Strong Ties as Sources of New Knowledge: How Small Firms Innovate through Bridging Capabilities*

Sandor Lowik, Daan Van rossum, Jeroen Kraaijenbrink and Aard Groen

Journal of Small Business Management, 2012, vol. 50, issue 2, 239-256

Abstract: While extant literature assumes an inverted U‐shaped relationship between tie‐strength and new knowledge acquisition, our study suggests a positive, curvilinear relationship. Our multiple case study shows that firms use specific relational capabilities—which we define “bridging capabilities”—to acquire new knowledge. These bridging capabilities mitigate the risk of overembeddedness in strong ties through increasing multiplexity, that is, through establishing and leveraging multiple relations within a single tie. Our findings suggest that small firms should invest more in the exploration of strong ties instead of increasing their weak tie network. Doing so helps them to reduce alliance complexity, thereby increasing alliance management efficiency and alliance ambidexterity.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1540-627X.2012.00352.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ujbmxx:v:50:y:2012:i:2:p:239-256

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ujbm20

DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-627X.2012.00352.x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Small Business Management is currently edited by Eric Liguori

More articles in Journal of Small Business Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().