2208/DSoc Soc 2090 (Weeden) Study Questions, Week 7 / Lecture 11 1. Consider two hypothetical Cornell students who graduate with a BA in the same major, the same GPA, and generally equivalent skills and qualifications. Student A looks for a job in her hometown, while Student B decides to move to a comparably sized city in a new part of the country and start her job search there. From a social networks perspective, discuss the implications of these choices on their likely job search processes. What advantages or disadvantages would you expect each to have in their job search? Is one student necessarily in a better position to find a satisfactory job than the other? Be sure to discuss as many social network approaches from lecture and reading as you think are relevant to this hypothetical situation. Structural holes might not fit into this as well as other readings but not as well in this one Think about outcomes: what do you think will happen to them based on the network that is generated o What do I expect for these students and why do I expect this - Student A who moves back to her hometown will probably have better prospects because of her social networks and social capital in the hometown rather that Student B who does not have any social networks or capital in the new city. However, through acquaintances and weak ties Student B may be able to find a job that is just as good as Student As or an even better job if Student B establishes acquaintances in the right places. Human capital: personal productive capacity, often measured by investments in education, on the job training, health, etc. Social capital: resources that reside in ones relationships and social networks, there is something about relationships that increases access to capital, can invest in a network that allows you to get ahead in social capital Social capital is embedded in social networks, student A has access to establish social networks in her hometown - Advantages to student A: Social Psych Model: people in your network are important to attainment process because they develop expectations that you internalize, people internalize the expectations of their networks o More likely to internalize the positive expectations of networks in hometown because she is surrounded by the people in her network Strength of Weak Ties (Grenovetter) o Strong ties: family and close friends, motivated to help but know many of the same people that you do and have the
same knowledge that you do (not likely to provide outside information) o Weak ties (casual acquaintances) are the ones who will get you a job and provide new information o Surrounded by acquaintances in her hometown o 40-50% of jobs are found through personal contact, majority of these contacts are through weak ties Friends in All the Right Places (Lin) o those who use interpersonal channels seemed to land more satisfactory and better (e.g. high income) jobs. o Weak ties form bridges that link individuals to other social circles and information that was previously inaccessible to them o Weak ties might be especially beneficial when you are accessing social positions vertically higher in the social hierarchy (e.g. hair dresser may have clients in a higher status) o Type of job depends on social position of ties o More likely to have high status acquaintances because is established in her hometown Structural Holes? Employers as Social Capitalists (Fernandez, Castilla) o Looks at demand side o Employers rely on referrals o Referrals are more likely to get the job: vs. 11.9% 6.7% o Get a better qualified application pool by having referral based services o More likely to be able to get a referral to a company in the hometown because has a large network and may know someone who is already working at the company - Advantages to Student B: Strength of Weak Ties o According to this argument, once Student B makes acquaintances which she will be able to do easily, she will get the help that she needs and the connections that she needs to find a job in the new city o Those in her hometown who are closer to her such as friends and family would not be able to provide her with the outside information that she needed to find a job o Grenovetter interested in how people get jobs, suggests that proscription to success is in making many different friends, way student B gets ahead because she can make more friends Friends in all the Right Places
o If Student B is able to make the right type of acquaintances who are higher in the social hierarchy he or she will have the ability to get satisfactory jobs with good wages 2. In the late 1960s, a Harvard psychologist named Stanley Milgram1 sent packets to 160 randomly chosen people in Omaha, NE and 20 in Cambridge, MA. These starters were told to send the packet to someone who they knew on a first-name basis and who might be able to get it to a specific recipient: a stockbroker living in Sharon, MA. Milgram found that packets reached the target through an average of six interpersonal ties. This gave rise to the phrase, six degrees of separation and ultimately spawned several plays, movies, and the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Much less well known are the details of Milgrams research. (1) In his first experiment, which was never published, less than 5% of packets originating in Wichita reached the target, the wife of a divinity student in Cambridge, MA; and those that arrived required an average of 9 ties. (2) In the second study, Milgrams Omaha starters were randomly chosen from mailing lists of highincome people and blue-chip stock owners. His Cambridge starters were solicited through an advertisement in a Boston paper that asked for volunteers who were sociable. (3) In the second study, less than 30% of the original packets reached the stockbroker, and 25% of the arriving packets were delivered by one person. (4) Later replications of the experiment showed that packets rarely cross class or race lines. For example, extremely few packets originating with white starters made it to a black target. No packets originating with lowincome starters made it to intermediary recipients who were middle- or highincome, let alone to the target. How do Milgrams results support, qualify, or negate the American obsession with networking as career strategy? To what extent are these findings consistent or inconsistent with, or simply irrelevant to, each of the network approaches to attainment that were discussed in the lecture and readings? In your discussion, be sure to differentiate between the network approaches in terms of (a) the features of networks they identify as being important to the attainment process, and (b) the mechanisms through which they understand networks as helping or hindering individuals as they try to get ahead.
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I have no idea if Rich Milgram, the CEO of Beyond.com, a network of 15,000 career sites, is related to Stanley Milgram. But, wouldnt it be a small world if he is?
Focus on the types of people that were recruited What you can learn about the networks from the result of the experiment