Modelling the evolution of a bipartite network—Peer referral in interlocking directorates

A central part of relational ties between social actors is constituted by shared affiliations and events. The action of joint participation reinforces personal ties between social actors as well as mutually shared values and norms that in turn perpetuate the patterns of social action that define groups. Therefore the study of bipartite networks is central to social science. Furthermore, the dynamics of these processes suggests that bipartite networks should not be considered static structures but rather be studied over time. In order to model the evolution of bipartite networks empirically we introduce a class of models and a Bayesian inference scheme that extends previous stochastic actor-oriented models for unimodal graphs. Contemporary research on interlocking directorates provides an area of research in which it seems reasonable to apply the model. Specifically, we address the question of how tie formation, i.e. director recruitment, contributes to the structural properties of the interlocking directorate network. For boards of directors on the Stockholm stock exchange we propose that a prolific mechanism in tie formation is that of peer referral. The results indicate that such a mechanism is present, generating multiple interlocks between boards.     

Firms,directors and time in the directorate tie market

Continuing the structural analysis of corporate profits and cooptive interorganizational ties through boards of directors, I summarize results obtained from research proposed several years ago in this journal. As expected, ties through directorates occurred in the 1967 American economy where market constraints on profits in manufacturing industries were most severe. Moreover. types of ties were coordinated as multiplex cooptive relations to sources of market constraint.The results led me to believe that there was a directorate tie market in the economy during the late 1960s — a social network composed of directorate ties providing a nonmarket context for the most competitive buying and selling between business establishments.Acting on this speculation, I propose lines of research into processes by which individual firms and individual persons would have had an incentive to maintain such a market. The research includes an analysis of the etiology of successful cooptation at the level of individual firms and assesses the impact of this success on corporate profitability and growth. The research includes an analysis of the etiology of an individual director's participation in successful cooptation and assesses the impact of this participation on his ability to obtain positions on the boards of large, profitable firms. The research includes analyses of the association between market constraints and directorate ties over a twenty year interval, 1960 through 1980, so that inferences made from the cross-sectional analysis in 1967 can be generalized with evidence on stability and change in the association between market constraint and directorate ties.     

Analysing interlocking directorates: Theory and methods

In this review article an overview is given of research on interlocking directorates. The emphasis is on methodological problems and innovations. The start of research on interlocking directorates in Germany and the U.S.A. at the beginning of this century is described. Studies on financial groups are then discussed, followed by the sociological approach and longitudinal studies. Finally, more recent research is discussed, starting with a short introduction to the research on networks of interlocking directorates. In the last section five topics are discussed in more detail: component analysis, groups in the network, different types of interlocking directorates, the stability of interlocking directorates and the relation between different corporate interlocks.     

Developing education on problematic substance use in Norwegian social work bachelor’s degree

This commentary article is based on a mapping of education on problematic substance use (PSU) in the Norwegian social work bachelor’s degree (SWBD). The results show that national discussions are necessary to ensure that Norwegian SWBD students are provided with consistent and adequate education in preparation for work with PSU issues in social work practice. A practical starting point for development is presented. A discussion concerning social work’s role in future theoretical, practical, and research developments in the field of PSU is paramount.     

Locating the Community Field: A Study of Interorganizational Network Structure and Capacity for Community Action*

Abstract I examine the concept of the community field to identify the structures, elements, and processes that generate improved capacity for community action. I conduct analysis of interlocking leadership among local organizations and recent community action in three Midwestern communities to determine the structure and attributes of the community field. I use findings from community power research to anticipate and guide interpretation of the different network structures found in each community. A community field is identified in the communities with pyramidal and coalitional structures. Inclusive, coordinating networks, institutions with stockpiled resources, and the existence of local planning processes are some of the community field‐like structures and processes I identify. The findings have implications for future rural community research and practice, including support for increased use of network analysis as a diagnostic tool for community development.     

A structural theory of interlocking corporate directorates

A theory is proposed that explains where interlocking corporate directorates should appear between sectors of an economy, where they should not appear, and the profitability of efficient corporate interlocking. Taking the sector of an economy as the unit of analysis, interlocking directorates are cast as strategically created constraints on those sectors of the economy most “problematic” for obtaining profits in a given industry of firms. The extent to which each sector of the American economy is problematic for obtaining profits in two-digit and four-digit manufacturing industries is estimated from research linking industry profits with the form of the pattern of relations defining the industry as a position in the network of dollar flow transactions given in the 1967 Input-Output Study for the United States. A two-stage process is described for sampling firms representative of large corporations involved in American manufacturing. Measures of alternative strategies for interlocking across sectors are described. Two classes of hypotheses are derived: (1) Firms in an industry should interlock with firms in some other sector in proportion to the extent to which the sector constrains the industry's profits. (2) Controlling for production and market differences, the ability of firms in an industry to obtain unusually high profits reflects their success in creating interlocks with those sectors most problematic for their industry's profits.     

