Far from random? The role of homophily in student supervision

The paper studies racial and gender homophily in student supervision relationships in a context of social transformations, South Africa academia. We develop a technique to separate choice homophily from that induced by the system. Comprising two permutation tests repeated at two levels of aggregation, system and departments. We find clear evidence of homophily in student supervision, along racial lines in particular. Roughly half of the observed homophily is induced by the departments composition and stays constant over time. Overall, choice homophily has similar magnitude along racial and gender dimensions. Further, we ask where choice homophily originates in the demographic groups of students and professors. We find that white (male) students have high tendency to form same-type relations, while among professors it is black (female) who display the higher frequency. Group differences show that choice homophily is likely to originate from students in the former majority

Happiness is assortative in online social networks

Social networks tend to disproportionally favor connections between individuals with either similar or dissimilar characteristics. This propensity, referred to as assortative mixing or homophily, is expressed as the correlation between attribute values of nearest neighbour vertices in a graph. Recent results indicate that beyond demographic features such as age, sex and race, even psychological states such as "loneliness" can be assortative in a social network. In spite of the increasing societal importance of online social networks it is unknown whether assortative mixing of psychological states takes place in situations where social ties are mediated solely by online networking services in the absence of physical contact. Here, we show that general happiness or Subjective Well-Being (SWB) of Twitter users, as measured from a 6 month record of their individual tweets, is indeed assortative across the Twitter social network. To our knowledge this is the first result that shows assortative mixing in online networks at the level of SWB. Our results imply that online social networks may be equally subject to the social mechanisms that cause assortative mixing in real social networks and that such assortative mixing takes place at the level of SWB. Given the increasing prevalence of online social networks, their propensity to connect users with similar levels of SWB may be an important instrument in better understanding how both positive and negative sentiments spread through online social ties. Future research may focus on how event-specific mood states can propagate and influence user behavior in "real life".Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

Let’s Be Friends: National Homophily in Multicultural Newcomer Student Networks

Understanding the relational and network dynamics among newcomer networks is important to devising appropriate strategies that will maximize the productivity of the incoming workforce. Nevertheless, there are limited empirical contributions on newcomer networks with few studies examining newcomer networks in international environments. This study focuses on national homophily and examines whether ethnic identity salience, self-efficacy, individualism and ethnocentrism are associated with the occurrence of national homophily in newcomers networks. Using a multicultural student sample drawn from newly formed networks, the study found that ethnic identity salience and academic self-efficacy are associated with national homophily positively and negatively, respectively. Individualism is not found to be related to homophily while, contrary to our hypothesis, ethnocentrism is found to be negatively related to homophily. Through its examination of the effect of attitudinal variables on homophily, this study contributes to the broader literature on homophily and provides implications for managers and researchers

School ties: An analysis of homophily in an adolescent friendship network

Homophily is the tendency to establish relationships among people who share similar characteristics or attributes. This study presents evidence of homophilic behaviour for an adolescent friendship network of 6,961 links in the West of England. We control for unobserved characteristics by estimating school and individual fixed effects and present evidence on the role of length and closeness of friendships on the degree of homophily. We also exploit the dynamics of the friendship by comparing similarities among existing and future friends. Results indicate that academic achievement, personality, educational aspirations, bad behaviour and mother’s education are essential in the friendship formation process. However, income and parents’ occupational class proved to be insignificant. We also show that the degree of homophily among friends selected from a random process is much lower than that of the observed friendships.Networks, Homophily, Segregation, Friendships, Adolescents

IDENTITY AND SOCIAL RELATIONS: A CASE OF CHINESE GRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE U.S.

This dissertation research separates out the social relations implied in identity theory and empirically shows the interaction of identity and social relations. I conducted 60 interviews and one online survey with respondents at two public universities in two cities with distinctive sociocultural characteristics. The respondents were graduate students from mainland China pursuing their master’s or doctoral degrees in the U.S. The students’ lengths of stay in the U.S. varied, but all experienced a major life transition from China to the U.S. The qualitative interview data show that the adoption of a religious identity in the two places, defined as different social environments, impact the interaction of identity and networks. Where the community is small and homogeneous, the Chinese graduate students are quickly thrown into strong religious dyadic relationships and primary groups, and soon thereafter acquire a religious identity. Where the community is large and sparsely connected, the identity pool is large and the adoption of the religious identity becomes less constrained by dyadic relationships and primary groups. The interview data also show that within-person time spanning (the time span between prior to the respondents’ arrival in the U.S. and after the respondents’ coming to the U.S.), and between-person time spanning (the “newcomers” who have lived in the U.S. for less than one year versus the “old-timers” who have lived in the U.S. for over one year) are important in the identity network process. The transfer from China to the U.S. fosters the emergence of the Chinese ethnic identity. The Chinese network composition of the newcomers and the old-timers granted them a similar list of important identities. The quantitative findings confirm that place, time, and personal network function together to impact identity importance. Also, the classification of ties into “important people” and “time bound people” are effective predictors of identity importance. In conclusion, this dissertation research demonstrates empirically how social relations and identity impact each other. This research also provides a case study for the population – Chinese graduate students in the U.S

