In the current day and age, networking, both in the social and business atmosphere has become extremely important. Networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn rank supreme, and the continued advancement of technology drives people to “stay connected.” It is a reasonably well known fact that any sort of “connections” when searching for jobs, can prove to be invaluable. Furthermore, as one of the cornerstones of social network theory, Mark Granovetter, proved, just because a tie is “weak” does not make it any less important or influential than a “strong” tie; in fact, many times weak ties prove to be much more valuable than strong ties. Especially in the current job-market climate, it has never been more important to have “connections,” regardless if these ties are weak or strong. While the job-seekers focus on building and using their business contacts for jobs, the managers in charge of building strong organizations in companies have some important decisions to make with regards to the amount and strength of ties in their organizations. If these managers have the opportunity to build the “perfect” organization from scratch, do they build an organization of strongly connected, qualified individuals, who have all successfully worked with each other before and have similar experiences, or do they choose qualified individuals who have no ties, or at the most, weak ties with each other, and are relatively new in working with each other, or some combination of the two. Obviously this decision should be based on the very specific needs of the organization; nevertheless, this situation brings up interesting questions that are important for any organization to consider. On the one hand, the close-knit group should need less time to adjust to each other and work as a team, but because they have such close ties to each other, their minds and opinions might be made up already. On the other hand, by bringing together a group of qualified, but less connected individuals, the time to bond as a team will take longer, but the potential for new ideas might be greater.

Over the past couple of years, one major problem in corporations has been executive greed and corruption, specifically with regards to the hiring of friends over other qualified business professionals. These are “strong” ties, but are they good for business? Perhaps, but most likely not. Therefore, it seems once again, even though counter-intuitive, weak ties may actually be stronger than strong ties. While Granovetter is the father of the theory of the strength of weak ties, many other individuals have come up with examples that further validate and prove Granvonetter’s theory. For example, in The Strength of Weak Ties: The Influence of Horizontal Research Ties on National Environmental Policies, Elizabeth Malone and Sylvia Edgerton, provide the belief that “if we want to address questions about how information and innovation spread, we must include—even focus on—weak ties, because information spreads poorly via paths that consist only of strong ties” (Malone 3). They even go on further to say that “if everyone who passed on a message did so only to close friends, transmission of the message would be slow at best and, very possibly, short-lived” (Malone 3). Therefore, as Malone and Edgerton conclude, weak ties are the starting point for innovation and influence because of their ability to access large portions of the population, with less barriers than with strong ties. As can be seen, if the main goal for a new organization is innovation, a collection of individuals with weak ties is not a bad organizational model.

http://www.globalchange.umd.edu/data/publications/1_
The_Strength_of_Weak_Ties.revised.pdf