Large, sparsely connected social networks (i.e., networks rich in “structural holes”) are advantageous because they provide an informational edge. However, some studies have found that hole-rich networks can be a disadvantage for women. We examine the question: Are the returns women derive from structural holes contingent on women’s changing proportional representation in a field? Focusing on the context of knowledge production, with citations as a key metric of success, we analyzed co-authorship and citation data from elite management journals (1970–2006) using panel-data regression. Our findings reveal that the number of structural holes in women’s collaboration networks positively correlates with citations until women’s proportion in the field reaches approximately 30%. Beyond this tipping point, the relationship becomes negative and significant. This result remains robust after controlling for variables such as previous citations (both the individual’s and co-authors’), career stage, authorship order, gender homophily, and institutional status. Our study suggests that understanding the interplay between gender, structural holes, and citations requires a contextual perspective that considers the evolving circumstances women face as their representation in a field grows.

Preface Introduction Mathematical Foundations Research Design Data Collection Data Management Multivariate Techniques Used in Network Analysis Visualization Testing Hypotheses Characterizing Whole Networks Centrality Subgroups Equivalence Analyzing Two-Mode Data Large Networks Ego Networks

Decisions—whether made by individuals or groups—often involve estimating quantities, a process that is subject to anchoring bias (Tversky and Kahneman in Science 185: 1124–1131, 1974). Differences in susceptibility to anchoring bias between individuals and groups have been recently explored with the result that groups appear less biased than individuals (Meub and Proeger in Theor Decis 85:117–150, 2018). However, existing studies treat groups monolithically without taking into account their network structure—the pattern of relationships among members. The present paper investigates the effects of group social network structure on anchoring bias. Using a structured survey instrument, we gathered data on competence-based trust relationships among 264 students enrolled in a university degree program. An anchoring experiment was conducted in which some of the students made estimates as individuals, while others did so in groups of different structures. The findings provide initial evidence of differences in bias levels across variously structured groups as well as relative to individuals. Groups with highly centralized trust networks (where a single person owned everyone’s trust) showed more anchoring bias than dense groups (where everyone trusted everyone else) and sparse groups (where no one trusted any other member of the group) showed more bias than dense groups. In addition, despite previous research demonstrating groups are less susceptible than individuals to anchoring bias, this study shows a higher presence of bias in both our centralized groups and sparse groups when compared to individuals, suggesting that group structure might moderate the mitigating effect of groups on anchoring bias. The research has implications for organizational behavior and social network literature. Specifically, this study contributes to the debate on anchoring bias for group decisions by highlighting the significant role of social network structure. At the same time, it contributes to the literature on network structure and performance by providing initial evidence of how network structure affects anchoring bias susceptibility. Moreover, our study contributes to management practice by alerting managers to the dangers of centralized networks, suggesting that competence-based trust plays a vital role in the resistance to anchoring bias.

Owning to its focus on the competitive intensity between firms across both product and resource markets, the theory of factor-market competition (FMC) sparked interest among strategy scholars who study the drivers, processes, and outcomes related to inter-firm competition. Yet, despite some initial theoretical advancement, little progress has been made in this potentially important research stream. In this study, we empirically explore elements of relational rivalry between firms (explicit rivalry, capability to compete, and status similarity) drive the intensity of FMC. Using the market for high school recruits among National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football teams as our research setting, we show that these psycho-social aspects of relational rivalry (as well as some product-market based structural aspects) indeed drive FMC. Further analysis reveals that the nature of these relationships is contingent on another underexplored element of FMC: factor quality. As such, our study is an early test of the theory of FMC, a refinement of the theory to account for resource properties, and an extension beyond structural aspects into the role of relational rivalry on the intensity of FMC.

The Chilean Society for Social Network Science (ChiSocNet) has played a pivotal role in the organization of the social networking community in South America, Ibero-America, and beyond in recent years. It recently spearheaded the inaugural Chilean Social Networking Conference (ChiSocNet), held in Santiago, Chile, from January 4-7, 2023. This conference brought together researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds, united by a shared interest in the social networking perspective. The program consisted of 13 sessions on nine topics, with more than 80 presentations. In addition, 180 individuals registered to attend the conference, including speakers and the general public. Furthermore, six free workshops were held, with registrations ranging from 40 to 100 people, depending on the topic. In this context, the international keynote address was delivered by Steve Borgatti, Professor and Chair of the Department of Management in the College of Business at the University of Kentucky. A transcript of this presentation is provided in this article.

