than just an inferior network position. Instead, two mechanisms—periphery status and homophily—jointly operate to aggravate the inefficiency of search for knowledge. Employees who belong to the periphery of an organization because of their minority gender status, lower tenure, or poor connectedness have limited awareness of who knows what and a lower ability to seek help from others best suited to guide the search. When they start a search chain, they are likely to engage in homophilous search by contacting colleagues like themselves, thus contacting others who also belong to the periphery. To search effectively, employees on the periphery need to engage in heterophilous search behaviors by crossing social boundaries. We find support for these arguments in a network field experiment consisting of 381 unfolding search chains in a large multinational professional services firm. The framework helps explain employees' unequal access to the knowledge they seek, a poorly understood yet important type of organizational inequity in an information economy. DEWEY : 658 ISSN : 0025-1909 En ligne : http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/9/1415