Summary
Two interventions—working in teams and using social networking services (e.g., internal knowledge exchange platforms) can foster inclusivity in a network, by enhancing the social capital or social relationships of individual members of the network. Together, both interventions improve social capital by creating positive interpersonal ties. Yet there are nuanced differences. Working in diverse teams creates positive and negative ties, whereas using social networking services creates only positive ties between organizational members. Together, the interventions create more diverse and inclusive networks.
The ethnically diverse nature of today’s urban economies, the global interdependence of business, and the need to harness the talents of both sexes and all races, makes workforce inclusivity, not only fair but, a necessary driver of organizational performance.
Inclusion occurs when people feel they are accepted members of a group and the group values their distinctive characteristics—satisfying the individual’s need for belonging and the group’s need to maintain its uniqueness.
Despite the widely acknowledged value of inclusivity in organizations, there is a powerful force—the sociological concept of homophily—working against it. This is the tendency for individuals to form homogeneous networks with other people who are like themselves. Based on shared demographic factors—age, gender, or race—people often choose to connect with similar others, finding communication and coordination easier because shared cultural backgrounds and tastes breed comfort, or because similarity is used as a shortcut for trust. Homophily significantly influences social networks, affecting the formation of relationships, information flow, and the spread of ideas.
Fostering inclusive networks
With the aim to inform management practices that can leverage diversity into better organizational performance, a recent study, co-authored by Cassandra Chambers, CIL Core Faculty and Assistant Professor of Management at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, considered ways to encourage the growth of inclusive heterogeneous networks.
Inclusion is typically viewed as a social-psychological response to experiences in a diverse social environment in which people feel they are accepted and their unique characteristics are valued. Chambers’ new research complements this view by focusing on interactions and workplaces in which inclusive interactions (interactions across demographic differences) are valued, and develops a structural approach to the concept of inclusion in organizations. The goal of the research was to examine the effectiveness of two types of interventions that could enhance inclusion. The research looked at how the interventions diversified and strengthened individuals’ social capital (as defined as a person’s social relationships, shared values, and facility for cooperation and collective action).
The study provides analysis of two extra-network interventions that influence intraorganizational network dynamics and are deployed to deliberately create networks of inclusion:
i) Working in diverse teams; and
ii) Using social networking services (SNS)—internal platforms or apps that facilitate knowledge exchange, advice giving, and general network building.
Building social capital
The key metric for analyzing the growth of social capital is the formation of new interpersonal ties—taking account the psychological concept of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ ties. Bonding social capital builds strong ties between demographically similar people, fostering trust and mutual support, while bridging social capital forms ties between demographically dissimilar people, enabling access to new perspectives. Bonding provides internal stability, whereas bridging creates broader networks that enhance social cohesion across organizations and beyond. Taking the fundamental demographic category of sex, a tie made between two female teammates is classified as a bonding tie, whereas that between a male and female teammate is classified as a bridging tie.
Intraorganizational network dynamics theory proposes two essential reasons driving people to develop relationships with diverse others. First opportunity—the exposure to diverse others; and secondly agency—the motivation to form ties to produce diverse social capital. The two interventions of teams and SNS are extra-network forces that create the conditions in which people are motivated to direct their time, effort, and energy to build positive ties with one another, and to do so in diverse contexts that offer opportunities to form ties across demographic lines. The encouragement of these interventions can be seen as attempts to engineer particular social structures—in their study Chambers and co-authors introduce the concept of structural inclusion as a complement to the social-psychological definition.
Diverse teams vs. social network services
Diverse team membership has a large effect on social capital, creating positive bonding ties and bridging ties. But diverse teams also create negative ties. People placed in diverse teams have direct experience of working and cooperating across demographic lines—a step toward inclusion. A potential disadvantage of diverse teams is that they can create negative ties, producing some strained or deflating relationships, raising a risk of conflict or exclusion. Team dynamics also sometimes reinforce homophily (preference for similar others), which can limit inclusivity. This contrasts with the use of SNS, where only positive ties are formed. SNS systems facilitate helping and knowledge exchange, which do not carry the same inherent risk for conflict and disagreement.
SNS can compensate for the negative ties created by working in diverse teams and facilitate the formation of new positive social capital. Moreover, the SNS broaden the reach and diversity of networks, providing opportunities to connect meaningfully beyond the confines of a small team. However, the level of interaction can be more superficial and less intense, and while avoiding conflict is a positive for tie formation it precludes the need to negotiate differences in relationships, which makes it less effective for building resilience.
Conclusion
A practical implication for leaders aiming to foster inclusion is to use a combination of diverse teams and a SNS—as together, the two interventions significantly expand and produce more structurally inclusive networks. Together, they complement each other: diverse teams create deep but sometimes tense bonds, while SNS spreads inclusion widely and without any noteworthy negatives.
A further implication of Chambers’ research is that it demonstrates the value of viewing diversity and inclusion through the lens of intraorganizational network dynamics, and points to how intentional practices can be used to improve network inclusivity.
Access the full research paper here: Gordon, S. J., Baker, W. E., Uribe, J., Chambers, C. R., & Desmarais, B. A. (2025). Networks of inclusion: Using teams and technology to create diverse social capital. Social Networks, 83, 120–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2025.05.003
