Working Paper entitled “Does Homophily Affect Performance?
knowledge.insead.edu, "Are You Becoming “Clique-ish”?", February 7, 2013
Ditching work friends could be the best career move, CNN, February 20, 2013
In the workplace, networks that result from homophily are initially helpful to get ahead, according to the study published by graduate business school, INSEAD.
When an employee first enters a career or organization, "they have little legitimacy, they have little formal power over anyone else. If these people talk to people who are like them, at least they will get some information," said Gokhan Ertug, one of the report's lead researchers and assistant professor of strategic management at Singapore Management University.
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If you are a woman, if you are an underrepresented minority, in most organizations (in the U.S.), those people are probably underrepresented at the top," he said. "Therefore if your strategy is only to focus on people who you have things in common with, then you run the risk of missing a lot of people who are either at the top or are on the way to the top."...
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