Talk,Research Technology,and the Achievement of Human Subject “Status Passage”

This article draws on field notes and interviews collected during an ethnographic study of the informed‐consent process in HIV/AIDS clinical trials to examine the movement of individuals from the status designation of patient to that of human subject of research. Its theoretical starting points are Glaser and Strauss's (1971) observation of the centrality of interaction to status passage and their conceptualization of status passage as social accomplishment. Insights from conversation and technology studies are applied to show that human subject status passage is facilitated through (1) the enlistment efforts of research professionals and patients, (2) the talk of participants on informed consent and protocol‐related matters, and (3) the placement of signatures on informed‐consent documents. The analysis reveals that human subject status passage is indeterminate, negotiated, and unmarked by ceremony and cultural symbols. The implications of these findings for future studies on status passage and informed consent in human research are considered.     

Federal funding and its effect on criminological research: Emphasizing individualistic explanations for criminal behavior

The sociology of knowledge suggests that various influences can affect the development of any substantive area of science. Much discussion has ensued over the years on the impact of sponsorship on sociological research. This article examines the effect of sponsorship on theoretical criminological research. I hypothesize that research funded by the federal government is more likely to support research having individualistic as opposed to structural explanations of crime. To test this, 181 theoretical criminological journal articles from 1975 to 1993 were examined. The data support this conclusion. There is a relationship between the type of funding received and whether an article’s focus is individualistic or structural. Alternative explanations are discussed and areas for future research are suggested. Finally, the relevance of these findings to sociology are examined in terms of the development of theory.     

Religion as Cultural Power: The Role of Religion in Influencing Americans’ Symbolic Boundaries around Gender and Sexuality

In this article, we describe recent research that explores the power of religion to influence understandings of gender and sexuality in the United States. We argue that sociologists of religion should draw from symbolic boundaries theory, a theoretical innovation in the sociology of culture. In particular, we discuss a rich body of research in the sociology of religion to show how Americans use religious tools to draw boundaries around ideal and stigmatized gender norms, family forms and sexual identification. We combine symbolic boundaries literature and this literature to show that religion is a source of cultural power that assigns meaning to, and draws boundaries around, certain cultural categories. We end by describing some productive directions for future research in this area.     

Debiasing or rebiasing? Moderating the illusion of delayed incentives

This paper studies corrective strategies for the illusion of delayed incentives (Soman, 1998), the phenomena that money-for-effort transactions that are unattractive in the present appear attractive when they are in the future. This illusion occurs because future effort is discounted more heavily than future monetary outcomes. In this research, we show that this bias of differential discounting can be corrected by asking consumers to perform effort at the time of decision-making. We further outline three explanations for why this intervention attenuates the illusion of delayed incentives, and discuss whether these explanations constitute a debiasing effect or a rebiasing effect (Larrick, 2004). We report the results of two laboratory experiments and discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings.     

Nonverbal exchange: Past,present, and future

This paper provides a broad review and evaluation of the research on nonverbal exchange. The development of theoretical approaches to this research is traced over time and discussed. Relative strengths and weaknesses of past and present models are analyzed. Finally, specific recommendations are made for future research that will, we hope, extend our understanding of nonverbal exchange and its basic role in social interaction.     

HIV in young men who have sex with men: a review of epidemiology, risk and protective factors, and interventions

Epidemiological studies have found that young men who have sex with men (YMSM) represent the majority of young people infected with HIV annually in the United States. Further, they are one of the few risk groups to show an increase in the rate of infections in recent years. In addition to these disparities in prevalence and infection rates, there is an inequity in prevention and intervention research on this population. The purpose of this article is to review the existing YMSM literature on HIV epidemiology, correlates of risk, and intervention research. The article concludes that promising future directions for basic research include a focus on multiple clustering health issues, processes that promote resiliency, the role of family influences, and the development of parsimonious models of risk. In terms of intervention research, the article suggests that promising future directions include Internet-based intervention delivery, integration of biomedical and behavioral approaches, and interventions that go beyond the individual level to address partnership, structural, community, and network factors.     

Small Business Success in Rural Communities: Explaining the Sex Gap*

Abstract Building on previous theory and research, we propose a “structural relational” view of the sex gap in small business success. Our findings, based on analyses of data from 423 small business owners in Iowa, show support for our model and suggest that links between owners, social relational processes, business structure, and small business success operate differently depending on the industry location of the business and the owner's sex. Results also indicate that the business owner's sex has direct and indirect effects on business success. This finding suggests that social relations, organizations, and institutions are all gendered in ways that influence the sex gap in sales, but that further research is needed to more fully explain sex differences in small business success. We discuss these and other findings in terms of their theoretical and practical implications, and suggest directions for future research.     

