When Three’s (Good) Company: Third‐Party Friendships on Cooperation across Departments

The social embeddedness perspective highlights that socially embedded dyads are more cooperative than dyads that are not embedded by common third parties. Going beyond the traditional emphasis on the number of third parties, our study examines which third parties are more influential in promoting cooperation in interdepartmental dyads. Based on the logic of dependence from interdependence theory, we show that providers are more cooperative to recipients when third‐party friends have more organizational knowledge to offer socio‐emotional support to providers, but this effect is reduced when providers themselves have more organizational knowledge. Third‐party influence is also marginally attenuated when providers have a larger circle of friends. Overall, our findings advance the social embeddedness perspective by instilling a greater appreciation for dyad member’s dependence upon the third party in explaining third‐party influence on cooperation.