Friends Forever? Disentangling Tie Creation from Tie Maintenance in Emerging Friendship Networks

Research on friendship networks tends to equate network emergence with the creation of new ties, neglecting the fact that network growth also requires preventing existing ties from dissolving. Guided by a conceptual framework, we developed and tested hypotheses about the differential effects of four sets of predictors on friendship tie creation and maintenance in task settings. We tested our hypotheses with a seven-month longitudinal study of the emergent friendship network of a cohort of 182 MBA participants. Our main results suggest that friendship ties are created with those who are similar on surface-level characteristics whereas ties are maintained with those who are similar on deep-level characteristics. Moreover, friendship ties are less likely to be created – but more likely to be maintained – with those who were disliked at a previous point in time and with those who share many ties to third parties. Finally, friendship ties are created and maintained with those who provide frequent advice. However, advice ties only affect friendship tie maintenance if few alternative advice resources are available in the network. Our findings call into question theory and research that focuses only on tie creation in understanding the emergence of friendship networks in task settings.