Homophily and Individual Performance

We study the relationship between choice homophily in instrumental relationships and individual performance in knowledge-intensive organizations. Although homophily should make it easier for people to get access to some colleagues, it may also lead to neglecting relationships with other colleagues,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: ERTUG, Gokhan, GARGIULO, Martin, GALUNIC, Charles, ZOU, Tengjian
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/4321
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/5320/viewcontent/2018_03_04_homophily_and_performance__author_copy_.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We study the relationship between choice homophily in instrumental relationships and individual performance in knowledge-intensive organizations. Although homophily should make it easier for people to get access to some colleagues, it may also lead to neglecting relationships with other colleagues, reducing the diversity of information people access through their network. Using data on instrumental ties between bonus-eligible employees in the Equity Sales and Trading division of a global investment bank, we show that the relationship between an employee’s choice of similar colleagues and her performance is contingent on the position this employee occupies in the formal and informal hierarchy of the bank. More specifically, homophily is negatively associated with performance for bankers in the higher levels of the formal and informal hierarchy, whereas the association is either positive or nonexistent for lower hierarchical levels.