Ideas Made to Matter
Study demonstrates the value of ‘long ties’
Maintaining relationships with distant contacts takes work but results in a more diverse network and increased access to economic opportunities.
Aug 10, 2023
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Ray Reagans
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Ray Reagans is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Management in the Work and Organization Studies Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
His research focuses on a set of related questions, including how demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and race affect the formation of interpersonal relationships; how demographic diversity affects a teams’ social capital and how a team’s social capital affects its performance and general capacity for learning; and finally, how an individual’s social network affects his or her ability to share knowledge.
More recently, his research considers how organizational climate and culture affects the retention and performance of women and racial minorities. Reagans is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
He holds a BA in sociology and economics from Brown University and a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago.
Honors
Reagans wins teaching award
Publications
"Mutual Learning in Networks: Building Theory by Piecing Together Puzzling Facts."
Reagans, Ray E. Research in Organizational Behavior Vol. 42, No. Supplement (2022): 100175.
"Team Talk: Learning, Jargon, and Structure versus the Pulse of the Network."
Burt, Ronald S. and Ray E. Reagans. Social Networks Vol. 70, (2022): 375-392.
"Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: Tailoring Diversity Approaches to the Representation of Social Groups."
Apfelbaum, Evan Paul, Nicole M. Stephens, and Ray E. Reagans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 111, No. 4 (2016): 547-566.
"Knowledge Utilization, Coordination, and Team Performance."
Reagans, Ray, Ella Miron-Spektor, and Linda Argote. Organization Science Vol. 27, No. 5 (2016): 1108-1124.
"Forgotten Third Parties: Analyzing the Contingent Association Between Unshared Third Parties, Knowledge Overlap, and Knowledge Transfer Relationships with Outsiders."
Reagans, Ray, Param Vir Singh, and Ramayya Krishnan. Organization Science Vol. 26, No. 5 (2015): 1400-1414.
"Commitment, learning and alliance performance: A formal analysis using an agent-based network formation model."
Anjos, F. and Ray E. Reagans. Journal of Mathematical Sociology Vol. 37, No. 1 (2013): 1-23.
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Ideas Made to Matter
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Media Highlights
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Poets & Quants
Meet MIT Sloan's MBA class of 2023
“MIT Sloan continues to … sustain important conversations around Diversity, Equity and Inclusions (DEI) issues … "
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Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal
MIT Sloan program puts real-world racial, gender issues on table
Last month, MBA students at the MIT Sloan School of Management explored issues of race and gender in sports.
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INSEAD | Knowledge
Can Zoom be a tool for teaching anti-racism?
In recent years, we have been heartened to see DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] being gradually institutionalized within business academia.