Daniel Z. Levin

The Strength of Weak Ties You Can Trust: The Mediating Role of Trust in Effective Knowledge Transfer

Research has demonstrated that relationships are critical to knowledge creation and transfer, yet findings have been mixed regarding the importance of relational and structural characteristics of social capital for the receipt of tacit and explicit knowledge. 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 trustworthiness dimensions, the structural benefit ofweak ties emerged. This finding is consistent with prior research suggesting that weak ties provide access to nonredundant information. Third, competence-based trust was especially important for the receipt of tacit knowledge. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Perceived trustworthiness of knowledge sources: the moderating impact of relationship length.

Prior meta-analytic evidence has indicated no association between relationship length and perceived trustworthiness. Viewing trustors as information processors, the authors propose a model in which relationship length, although having no direct effect on perceived trustworthiness, moderates the association between perceived trustworthiness and the basis on which people decide to trust each other. Specifically, as trustors learn about others, they base their trust on different kinds of information (demographic similarity, trustworthy behavior, and shared perspective). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a field survey of supervisors and subordinates from 3 companies (N = 88) provide evidence consistent with this prediction: Perceived trustworthiness is associated with demographic similarity in newer relationships, with trustworthy behavior in relationships that are neither brand new nor old but in-between, and with shared perspective in older relationships.

Dormant Ties: The Value Of Reconnecting

The social networks literature suggests that ties must be maintained to retain value. In contrast, we show that reconnecting dormant ties---former ties, now out of touch---can be extremely useful. Our research prompted Executive MBA students to consult their dormant contacts about an important work project; outcomes compared favorably to those of their current ties. In addition, reconnecting previously strong ties led to all of the four benefits that are usually associated with either weak ties (efficiency and novelty) or strong ties (trust and shared perspective). These findings suggest that dormant relationships---often overlooked or underutilized---can be a valuable source of knowledge and social capital.

Technology management routines that matter to technology managers

This study addresses the fragmentation in the technology management field by identifying and organising the routines used by managers of technology. In a multi-method, iterative qualitative study done jointly between academics and technology managers from a number of large industrial firms, 27 technology management routines were identified. These 27 routines were organised into a framework consisting of four categories: producing scientific and technological knowledge, transforming knowledge into working artefacts, linking artefacts with user requirements, and providing organisational support. This framework provides an organising scheme to make sense of technology management routines. In addition, because managers of technology actively participated in developing the routines, the study contributes by identifying routines practitioners regard as particularly important. Both research and practical implications are derived from the framework. 111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30

Relational Enhancement How the Relational Dimension of Social Capital Unlocks the Value of Network-Bridging Ties

We propose and test a novel approach to the dilemma that the very network-bridging structure most likely to provide access to novel knowledge may be ill-suited for the cooperation needed to successfully transfer that knowledge. We theorize that the relational dimension of social capital (e.g., tie strength) can act as a substitute for the structural benefits of network closure, and so a network-bridging tie yields more value when it is also strong. We further investigate if it is emotional closeness, interaction frequency, or trust that underlies this “relational enhancement” effect. The results from analyzing a bounded network in a large consulting firm and egocentric networks in the engineering division of a large manufacturer provide support for the relational-enhancement effect of tie strength and further identify trust as the key mechanism allowing network actors to unlock the value embedded in their network-bridging ties.

Performance Benefits From Providing Assistance in Networks Relationships That Generate Learning

Social network scholarship emphasizes that receiving resources from others in a network can benefit an individual’s job performance. Yet this paradigm rarely considers the effects on the provider of assistance. Outside the networks literature, scholars have been increasingly attentive to factors that affect motivations to provide help (i.e., prosocial motivation). However, the performance effects associated with providing help have been mixed. We concentrate specifically upon assistance that has the potential to enhance the providers’ learning and knowledge base and, hence, their performance. Using a bounded-network survey in a large consulting firm, we show that providing problem-solving assistance to many others on task-related matters increases the provider’s own work performance. We then consider how this learning may be affected by other relational and contextual factors. In so doing, we shift the predominant network perspective that people accrue performance advantages from receiving assistance to show that such advantages also occur—under the right circumstances—from providing it.

