Events

Prof. Jian Bai Li (Jamber)
Assistant Professor
National University of Singapore Business School

Embedded networks in young, growth-oriented firms engender solidarity amongst their original members during the firms’ early years, but they also increase the difficulty of building cooperative relationships with organizational newcomers during scaling. Extant research has under-examined how this difficulty may be overcome. We address this gap via an inductive, multiple-case study. Counterintuitively, we found that closely involving a newcomer in the original members’ interactions and activities derailed cooperation. This is due to the inability of the newcomer to form the same kind of relationships that the original members shared amongst themselves. Given this inability to attain relational equivalence, the newcomer’s close involvement in the original members’ interactions and activities came to be perceived by them as intrusive—even when a third party was present to help broker cooperation. We also found that separating the newcomer from the original members, i.e., reducing the newcomer’s involvement in their interactions and activities, aided relationship-building, since it enabled the newcomer and the original members to develop cooperation at a distance that both sides were comfortable with—without necessitating that the newcomer attain relational equivalence vis-à-vis the original members. Overall, we contribute the insight that, for building new relationships during scaling, separation enables cooperation.