Homophily in social relations results from both individual preferences and selective opportunities for interaction, but how these two mechanisms interact in large, contemporary organizations is not well understood. We argue that organizational structures and geography delimit opportunities for...

In multidivisional firms, the corporate staff is central to the implementation of corporate-level strategy, but empirical evidence on its function is limited. We examine one corporate staff through e-mail analysis. We find sharp cross-sectional differences in communication patterns: staff...

In my dissertation, I examine intraorganizational social networks and their antecedents and consequences. The first paper, jointly authored with Michael Tushman, is a theoretical discussion of the role of social networks in inter-divisional coordination. Most large organizations fail to develop...

Novel external partnerships are valuable but risky, and scholars have examined the organization- and individual-level determinants of firms' decisions to pursue these new relationships. Yet, in organizations doing complex and knowledge-intensive work, decisions about interorganizational...