Tie Loss and Tie Gain: Trust & efficiency during management transitions

In this paper we examine the changes newly promoted professionals in three service firms (auditors, consultants, and lawyers) experience to their network relations over the course of their first 1½ years in the job: which contacts are lost/retained and which contacts are gained? Our focus is twofold: A) predicting tie loss and B) predicting trust-levels in gained contacts. We contribute a comprehensive look at driving factors, examining qualities of the relation, the relationship, and the social structure. Each contributes to predicating change, but revealing an overarching tendency for “balance.” Newly promoted professionals will avoid losing high-status contacts (H1), but they do not shed contacts of any rank that bring multiplex resources (H2). They are less likely to lose contacts they trust (H3, H4) and especially embedded ties (H5), but they also pursue efficiency, shedding the most redundant relations (H6). Finally, they are likely to experience greater competence-based trust (but not emotion-based trust) in new relations if they have been situated in less redundant networks, developing discernment through prior relational pluralism (H7, H8).