Grandparent-Grandchild Communication: A Review of Theoretically Informed Research

This article reviews theoretically informed research on grandparent-grandchild (GP-GC) communication. Research has been organized herein according to whether it is guided by an intergroup theory, an affect theory, or another type of theory. After reviewing research under these three broad categories, a heuristic value and degree of support for each theory are proposed for helping future researchers in their theoretical selections. Each theory is then positioned in a two-dimensional space consisting of interpersonal and intergroup dimensions to visually demonstrate theoretical lacunae that future researchers can address. We end by discussing how researchers can utilize theory as a basis for probing the role of demographic characteristics in influencing GP-GC communication.     

Social Guardianship and Social Isolation: An Application and Extension of Lifestyle/Routine Activities Theory to Rural Adolescents*

Abstract Although the overall crime rate dropped between 1993 and 2000, both adolescent violence and violent crime in rural areas has been on the rise. However, little research has been conducted on the determinants of rural violence using targeted regional samples of rural youth. This study examines the applicability of lifestyle/routine activities (RA) theory to a large sample of rural adolescents from Alabama. Multivariate logistic regression analyses indicate that: (1) social guardianship reduces the risk of assault and robbery victimization; (2) blacks are less likely to be assault and robbery victims; and (3) males are less likely to be robbery victims. Social isolation at the individual level is also a strong risk factor for both robbery and assault victimization. The theoretical implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

“The Penal Couple”: An Examination of the Relationship Between Victimization and Offending and Its Implications for Criminal Justice

Although it is commonly assumed that victims and offenders are distinct groups of people, extant research indicates significant overlap in these populations. The current review explores theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence supporting this position. It also highlights some unique challenges and consequences for the criminal justice system. Key issues and avenues for future research on the link between victimization and offending are discussed.     

A framework for evaluating eHealth research

Health care is in the midst of a consumer-oriented technology explosion. Individuals of all ages and backgrounds have discovered eHealth. But the challenges of implementing and evaluating eHealth are just beginning to surface, and, as technology changes, new challenges emerge. Evaluation is critical to the future of eHealth. This article addresses four dimensions of eHealth evaluation: (1) design and methodology issues; (2) challenges related to the technology itself; (3) environmental issues that are not specific to eHealth but pose special problems for eHealth researchers; and (4) logistic or administrative concerns of the evaluation methodology selected. We suggest that these four dimensions must be integrated to provide a holistic framework for designing and implementing eHealth research projects, as well as for understanding the totality of the eHealth intervention. The framework must be flexible enough to adapt to a variety of end users, regardless of whether the end user is a healthcare organization, a for-profit business, a community organization, or an individual. The framework is depicted as a puzzle with four interlocking pieces.     

Cultures of cosmopolitanism

This paper is concerned with whether a culture of cosmopolitanism is currently emerging out of massively wide‐ranging global processes. The authors develop certain theoretical components of such a culture they consider ongoing research concerned with belongingness to different geographical entities including the world as a whole, and they present their own empirical research findings. From their media research they show that there is something that could be called a banal globalism. From focus group research they show that there is a wide awareness of the global but they this is combined in complex ways with notions of the local and grounded and from media interviews they demonstrate that there is a reflexive awareness of a cultures of the cosmopolitan. On the basis of their data from the UK, they conclude that a publicly screened cosmopolitan culture is emergent and likely to orehestrate much of social and political life in future decades.     

The Measurement of Fear of Crime*

The volume of research on fear of crime in the United States is substantial and continues to regularly appear in sociology and criminology journals. Despite the amount of research on the subject, the measurement procedures most frequently used are suspect because of theoretical and methodological shortcomings. We present a conceptual definition of fear of crime and then systematically review the way it has been measured in research over the last fifteen years. The review indicates that whik omnibus fear of crime and risk of crime measures are only moderately correlated, a substantial number of studies have used risk measures and generalized to fear. Suggestions for future research are offered.     

Counselor Turnover in Substance Abuse Treatment Centers: An Organizational-Level Analysis

This article draws on institutional and ecological perspectives on work and organizations to develop a workplace level model of variation in voluntary counselor turnover rates across privately funded substance abuse treatment centers in the United States. Results show that participatory management structures reduce turnover rates principally by promoting organizational commitment. The analysis also tests hypotheses regarding the effects on turnover rates of other relevant theoretic domains of treatment center structure and organization. We discuss theoretical implications of the findings and suggest directions for future research.