How it Starts is Not How it Ends: The Role of Value Homophily in the Dynamics of Business Friendships

Value homophily is the idea that relationships are more common and rewarding among people with similar values because shared values generate expressive benefits such as mutual affinity, sympathy, and trust. Albeit a bedrock concept in the literature on interpersonal networks, it is supported primarily by indirect evidence as values are difficult to measure in a direct manner. To deal with this problem, we apply an original method based on semantic network analysis to measure individual values in order to study the role of value similarity in the dynamics of business friendships. In the end, we find that value similarity matters more than any other form of similarity when it comes to the formation of business friendships but is unimportant for predicting whether these ties survive. Conversely, the instrumental benefits represented by such ties, which have no influence on the likelihood of tie formation, are nonetheless key determinants of tie survival. By emphasizing values in relationship formation, and instrumentality in relationship maintenance, networkers may be able to honestly claim that they are establishing ties based on authentic personal attraction and mitigate the tension that networkers experience from simultaneously pursuing expressive and instrumental interests.