For this project, I supervised two graduate students in the year of 2006 to develop and test an expertise recommendation system that is grounded on the basic premises of transactive memory theory and social capital. The research studied both positive social capital that people can access from friendship ties, and negative social capital from adversarial relations. Data was collected from two classes: one master-level CS class and one senior-level HCI class. And the recommendation system was tested in the CS class.

While studies of communication networks have made significant contribution in improving our understanding of how social relationships influence group dynamics (Monge & Contractor, 2003), most social network studies to date, however, have focused on the positive, rather than the negative, aspects of social networks. Despite the fact that adversarial relations have been rarely discussed in comparison to other types of social networks (e.g., friendship, communication, advice and work-flow networks), more scholars have come to realize the strong detrimental influence of adversarial relations on group collaboration, as well as on individual and group performance (Sparrowe et al., 2001). Defining negative relationship as the "social liabilities" (the opposite of "social capital"), Brass & Labianca (1999) proposed that negative ties may have greater value than positive ties in both explaining and studying organizational dynamics in that negative events may "elicit greater physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral activity and further lead to more cognitive analysis than neutral or positive events" (p. 325). The major objective of this research is therefore to study how negative relations in groups can influence group dynamic and collaboration.

So far we have finished collecting data from two classes at Cornell University. Complete social network data were collected on group members` frequency of communication, and liking and disliking relationships.

So far one conference proceeding has been published from this project. Another paper is current under review for conference presentation and journal publication

social capital and collaborative work

Seed grant from the Institute of Social Sciences at Cornell