Secondhand social capital: Boundary spanning, secondhand closure, and individual performance

Abstract We move beyond the performance returns of individuals’ direct network connections to study the effects of “secondhand” social capital, i.e., from the networks of one’s contacts. We propose that certain colleagues may be more valuable to one’s job performance than others when their spillovers of novel information combine with spillovers of the cooperation needed to obtain that novelty. In a study of 1273 research and development employees across 16 business units, we find that the most benefit to one’s own performance comes from having ties that span business units and that also include secondhand closure (i.e., where one’s contacts are each embedded in a constrained, dense network). Bridging the organizational boundary provides the novelty; and secondhand closure provides the cooperation. Further, by examining who in the network is constraining these contacts, we are able to trace their cooperative motivation both to reputational and organizational identity concerns, which each create a spillover of cooperation toward the focal individual, who reaps the returns.

Corporate growth engines: driving to sustainable strategic advantage

In todays highly competitive and rapidly changing environment, core competence and capability principles have become mainstay concepts of corporate strategic thinking. They lend themselves well to high-level strategic analysis, but their limited focus and static character do not inherently provide either an application roadmap to develop a competence/capability, or, given the existence of a core competence, a framework to achieve active market superiority. The concept of corporate growth engine, a further development of core competence and capability, unifies and extends several existing strategy paradigms, and spans all three phases of the corporate strategy process - analysis, planning and execution. Its characteristics can be used by the management team with the desire to actively drive to sustainable strategic advantage as a blueprint for implementation. Some empirical evidence points at significant benefits for both well and poorly run corporations. This paper, conceptual in nature, will introduce the growth engine paradigm, trace its use through ten vignettes of large technology-intensive corporations, and discuss its seven defining characteristics. It will contrast this new construct to existing strategic principles, and illustrate its greater power in providing a framework for achieving sustainable superiority. Finally, it will present preliminary requirements for building, identifying, and sustaining a growth engine. The highly competitive environment that now confronts many firms has been forcing managers to re-examine and improve the strategic rules and processes by which they operate. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art strategic concepts in the literature and as dispensed by consultants are still piecemeal and incomplete. They primarily have an analysis focus, and fail to offer sufficient guidance beyond that stage they must be complemented by a separate methodology to carry through into planning and especially into execution [1]. Thus, these concepts, because of their limited foci within the overall strategic process, do not define, enrich or structure strategic planning and execution. Nor do they provide the critical drive and vision often needed. The management team interested in developing strategic superiority needs something more, a coherent whole that can provide meaning and direction, a systemic and context-rich approach that can deal with the totality of the strategic challenge. We are proposing here a new construct, that of corporate growth engines, that aims at bridging the whole strategic process from analysis to planning and execution. It is evolved from existing strategy paradigms, and provides the corporate management team with a practical roadmap to tackle strategic issues along the whole span of the strategy process. In proposing this new concept for the first time, our purpose is to present and explore new insights into the strategic process, and to illustrate it in action through several vignettes. Formal testing and validation of the ideas introduced remain for future research, hopefully stimulated and informed by this presentation. We will begin with a review of the overall strategy process to show that no existing strategic concept provides the paradigms needed to cover its entire span. We will then analyse a series of corporate case study vignettes, using the corporate growth engine concept as an explanation for company success and failure.

Coupling of technology management and strategic planning processes: the state of the art

Summary form only given. This research is the result of a particularly productive and unusual partnership between academics and practitioners and is part of an ongoing research program where many of the concepts and frameworks continue to evolve. With the cooperation of a consortium, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS), a half-dozen large technology-oriented organizations have been participating in the research, providing information through numerous site visits and dozens of interviews. In addition to this traditional data gathering effort, however, the research program has benefited from having key participants from the organizations provide critiques and refinements to the process-based framework as it emerged from the fieldwork and from the literature. The researchers and practitioners working on this study jointly identified a large number of technology management processes as part of an overall framework for the management of technology. This framework is based on a process-based view of organizations, where a process is defined as a set of related activities or routines. For each process within this overall framework, the authors have developed as part of the research effort: a brief description; key issues related to the process; potential best practices; ways in which academics or practitioners have tried to measure the process; relationships to other processes; and references to the literature.

Before They Were Ties: Predicting the Value of Brand-New Connections:

Complementing and extending prior studies on the value of existing work relationships, this study examines whether we can predict the value of brand-new ties before people ever meet. We examine this question by developing three sets of hypotheses reflecting the three main perspectives in the social networks literature: the resource (actor), dyadic (tie), and structural (network) perspective. To test our hypotheses, we asked executives to reach out for advice from someone they had never met and to complete a survey of their various thoughts about the other person both before and after making a connection. We find support for all three perspectives after a connection has been made; however, before tie formation, we find evidence only for the structural perspective. Our results suggest that the lack of reliable information about strangers obscures which brand-new ties will turn out to be more valuable but that surrounding network structures remain a reliable predictor of value, even for brand-new ties.