Should prospective employees be judged by the size of their networks?

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Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work:

…this isn’t just in the interest of having a fun and friendly workplace (though that is an important bonus). Each one of these social connections pays dividends. At IBM, for example, when MIT researchers spent an entire year following 2,600 employees, observing their social ties, even using mathematical formulas to analyze the size and scope of their address books and buddy lists, they found that the more socially connected the IBM employees were, the better they performed. They could even quantify the difference: On average, every e-mail contact was worth an added $948 in revenue. There in and white is the power of social investment. And IBM wisely decided to capitalize on it by starting a program at its Cambridge, Massachusetts, office to facilitate the introductions of employees who didn’t yet know one another.

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