Extended structures of mediation: Re-examining brokerage in dynamic networks

In this paper we revisit the concept of brokerage in social networks. We elaborate on the concept of brokerage as a process, identifying three distinct classes of brokerage behavior. Based on this process model, we develop a framework for measuring brokerage opportunities in dynamic relational data. Using data on emergent inter-organizational collaborations, we employ the dynamic brokerage framework to examine the relationship between organizational attributes and coordination in the evolving network. Comparing the findings of our process-based definition with traditional, static approaches, we identify important dimensions of organizational action that would be missed by the latter approach.     

Staying connected under fire: Effects of individual roles and organizational specialization on the robustness of emergency-phase communication networks

Communication network connectivity is central to organizational performance, but maintaining connectivity can be difficult during periods of disruption. During the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster of September 11th, 2001, both emergency response-specialized organizations and organizations without such specialization forcibly adapted to a radically altered environment. Their dynamic communication networks necessarily entailed trade-offs between competing demands for efficiency and robustness to disruption. Of particular importance is whether organizations concentrated activity within a small number of “hub” nodes, and whether those with existing coordinative roles were critical to maintaining connectivity. We examine these questions by analyzing seventeen organizational communication networks in the WTC disaster. We find that organizations maintain connectivity through relatively small numbers of coordinators, but the realization of institutionalized coordinative roles depends upon organizational context. Further, we find distinct patterns of robustness, with the removal of key players leading to mass isolation in specialist networks versus a gradual pattern of failure in non-specialist networks. These results suggest that organizations responding to disruptions within their usual domain of operations will be more likely to retain institutionalized roles when building emergent networks, although this increases the network's fragility in the event of the loss of one of those coordinators. Organizations responding to novel threats may reconfigure more radically, limiting vulnerability to the loss of institutionalized—but not emergent—coordinators.     

Relational collaboration among spatial multipoint competitors

The presence of network ties between multipoint competitors is frequently assumed but rarely examined directly. The outcomes of multipoint competition, therefore, are better understood than their underlying relational mechanisms. Using original fieldwork and data that we have collected on an interorganizational network of patient transfer relations within a regional community of hospitals, we report and interpret estimates of Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) that specify the probability of observing network ties between organizations as a function of the degree of their spatial multipoint contact. We find that hospitals competing more intensely for patients across multiple geographical segments of their market (spatial multipoint competitors) are significantly more likely to collaborate. This conclusion is robust to alternative explanations for the formation of network ties based on organizational size differences, resource complementarities, performance differentials, and capacity constraints. We show that interorganizational networks between spatial multipoint competitors are characterized by clear tendencies toward clustering and a global core-periphery structure arising as consequences of multiple mechanisms of triadic closure operating simultaneously. We conclude that the effects of competition on the structure of interorganizational fields depends on how markets as physical and social settings are connected by cross-cutting network ties between competitors.     

Collegial oligarchy and networks of normative alignments in transnational institution building

This paper presents a combined relational and cultural approach to transnational institution building by focusing on a network analysis of a small collegial oligarchy and normative alignments among its peers. To contribute to a theory of institutionalization, we propose hypotheses about whom professionals as institutional entrepreneurs are likely to select as members of their collegial oligarchy, about the role of social networks among them in identifying these leaders, and about the costs of alignments on these leaders’ normative choices. We test these hypotheses using mainly Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) applied to a dataset including network information and normative choices collected at the so-called Venice Forum – a field-configuring event that was central in creating and mobilizing a network of European patent judges for the construction of a new transnational institution, the European Unified Patent Court. We track normative alignments on the collegial hierarchy in this network of judges and their divergent interpretations of the contemporary European patent. Highlighting this under-examined articulation of relational infrastructures and cultural framing in transnational institutionalization shows how Northern European forms of capitalism tend to dominate in this institutionalization process at the expense of the Southern European forms. It also helps reflect on the usefulness of analyses of small networks of powerful players in organizational societies, where power and influence are highly concentrated.     

