Sophia’s 5th Grade Promotion Speech

Jorge Walter

sophiagraduation2018

Still can’t believe I had to miss Sophia’s 5th grade promotion ceremony for my Oslo trip–especially since she was selected as a student speaker sharing her reflections on her time at elementary school and the transition to middle school.

So proud of all you have accomplished already, Sophia, and of the person you’ve become!

New Article Forthcoming in Journal of Management

Jorge Walter

A new article “Before they were ties: Predicting the value of brand-new connections,” co-authored with Daniel Levin (Rutgers University), has just been accepted for publication in the Journal of Management.

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.

New Commentary Forthcoming in the Academy of Management Discoveries

Jorge Walter

My co-author Daniel Levin (Rutgers) and I just published a commentary titled “Is tie maintenance necessary?” in the Academy of Management Discoveries.

In this commentary, we build on our research on dormant ties to contrast what we would call the activity-based perspective of tie maintenance—i.e., the premise underlying the vast majority of social networks research that ties to individuals who are associated with one’s past are important to maintain—with we would call the memory-based perspective on tie maintenance, i.e., that the memory of a prior relationship is often sufficient and that past relationships can retain considerable value, without the need for active maintenance.

2017 SMS Annual International Conference

Jorge Walter

Congratulations to to the organizers Laura Cardinal, Chet Miller, and Anthea Zhang for a great Strategic Management Society conference in Houston, TX!

sms2017

As Associate Program Chair for the Strategy Process IG, I co-organized two workshops:

  • “New frontiers in strategy process & practice research,” with Rich Bettis (UNC Chapel Hill), Cynthia Devers (Texas A&M University), Steven Floyd (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Tomi Laamanen (University of St. Gallen), Phil Bromiley (University of California, Irvine), Paula Jarzabkowski (Cass Business School, City University of London), Shenghui Ma (University of Zurich), & Libby Weber (University of California, Irvine); co-chaired with Krsto Pandza (Leeds University Business School).
  • “The process of publishing process research: Journeying along the (sometimes bumpy but ultimately successful) paths to publication,” with Steven Floyd (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Tomi Laamanen (University of St. Gallen), Henry Mintzberg (McGill University), and Sotirios Paroutis (University of Warwick); co-chaired with John Joseph (University of California, Irvine).

Thanks to all panelists and participants for making this happen!