National culture and friendship homophily in the multinational workplace

This article argues that cultural differences can be understood in terms of demographic homophily patterns. We test this argument by comparing friendship homophily in nationality and gender between two cultural groups (Korean and American employees) from within a multi-national corporation. Korean employees showed stronger nationality homophily owing to their collectivistic values. Confucian culture strengthened the gender homophily of the East Asian employees, especially female employees. Finally, compared to the Korean employees, the affective closeness of the US employees’ friendship ties was significantly affected by friendship tie multiplexity, showing this group's instrumental disposition.