Confidentiality,power relations and evaluation of potential harm in the study of the personal and organizational networks of travel agents in Moscow

Network research in organizational contexts faces ethical challenges related to revealing the identity of participants, managing power relations, and managing the interests and potential harms of the different stakeholders. In this article, we review the ethical issues associated with the investigation of the personal and organizational networks of travel agents in Moscow. In our case study, we interviewed 32 tourism agents from Moscow and its region, obtaining information on 45 people with whom they have regular relation as part of their work; and relational data, with a 2-mode matrix, on 15 organizations with which the agency could be linked in the Russian-Andalusian tourism market. Our results highlight the utility of presenting the information of personal networks in an aggregate manner. It also demonstrates the value of cultural adaptation strategies and adjustment to the characteristics of the community. Moreover, the central role of power relations in organizations, within a cultural context with a greater distance to authority was also found.     

Contemporary organizational theory: The demographic,relational, and cultural perspectives

We review three perspectives—demographic, relational, and cultural—that have dominated sociological research on organizations during the past four decades. These perspectives arose in reaction to the atomistic and rationalist–adaptationist assumptions of earlier perspectives on organizations. These perspectives have different conceptions of social structure and thus different conceptions of what creates opportunities for and constraints on action. The demographic perspective holds that social structure is constituted by distributions of social actors along salient dimensions of social and physical space; the relational perspective, by webs of social relationships; and the cultural perspective, by widely shared and patterned understandings of reality and possibility. These perspectives also have different conceptions of identity and therefore motivations for action. For demographers, identity derives from position, absolute or relative, along salient dimensions of social life; for relational scholars, from ties among individuals, groups, and organizations; and for cultural scholars, from social interaction. All three perspectives have been applied to explain behavior at five different levels of analysis: the individual, group or organizational subunit, organization, industry or organizational population, and field. Up to the 1990s, these perspectives were generally applied separately, but over the past two decades, studies have increasingly used multiple perspectives.     

A hegemon fighting for equal rights: the dominant role of COC Nederland in the LGBT transnational advocacy network

Networks are alternatives to hierarchical organizational forms. However, actors in networks have different resources at their disposal, and more powerful participants will try to influence the network as a whole. We identify a dominant node in the European LGBT advocacy network, and explore whether a hegemonic actor in the transnational advocacy network will affect less powerful groups' issue framing. Our project uses software that locates the issue network on the internet, highlighting how transnational advocacy work and digital communication have become inextricably connected. We confirm that Cultuur – en Ontspannings Centrum, known as COC Netherland has higher‐than average centrality measures in the LGBT network. Noting the limitations of hyperlink analysis, we conduct a content analysis of select nodes illustrating the impact of a hegemon. We focus on marriage equality and find tentative support for our hypothesis: organizations with links to COC advocate for stronger forms of legalized same‐sex union than do organizations without ties.     

The institutional antecedent to firms’ interorganizational network portfolios: Evidence from China

Although the amount of research on interorganizational networks has increased significantly in recent years, few studies have examined the antecedents to interorganizational network portfolios—organizations’ configuration of their relationship networks with other organizations. To address this gap, this study examines how firms’ interorganizational network portfolios vary across three types of ownership structures (i.e., state-owned, private, and multinational enterprises) in China. Cluster analysis of the data on 212 leading firms operating in China revealed two types of network portfolios firms maintain. Specifically, firms maintaining robust cross-sector portfolios had more extensive networks with organizations in the nonprofit and public sectors than firms maintaining limited cross-sector portfolios. Moreover, regression results suggested that firms across different ownership structures had distinct numbers and types of organizational partners, particularly nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners. Theoretical and practical implications are derived from the findings.     

Arbiters,Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of Business School Reputations1

How are organizational reputations established? Expanding on recent work that emphasizes the construction of reputations rather than their cultural content, we explore how forces in the organizational environment define organizational reputation. Specifically, we demonstrate how two types of mediators—reputational arbiters and reputational entrepreneurs—influence the development of reputations by organizing and managing the information on which reputations are built. Buttressing our theoretical claims with 30 interviews of business school administrators, we find that these mediators play a central role in determining organizational reputations by engaging in three processes of information manipulation: synthesis, selection, and simplification. In addition to specifying the key role that the manipulation of information by outsiders plays in the development of reputation, this approach suggests the importance of the interrelationships among these mediators in the determination of reputational standing.     