Given that teams are complex dynamic adaptive systems, membership change is prevalent in them and can have a significant impact on interpersonal relationships. However, much of the research on team co-membership change has focused on its effect on team-level outcomes like overall affective tone. Thus, little is known about its influence on the change in interpersonal affect between team members at the dyadic level. Drawing on social identity theory, the current study investigates the effect of two team co-membership change conditions – 1) commencement of team co-membership and 2) conclusion of team co-membership on change in interpersonal affect and the moderating role of emotion regulation ability in this relationship. A randomized natural experiment is adopted to test the hypotheses. Results of multilevel modeling confirm that focal employee’s interpersonal affect for the co-member increases on commencement of team co-membership (i.e., when co-member joins the same team as the focal employee) and it decreases on conclusion of team co-membership (i.e., when the co-member is removed from the same team). Additionally, focal employee’s and co-member’s emotion regulation ability moderated the relationship between the conclusion of team co-membership and focal employee’s decrease in interpersonal affect for co-member such that the decrease was smaller when both their emotion regulation abilities were high. Overall, our findings challenge the implicit assumption in the teams literature that team membership change influences affect between team members uniformly or as a shared phenomenon that is experienced consistently by all members.

Worker co-operatives aim to produce a fairer distribution of work rewards than exists in conventional firms. Workers collectively own the firm and participate democratically in decisions, so should be able control rewards. However, direct participation in decisions is inefficient in larger firms. To balance democracy with efficiency, larger co-operatives combine a formal hierarchy with worker voice in decisions via elected representatives. This move is associated with the emergence of unequal informal organizational control and reward differentials. In this paper we ask how informal organization shapes control processes and worker perceptions of reward fairness in a representative democratic co-operative. We present a mixed-methods case study of a retail firm facing financial crisis which had reduced pay and benefits for workers. In this context, workers who maintained informal friendships with elected representatives on the firm’s governing board had a more effective voice in rewards than workers without such relationships. Effective voice in turn led workers to perceive their rewards as fairer. Fairness perceptions had important consequences for the co-operative spirit – the shared perception that all organization members were working towards common goals without opportunism. We explore the implications of our findings for maintaining democracy and promoting co-operative survival in times of crisis.

This paper reviews the growing body of work on network dynamics in organizational research, focusing on a corpus of 187 articles—both “micro” (i.e., interpersonal) and “macro” (i.e., interorganizational)—published between 2007 and 2020. We do not see “network dynamics” as a single construct; rather, it is an umbrella term covering a wide territory. In the first phase of our two-phase review, we present a taxonomy that organizes this territory into three categories: (1) network change (i.e., the emergence, evolution, and transformation of network ties and structures), (2) the occurrence of relational events (i.e., modeling the sequence of discrete actions generated by one actor and directed towards one or more other actors), and (3) coevolution (i.e., the process whereby network and actor attributes influence each other over time). Our review highlights differences between network dynamics based on relational states (e.g., a friendship) and relational events (e.g., an email message), examines the drivers and effects of network dynamics, and in a methodological appendix, clarifies the assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses of different analytical approaches for studying network dynamics. In the second phase of our review, we critically reflect on the findings from the first phase and sketch out a rough agenda for future research, organized in terms of four overarching themes: the interplay between the dynamics of social networks conceived as relational states and relational events, mechanisms underlying network dynamics, outcomes of network dynamics, and the role of cognition.

This chapter reflects on J. Clyde Mitchell’s (1969) classic piece “The Concept and Use of Social Networks” in the light of fifty years of development of the field of social network analysis.

This study examines the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and collaborative engagement on the performance of rural economic development organizations. The authors theorize that an organization’s EO and collaborative engagement, determined by levels of active engagement within a regional collaboration network, impact its ability to accomplish its goals, satisfy its stakeholders, and influence regional economic development. The authors’ analysis of data from 98 collaborating economic development organizations operating in the economically distressed region of eastern Kentucky shows that EO and collaborative engagement are positively associated with performance. This study provides actionable insights for leaders of economic development organizations seeking to improve their operations.

This chapter presents three different perspectives on centrality. In part, the motivation is definitional: what counts as a centrality measure and what doesn’t? But the primary purpose is to lay out ways that centrality measures are similar and dissimilar and point to appropriate ways of interpreting different measures. The first perspective the chapter considers is the “walk structure participation” perspective. In this perspective, centrality measures indicate the extent and manner in which a node participates in the walk structure of a graph. A typology is presented that distinguishes measures based on dimensions such as (1) what kinds of walks are considered (e.g., geodesics, paths, trails, or unrestricted walks) and (2) whether the number of walks is counted or the length of walks is assessed, or both. The second perspective the chapter presents is the “induced centrality” perspective, which views a node’s centrality as its contribution to a specific graph invariant—typically some measure of the cohesiveness of the network. Induced centralities are computed by calculating the graph invariant, removing the node in question, and recalculating the graph invariant. The difference is the node’s centrality. The third perspective is the “flow outcomes” perspective. Here the chapter views centralities as estimators of node outcomes in some kind of propagation process. Generic node outcomes include how often a bit of something propagating passes through a node and the time until first arrival of something flowing. The latter perspective leads us to consider the merits of developing custom measures for different research settings versus using off-the-shelf measures that were not necessarily designed for the current purpose.