Social transformations and labour market entry:an investigation into university systems in emerging economies

Exclusion provokes a waste of talents and incalculable cultural and economic losses. Today, given the increasing number of qualified women and blacks, the lack of representation in top-job positions in knowledge-intensive occupations is hard to explain without considering network mechanisms in the entry process. Entering those occupations comprises training and supervision, collaboration, and mutual evaluation and often those tasks involve the same people. This implies that networks between agents, groups, and institutions form and are at the heart of learning, evaluation and promotion decisions. Thus, my thesis investigates network mechanisms of the entry process in academia with the empirical focus of South Africa and Mexico. First, I examine the tendency to form same-race and same-gender student-advisor relations in the educational phase. Then, I analyse this tendency closer asking whether it affects the doctoral productivity of the couples and whether its effect changes for students with high or low productivity profile. Lastly, I study how universities' prestige and first job-mobility affects scholars' future performance. My work highlights that the inertia of individual and institutional relations explains the lack of transformations in prestigious positions that, in turn, slow down transformations at lower levels. Besides this disheartening result, my work shows that when agents overcome the inertia, creating “uncommon” relations, they perform at the highest levels underlining the gains from inclusion

ILR Research in Progress 2011-12

The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.Research_in_Progress_2011_12.pdf: 46 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Becoming a business student : Negotiating identity and social contacts during the first three months of an elite business education

We know that informal networks explain differences in career success. Historical differences in business careers of men and women have frequently been explained with differences in informal networks. We also know that corporations tend to recruit future leaders and professionals from highly ranked business schools, and that important social networks form among the students there. However, it is not fully known how these networks form initially, and how they develop over time. In this first report from an ongoing longitudinal study of networking among students of four business schools in Sweden and Finland, we explore networking and socializing during the first term of education. The data that is reported here were collected in 2019, i.e. before the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the first few weeks of education are crucial for networking: they present an “open window” for making new friends. This process is aided by structured efforts by the schools and the student unions which facilitate networking. We also find that expectations of networking can be felt as stressful by some students, as well as there being strong tendencies of homophily regarding gender and ethnicity among students. From the students’ point of view, however, the friends they make seem to be the result of random encounters. Being socialized into becoming a business student also means relating to and often challenging a perceived stereotype of the (male) business student. The report ends with pointing toward the need for establishing an intersectional and longitudinal approach to the study of networking

The Coevolution of Networks and Political Attitudes

How do attitudes and social affiliations co-evolve? A long stream of research has focused on the relationship between attitudes and social affiliations. However, in most of this research the causal relationship between views and affiliations is difficult to discern definitively: Do people influence each other’s views so that they converge over time or do they primarily affiliate (by choice or happenstance) with those of similar views? Here we use longitudinal attitudinal and whole network data collected at critical times (notably, at the inception of the system) to identify robustly the determinants of attitudes and affiliations. We find significant conformity tendencies: individuals shift their political views toward the political views of their associates. This conformity is driven by social ties rather than task ties. We also find that, while individuals tend to associate with similar others, political views are notably less a basis for associational choices than demographic and institutional factors

De la Homofilia a la cohesión social y viceversa

Este artículo tiene cuatro objetivos articulados. Primero, presentar los contenidos con que, en la literatura ad hoc, se suelen identificar y analizar la Cohesión social y la Homofilia. Ambos conceptos provienen de tradiciones diferentes lo que origina definiciones no coincidentes. Segundo, encontrar un anclaje entre ambas concepciones que permita una conjugación de su identificación y tratamiento; se trata de las relaciones-interacciones entre individuos u otros agentes. Tercero, desarrollar una concepción abierta entre ambos contenidos, Cohesión social y Homofilia, a partir de un proceso social de retroalimentación entre ambos. Por fin, en cuarto lugar, presenta una posibilidad de convergencia como proceso de método y cálculo para estudiar dicha conjugación entre Cohesión social y Homofilia dentro de un proceso más amplio de retroalimentación entre ambas.This article has four articulated objectives. First, presenting the contents with which, in the ad hoc literature, Social Cohesion and Homofily are indentified and analysed. Both concepts steam from different traditions which have originated dissimilar definitions. Second, to find an anchorage among both conceptions that permits a conjugation in their identification and processing: it is a matter of the relations-interactions among individuals or other agents. Third, developing an open conception of both contents, Social Cohesion and Homofily, as a social process of mutual feedback. At last, in fourth place, the article presents a possibility of convergence as a process of method and calculation to study the conjugation between Social Cohesion and Homofily inside a more extensive process of feedback among both