Secondhand social capital: Boundary spanning,secondhand closure,and individual performance

We move beyond the performance returns of individuals’ direct network connections to study the effects of “secondhand” social capital, i.e., from the networks of one’s contacts. We propose that certain colleagues may be more valuable to one’s job performance than others when their spillovers of novel information combine with spillovers of the cooperation needed to obtain that novelty. In a study of 1273 research and development employees across 16 business units, we find that the most benefit to one’s own performance comes from having ties that span business units and that also include secondhand closure (i.e., where one’s contacts are each embedded in a constrained, dense network). Bridging the organizational boundary provides the novelty; and secondhand closure provides the cooperation. Further, by examining who in the network is constraining these contacts, we are able to trace their cooperative motivation both to reputational and organizational identity concerns, which each create a spillover of cooperation toward the focal individual, who reaps the returns.     

The embeddedness of organizational performance: Multiple Membership Multiple Classification Models for the analysis of multilevel networks

We present a Multiple Membership Multiple Classification (MMMC) model for analysing variation in the performance of organizational sub-units embedded in a multilevel network. The model postulates that the performance of organizational sub-units varies across network levels defined in terms of: (i) direct relations between organizational sub-units; (ii) relations between organizations containing the sub-units, and (iii) cross-level relations between sub-units and organizations. We demonstrate the empirical merits of the model in an analysis of inter-hospital patient mobility within a regional community of health care organizations. In the empirical case study we develop, organizational sub-units are departments of emergency medicine (EDs) located within hospitals (organizations). Networks within and across levels are delineated in terms of patient transfer relations between EDs (lower-level, emergency transfers), hospitals (higher-level, elective transfers), and between EDs and hospitals (cross-level, non-emergency transfers). Our main analytical objective is to examine the association of these interdependent and partially nested levels of action with variation in waiting time among EDs – one of the most commonly adopted and accepted measures of ED performance. We find evidence that variation in ED waiting time is associated with various components of the multilevel network in which the EDs are embedded. Before allowing for various characteristics of EDs and the hospitals in which they are located, we find, for the null models, that most of the network variation is at the hospital level. After adding these characteristics to the model, we find that hospital capacity and ED uncertainty are significantly associated with ED waiting time. We also find that the overall variation in ED waiting time is reduced to less than a half of its estimated value from the null models, and that a greater share of the residual network variation for these models is at the ED level and cross level, rather than the hospital level. This suggests that the covariates explain some of the network variation, and shift the relative share of residual variation away from hospital networks. We discuss further extensions to the model for more general analyses of multilevel network dependencies in variables of interest for the lower level nodes of these social structures.     

Relationality and social interaction1

This paper explores Bourdieu's account of a relational social space, and his relative neglect of social interaction within this framework. Bourdieu includes social capital as one of the key relational elements of his social space, but says much less about it than economic or cultural capital, and levels of social capital are rarely measured in his work. Bourdieu is reluctant to focus on the content of social networks as part of his rejection of substantialist thinking. The neglect of substantive networks creates problems for Bourdieu's framework, because many of Bourdieu's core concepts rest upon assumptions about their interactional properties (in particular, the prevalence of homophilous differential association) which are left unexamined. It is argued here that Bourdieu's neglect of the substance of social networks is related to the criticisms that Bourdieu's framework often encounters, and that this neglect bears re‐examination, since it is helpful to think of the ways in which differentiated social networks contribute to the development of habitus, help form fields, and so constitute the intersubjective social relations within which sociality, and practice more generally, occur.     

Adding the Organizational Perspective: How Organizations Shape Service Work Abroad

International volunteering is an increasingly popular form of service work, but the scholarship on international volunteering has done little to unpack the assertion that organizations shape the international volunteering experience. We demonstrate the utility of taking an organizational perspective by reporting on an ethnographic investigation of an international voluntary service episode in Southern India. In doing so, we attend to all of the parties common to international volunteering—the coordinating international volunteer service organization, the host NGOs, and the volunteers—and pay particular attention to the organizational dynamics that influence the service rendered. We find that the different actors in the service relationship understood successful international development efforts in different ways, which frustrated the productivity of the relationships in question. These mismatched goals were partly the legacy of a partnership-formation process that followed a cultural–historical logic rather than an instrumental one. The consequences were dissatisfaction on the part of volunteers and mixed benefits for the organizations with which they were matched. We suggest that these findings have relevance to other international volunteering sites.     