Research on negative ties has focused primarily on the harm they do. In this paper, we show that negative ties can also have beneficial effects. We argue that, like positive ties, negative ties can link actors together in the minds of observers. As a result, we theorize that negative ties with high-status actors can benefit a focal actor, whereas negative ties with low-status actors can harm the focal actor. This prismatic effect depends on the existing status of the focal actor: a focal actor of low status is likely to benefit far more from negative ties with high-status actors and suffer more from negative ties with low-status actors than will an actor of high-status. To test our ideas, we analyze the phenomenon of "diss songs" in hip-hop music. A diss song is a song in which a rapper makes derogatory comments about another rapper, constituting a negative tie. We analyze the effects of negative ties among 53 rappers over 20 points in time on audience reaction as measured by record sales. We find that negative ties with high-status actors enhance future sales for low-status actors. However, negative ties with lower-status actors have no effect on the future sales of both low- and high-status actors. Just as some researchers have reported both positive and negative consequences of social capital, our study demonstrates that negative ties can also have both positive and negative outcomes.

Burt (1992) proposed two principal measures of structural holes, effective size and constraint. However, the formulas describing the measures are somewhat opaque and have led to a certain amount of confusion. Borgatti (1997) showed that, for binary data, the effective size formula could be written very simply as degree (ego network size) minus average degree of alters within the ego network. The present paper presents an analogous reformulation of the constraint measure. We also derive minima and maxima for constraint, showing that, for small ego networks, constraint can be larger than one, and for larger ego networks, constraint cannot get as large as one. We also show that for networks with more than seven alters, the maximum constraint does not occur in a maximally dense or closed network, but rather in a relatively sparse "shadow ego network", which is a network that contains an alter (the shadow ego) that is connected to every other alter, and where no other alter-alter ties exist.

All those in the execution and reporting of management research face a challenge of how to be aware and informed of best methodological choices. This challenge is increasingly difficult, as many of these choices can and should be based on methodological research and scholarship. The goal of this symposium is to present recommendations for improved methods and analysis for management research. The presentations and related papers should serve as a research methods resource for journal reviewers of empirical substantive management research, as well as authors and action editors. Each presentation will address a methodological topic where these is a need for discussion of key issues, an updated set of references, and a set of recommended practices. Our hope is that information presented can be used during planning and execution of research, as well as manuscript preparation and journal review. Best Practices in Data Collection & Preparation: Recommendations for Reviewers, Editors, & Authors Presenter: Herman Aguinis; George Washington U. Presenter: N. Sharon Hill; George Washington U. Presenter: James R Bailey; George Washington U. Best Practices for Construct Development/Validation: Reviewers, Editors, & Author Recommendations Presenter: Lisa Schurer Lambert; Oklahoma State U. Presenter: Daniel A. Newman; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Brian Boyd; City U. of Hong Kong Recommendations for Reviewers, Editors, and Authors in Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses Presenter: Ernest O'Boyle; Indiana U. Presenter: Justin A. DeSimone; U. of Alabama Presenter: Ji Woon Ryu; Indiana U. - Kelley School of Business Linking Theory to Methods in Social Network Research: The Case of Structural Holes Presenter: Richard DeJordy; California State U., Fresno Presenter: Stephen P. Borgatti; U. of Kentucky

Social ties with high-status others can be a potent signal of an individual's underlying quality and future promise. Individuals in competitive markets, therefore, have an incentive to publicly claim connections to high-status others. However, cognitive limitations and biases can make social network connections difficult for observers to reliably discern, and claims to high-status ties can go unrecognized by the audience. Our core contention is that claims to high-status affiliation are advantageous only when the audience recognizes the claim-unrecognized claims, like unreliable signals, do not deliver advantage and can backfire. Further, we draw on the literature on imprinting and develop arguments for why some people are more likely to make claims to high-status ties and why some claims to high-status ties are more likely than others to be recognized by the audience. We test our arguments with data from the market for head coaching jobs in NCAA basketball (2000-2011). Our study contributes to the sparse literature on how social network ties that exist in the minds of third-party observers influence individual attainment in market settings; and it offers new insights into how imprinting processes shape the perception and use of high-status network ties.