The Strength of Strong Ties : The Importance of Philos in Organizations

In 1973, Mark Granovetter proposed that weak ties are often more important than strong ties in understanding certain network-based phenomena. His argument rests on the assumption that strong ties tend to bond similar people to each other and these similar people tend to cluster together such that they are all mutually connected. The information obtained through such a network tie is more likely to be redundant, and the network is therefore not a channel for innovation. By contrast, a weak tie more often constitutes a “local bridge” to parts of the social system that are otherwise disconnected, and therefore a weak tie is likely to provide new information from disparate parts of the system. Thus, this theory argues, tie strength is curvilinear with a host of dependent variables: no tie (or an extremely weak tie) is of little consequence; a weak tie provides maximum impact, and a strong tie provides diminished impact. Subsequent research has generally supported Granovetter’s theory (Granovetter 1982), but two issues have been neglected in the research stream. First, there is considerable ambiguity as to what constitutes a strong tie and what constitutes a weak tie. Granovetter laid out four identifying properties of a strong tie: “The strength of a tie is a (probably linear) combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie” (1973:1361). This makes tie strength a linear function of four quasi-independent indicators. At what point is a tie to be considered weak? This is not simply a question for the methodologically curious. It is an important part of the theory itself, since the theory makes a curvilinear prediction. If we happen to be on the very left side of the continuum of tie strength, then increasing the strength of the tie (going from no tie to weak tie) will increase the relevant information access. On the other hand, at some point making the ties stronger will theoretically decrease their impact. How do we know where we are on this theoretical curve? Do all four indicators count equally toward tie strength? In practice, tie strength has been measured many different ways.