Europeanization of Research and the Role of Universities: An Organizational-Cultural Perspective

Europeanization of research is a process in which the dynamics of the European Framework Programme, of national research systems and local research organizations interfere. Unlike most studies on Europeanization that focus on Europe in relation to national research systems, this article explores the relationship between Europe and universities. The main question addressed by this article is why some universities have more researchers who are active and successful at the European level than others. Our hypothesis is that participation at EU level depends on the organizational cultural bias of university researchers. Following on studies of changes in the research system, the EU framework and institutional innovations of universities, we argue that researchers within universities who develop strong affinity with their own organization will be more successful at the European level. The organizational culture of a university is conceptualized as the aggregate of cultural repertoires and biases that university researchers have at hand to legitimate themselves. To map these biases, we analysed the perception of different processes of accountability. The hypothesis was tested by calculation of the correlation between these cultural biases and different indicators of 'European behaviour'. Data were from an international questionnaire on institutional innovation and Europeanization at universities, which was circulated in eight European countries.     

A relational approach to social impact: Moving beyond instrumental and consumer approaches

Social impact can be understood as the real or perceived, intended or unintended, relational and agentic consequences that emerge from organizational decisions or actions for individuals, communities, and societies. Inherent here is the recognition that social impact aligns with consequences, whether it be on individuals, communities, and societies, and that these consequences stem from organizational decisions and behaviors. Drawing on wider social impact scholarship, this paper identifies two approaches—instrumental and consumer—that have provided lenses on how organizations make decisions about social impact and related consequences, and the level of involvement stakeholders have in these decisions. This paper proposes that the understanding of social impact should evolve to reflect the relational worldview advocated in the public relations discipline, which is one that emphasizes the importance of organizations, individuals, and communities contributing to a fully functioning society. A relational lens shows that social impact can be understood as changes—whether they be intended or unintended, anticipated or unanticipated, positive or negative—in the way people live, experience, sustain, and function within their society, resulting from organizational decisions and consequent behaviors as co-determined by organizations and their stakeholders. The relational approach requires the adoption of a relational perspective on identifying, predicting, evaluating, managing, and reporting on social impact, operationalized via the seven-step Relational Framework of Social Impact conceptualized in this paper. While social impact is a relatively new term in the public relations literature, this paper highlights how public relations scholarship is well placed to enrich the social impact discipline due its emphasis on fostering a fully functioning society.     

Double-embeddedness: Spatial and relational contexts of tie persistence and re-formation

Personal relationships are embedded in both spatial and relational contexts. Using data on 60 intentional communities from the Urban Communes Data Set, we examine how such embedding is related to the persistence and re-formation of close personal ties over a thirteen year period, beginning from when most members had been out of their group environments more than a decade. We find that local network structure—the pattern of dyads immediately surrounding any dyad—is extremely weighty in which ties persist, which lapse, and which are re-initiated, but that the precise ways in which local structure affects contact are bound up with the distance between dyad members. We also find asymmetries in these processes that other studies have been unable to uncover—that processes that lead ties to be dropped are not the same as those that lead them to be renewed; that increases in local embeddedness are not opposite of decreases; that change in contact is not the same as change in friendship. Finally, there is evidence of hierarchical effects influencing the retention of friendships more than twenty-five years after most respondents left their groups.     

Chains and networks,territories and scales: towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy

A vast and continually expanding literature on economic globalization continues to generate a miasma of conflicting viewpoints and alternative discourses. This article argues that any understanding of the global economy must be sensitive to four considerations: (a) conceptual categories and labels carry with them the discursive power to shape material processes; (b) multiple scales of analysis must be incorporated in recognition of the contemporary ‘relativization of scale’; (c) no single institutional or organizational locus of analysis should be privileged; and (d) extrapolations from specific case studies and instances must be treated with caution, but this should not preclude the option of discussing the global economy, and power relations within it, as a structural whole. This paper advocates a network methodology as a potential framework to incorporate these concerns. Such a methodology requires us to identify actors in networks, their ongoing relations and the structural outcomes of these relations. Networks thus become the foundational unit of analysis for our understanding of the global economy, rather than individuals, firms or nation states. In presenting this argument we critically examine two examples of network methodology that have been used to provide frameworks for analysing the global economy: global commodity chains and actor‐network theory. We suggest that while they fall short of fulfilling the promise of a network methodology in some respects, they do provide indications of the utility of such a methodology as a basis for understanding the global economy.     

