SLIDE 1
Law of Propinquity
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 20 40 60 80 100
Distance (meters) Prob of Daily Communication
Gender
Sharing Confidential Matters:
1515 970 Female 748 1245 Male Female Male
Law of Propinquity 0.4 Prob of Daily Communication 0.3 0.2 0.1 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Law of Propinquity 0.4 Prob of Daily Communication 0.3 0.2 0.1 - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Law of Propinquity 0.4 Prob of Daily Communication 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0 20 40 60 80 100 Distance (meters) Gender Sharing Confidential Matters: Male Female Male 1245 748 Female 970 1515 Race Race White Black Hispanic Other
SLIDE 2
SLIDE 3
Race
34 3 5 21 Other 1 120 6 66 Hispanic 3 4 283 40 Black 20 30 29 3806 White Other Hispanic Black White Race
SLIDE 4
Religion
37 4 1 11 27 Other 14 131 12 66 92 None 1 5 68 7 13 Jewish 13 41 24 790 241 Catholic 30 83 22 305 2129 Protestant Other None Jewish Catholic Protestant Religion
SLIDE 5
Age
387 212 138 127 34 60 + 108 210 121 100 84 50 - 59 70 84 246 170 88 40 - 49 106 128 171 501 191 30 - 39 56 155 183 186 567 < 30 60 + 50 - 59 40 - 49 30 - 39 < 30 Age
SLIDE 6
Kinds of Homophily
- Choice-based
– Preference for one’s own kind
- Opportunistic
– Can only interact with those that are available for interaction – Demography – relative population sizes – Organizational & Event Foci
SLIDE 7
SocioDemographic Space
SLIDE 8
Organizations in Socio-Demographic Space
SLIDE 9
Some Propositions
- Rate of joining new groups increases with the
size of individual’s ego network
- Network ties to members increase duration of
membership
– Ties to non-members decrease duration of membership
- Similarity increases strength of tie
– Dissimilar members more likely to leave – Majority will often experience minorities as unstable
SLIDE 10
Ties Between Groups
SLIDE 11
Simple Answers
Who you ask for answers to straightforward questions.
Recent acquisition Older acquisitions Original company
HR Dept
- f Large
Health Care Organization Data drawn from Cross, Borgatti & Parker 2001.
SLIDE 12
Problem Reformulation
Who you see to help you think through issues
Recent acquisition Older acquisitions Original company
Data drawn from Cross, Borgatti & Parker 2001.
SLIDE 13
The Natural Organization
SLIDE 14
The Optimal Organization
SLIDE 15
The Experiment - Setup
- Weekend class exercise
- Class divided into two independent organizations
– Each subdivided into 4 departments, with some interdependencies
- A measure of overall performance which included
financial performance, efficiency, and some human resource metrics
- Staffing was controlled by the experimentor
– “natural org” placed friends together within departments – “optimal org” separated friends as much as possible (high E-I value)
- As they went along, the experimenter introduced
- rganizational crises, such as imposing layoffs
SLIDE 16
Experimental Results
‘Natural’ ‘Optimal’
140 120 100 80 60 40 20
6 trials at 3 universities. Results shown for most dramatic trial only.
SLIDE 17
Why?
- In crisis, the organization needs to pull together*
across departments
- But when you have few close ties across
departments
– The tendency is opposite – start retrenching, pointing fingers
- When you have lots a friends across