The World Is Not Small for Everyone: Inequity in Searching for Knowledge in Organizations

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 networ...

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Veröffentlicht in:Management science 2010-09, Vol.56 (9), p.1415-1438
Hauptverfasser: Singh, Jasjit, Hansen, Morten T., Podolny, Joel M.
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creator Singh, Jasjit
Hansen, Morten T.
Podolny, Joel M.
description 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.
doi_str_mv 10.1287/mnsc.1100.1201
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source Informs; RePEc; EBSCOhost Business Source Complete; JSTOR Archive Collection A-Z Listing
subjects Applied sciences
Consulting services
Employees
Evaluation
Exact sciences and technology
Firm modelling
Gender
homophily
Inequality
inequity
Information intermediaries
Information search
Job hunting
Knowledge
Knowledge management
knowledge sharing
Management science
Men
Operational research and scientific management
Operational research. Management science
Organization theory
Organizational behaviour
Organizational culture
Organizational learning
Organizational research
Productivity
Professionals
search
small world
Social networking
Social networks
Social structures
status
Studies
Tenure
title The World Is Not Small for Everyone: Inequity in Searching for Knowledge in Organizations
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