Beyond interviewer effects in the standardized measurement of ego-centric networks

The effects which interviewers exert on the collection of ego-centric networks have recently come into the focus of methodological considerations. Studies consistently show that the size of networks varies depending on the interviewer. We would like to expand on this research strand by pointing to different aspects which have so far gone unremarked in the discussion. First, size is mainly analysed as a network measure which is influenced during data collection, while other common measures such as network density or composition have not received sufficient consideration. Second, large-scale surveys using face-to-face interviews usually allocate interviewers to a single sampling point. Differences between sampling points (locality effects) are attributed to interviewer effects. Hence, we disentangle the effects of the locality and interviewer. Third, the discussion on interviewer effects often follows an “actor-oriented” consideration of how data collection situations are structured by interviewers. Expanding this approach from a relational perspective, we consider the relationship between the interviewers and respondents and whether this relationship influences the collection of network data. To test our hypotheses about the influence of interviewers, the locality and the interviewer-respondent relationship on different network measures, we use data from the 2010 German General Social Survey (n = 2827 respondents, n = 220 interviewers). The multilevel analyses show that the relationship between the interviewer and the respondent is not very relevant. Furthermore, the analyses show that interviewers have an influence on the network size but not on measures of their composition. However, evidence on the prevalence of locality or interviewer effects is mixed. Finally, homophilous interviewer-respondent relationships have very little effect on network characteristics. We find evidence of training and fatigue effects on network size. However, much of the variation in network size caused by the interviewer still remains unexplained. We draw conclusions on how to organize interview situations in surveys.     

Cohesiveness and goals in agency networks: Explaining conflict and cooperation

This paper examines principal and agent networks. We focus on networks because business research has placed far greater emphasis on the agency problem at the individual level. Our interest is in exploring the agency relationship at the group or network level. There are many variables at the group or network level which are absent when analyzing agency relationships at the individual level. Traditional theories of finance and economics do not adequately address or explain a host of behaviors that are inherent in human interactions that constitute organizational life. We include a sociological or behavioral approach in understanding this complex relationship. Using cohesiveness and shared goals as antecedents, we develop a theoretical model that predicts a range of relationship outcomes between principals and agents, as well as their impact on organizational goals. We explain that a range of relationships – including conflict, domination, exploitation, collaboration, and cooperation – is possible when networks of principals and agents interact.We argue that the social context is a key determinant of the relationship between actors in a network, and it has an important role in impacting cohesiveness and goal mutuality. The degree of cohesiveness within and between networks, and the extent to which goals are shared or are in conflict are the principal predictor variables we examine. We posit that cohesiveness and shared goals are necessary and sufficient conditions for agency problems between networks to be alleviated. Both necessary and sufficient conditions need to be met in order to overcome the problems of agency. The relationships we examine through the model include cooperation, collaboration, domination, opportunism, exploitation, and conflict. We present a number of propositions that theorize on the nature of the agency relationship and their impact on organizational goals. Implications for research and practice are also discussed.     

Network stability in organizational flux: The case of in-house management consulting

This article explores the effects of organizational flux on the statics of interpersonal knowledge exchange structures. In our empirical case, organizational flux refers to high rates of personnel turnover, temporary project work, constant recombination of team memberships, and short-term collaboration. Network statics refers to the balance between forces composing and decomposing a network. Set in continuously changing organizational compositions of an in-house management-consulting unit, our study offers insights into the relationship between organizational characteristics and informal networks between experts. Against conventional intuition, we find a dense and stable structure of knowledge exchange. Furthermore, we elaborate on the two concepts of organizational flux and network statics, by comparing the observed structures with theoretical (random graphs) and empirical references (other empirical cases), and by using ERG models to account for different factors of organization, social balance, and individual attributes.