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The purpose of this study is to examine the normal accident-inducing effect of two network positions: status and structural holes, which are often regarded as critical sources of relational advantages. Contrary to the existing theoretical and practical view that accidents occur due to operational or engineering problems, we suggest that an organization's status and structural holes in the interorganizational alliance network can also cause accidents. Drawing upon insights from normal accident theory, which highlights the accident-inducing effects of complexity, tight coupling, and slack shortage, we argue that differentiation costs stemming from status and complexity costs from structural holes increase the likelihood of accidents occurring. Moreover, slack shortage increases the accident-inducing effect of status by augmenting differentiation costs, whereas they reduce the accident-inducing effect of structural holes by diminishing complexity costs. The generalized estimating equations results of our empirical study of the U.S. airline industry from 1978 to 2011 strongly support our theoretical arguments. Accidents are more likely to occur when a focal airline holds a higher status in interfirm alliance networks and occupies a structural-hole rich position. Additionally, our results suggest that a shortage of human resource slack amplifies the accident-inducing effect of status while mitigating the effect of structural holes. The implications of the unintended negative outcomes of presumably advantageous network positions and the relational sources of accidents are discussed. Plain language summary: The normal accident theory suggests that complex systems, tight connections, and limited slack resources can inadvertently lead to catastrophic or system accidents. Extending this concept to interorganizational networks, we propose that two positions commonly seen as advantageous within an interorganizational network, high status and having multiple structural holes, can unintentionally increase the risk of these normal accidents. High-status actors often need to differentiate themselves, which might not align with their core responsibilities. For instance, in the airline industry, by focusing on improving other aspects such as comfort and service, high-status airlines may not fully focus on critical safety matters. Conversely, having numerous structural holes can introduce complexity by involving diverse, non-redundant sources of information. The costs linked to high status and many structural holes can shift an organization's attention away from operational details, increasing accident likelihood. Inadequate slack capacity magnifies the impact of high status on accidents as handling differentiation tasks becomes harder without resource flexibility. Conversely, limited slack capacity can mitigate the impact of structural holes, directing actors towards core tasks. The analysis using U.S. airline industry data indicates that accidents are more likely when airlines hold high-status or structural-hole positions in alliance networks. Moreover, we found that insufficient workforce capacity heightens the accident risk tied to high status, while dampening the effect of structural holes. Our study demonstrates that accidents can occur as unintended consequences when organizations pursue relational advantages from supposedly beneficial network positions like status and structural holes within interorganizational alliance networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. federal policy has created, at best, a gap and, at worst, a hostile environment for nonprofits serving refugees. We rely on frameworks of nonprofit-government relationships (institutional voids, structural holes, instrumental/expressive support) to explore government-nonprofit interactions in the refugee domain, and their impact on 34 refugee-serving nonprofits in the U.S. Findings indicate limited expressive and instrumental support for nonprofits and suggest nonprofits must navigate complex, multilevel, environments. Contributions include the suggestion of “intentional” rather than institutional voids, and a new typology of forms (zero, unclaimed, symbolic, or comprehensive) of government support for nonprofits in a problem domain based on whether government’s instrumental and expressive support for nonprofits is high or low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using newly collected data on ties between local politicians in Italy from 1985 onwards, this paper studies the relation between cross-party connections and future career prospects. Exploiting a difference-in-discontinuities design, I find that ruling coalition members connected with the leader of the opposition in local councils are twice as likely to be promoted to the local government. The results are confirmed with a number of placebo exercises. Interestingly, the effect of connections with the leader of the rivals disappears when I consider appointments to boards of state-owned enterprises or to other councils in which the party faces different politicians as opponents. A possible mechanism that may account for these results is that connected politicians act as political brokers and smooth the relationship between government and opposition. Finally, connected politicians are less educated than the average appointed official, indicating that political selection is negatively affected (Besley et al. in Econ J 121(554):F205–F227, 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile application service ecosystems (MASEs) are highly complex systems that involve multiple factors influencing value creation. However, current research on the impact of structural holes (SHs) as an organizational characteristic on value creation in MASE is still insufficient. To address this research gap, this paper proposes a value creation model for MASE and investigates the impact of SH on the value creation of MASE. Moreover, this paper investigates the correlation between SH and diversity, which can facilitate regulating the value creation process in MASE. Finally, we construct a computational experiment, comparing and analyzing how changes in SH affect the value creation of MASE and the correlation between SH and diversity. The findings of this study can be used to induce the evolution of MASE and promote its value maximization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal networks can be conceptualized not only as actual social structures surrounding individuals but also as cognitive social structures stemming from individuals' perceptions of those relationships. Yet most research on social networks adopts either a structural or a perceptual perspective. In this article, I blend these two traditions to examine how actual and perceptual brokerage jointly determine innovation performance. I hypothesize that while actual brokerage benefits individuals by exposing them to nonredundant information, socially perceived brokerage—being perceived to bridge groups regardless of one's actual network configuration—may trigger skepticism of brokers' motives that could hinder their ability to innovate. Thus I argue that others' perceptions of a focal actor's brokerage opportunities constitute a critical contingency underlying network advantage. Using a multimethod approach, including a field study in a global consulting firm and a preregistered experiment, I find that individuals spanning structural holes achieve higher innovation performance when their colleagues perceive them to have closed rather than open networks, and that trust is the underlying mechanism driving this effect. Integrating insights from cognitive social structures into structural holes theory, this study illustrates the importance of considering both structural and perceptual mechanisms in modeling how individuals reap the benefits of brokerage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural holes are believed to be a source of good ideas, important inputs for exploratory innovation. Nevertheless, firms that span structural holes may not always be good learners, as their learning orientation also matters. Drawing upon organisational learning theory and the knowledge recombination perspective, we argue that cohesive knowledge base plays a contingent role in the association between spanning structural holes (SSH) and new knowledge exploration (NKE). Based on panel data of Chinese automakers, our results indicate that global cohesion of knowledge base positively moderates the relationship between SSH and NKE. In contrast, local cohesion of the knowledge base negatively moderates the positive effect of SSH on NKE. These findings advance our understanding of the nuanced role of cohesive knowledge base in learning from brokering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the view of knowledge recombination, this study investigates the relationships between the proportion of new collaborators and the number and impact of inventions of focal inventors, and further investigates two contingencies namely, the direct tie strength between focal inventors and their new collaborators, and the focal inventors’ structural holes in a collaboration network, that moderate the aforementioned relationships. Hypotheses are tested by negative binomial regression model based on Huawei’s patent data filed in China during 2004–2013. The results show that the proportion of new collaborators has positive effects on the number and impact of inventions of focal inventors, the direct tie strength enhances the aforementioned relationships, the structural holes in a collaboration network do not affect the aforementioned relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Connecting otherwise disconnected individuals and groups—spanning structural holes—can earn social network brokers faster promotions, higher remuneration, and enhanced creativity. Organizations also benefit through improved communication and coordination from these connections between knowledge silos. Neglected in prior research, however, has been theory and evidence concerning the psychological costs to individuals of engaging in brokering activities. We build new theory concerning the extent to which keeping people separated (i.e., tertius separans brokering) relative to bringing people together (i.e., tertius iungens brokering) results in burnout and in abusive behavior toward coworkers. Engagement in tertius separans brokering, relative to tertius iungens brokering, we suggest, burdens people with onerous demands while limiting access to resources necessary to recover. Across three studies, we find that tertius separans leads to abusive behavior of others, mediated by an increased experience of burnout on the part of the broker. First, we conducted a five-month field study of burnout and abusive behavior, with brokering assessed via email exchanges among 1,536 university employees in South America. Second, we examined time-separated data on self-reported brokering behaviors, burnout, and coworker abuse among 242 employees of U.S. organizations. Third, we experimentally investigated the effects of the two types of brokering behaviors on burnout and abusive behavior for 273 employed adults. The results across three studies showed that tertius separans brokering puts the broker at an increased risk of burnout and subsequent abusive behavior toward others in the workplace. Funding: E. Quintane received funding from Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: We examine how crisis conditions affect the link between structural holes and organizational performance. Since brokerage offers early access to diverse perspectives and autonomy in exchange relations, the benefits of brokerage should rise when crises erupt. However, evidence on the subject has been inconclusive, raising the question of whether crisis actually imposes a boundary condition on structural hole theory. Using longitudinal data on investment banks, and exploiting the 2000 dot.com crisis as well as the 2008 financial crisis, we explore whether crises moderate the favorable effect of brokerage on performance. Our results reveal that only exclusive, and not shared, structural holes are advantageous for performance, as they facilitate ambidextrous responses to crisis. Implications for brokerage theory and new research on crisis are discussed. Managerial Summary: Crises, in the form of pandemics, wars, or market crashes, affect the relationship between a firm's position in collaboration networks and its future performance. Our analyses bring into focus a finding of interest to managers of firms operating as brokers in these networks: when a crisis erupts, a firm that serves as the sole bridge between its otherwise disconnected collaborators performs especially well. Uncontested by other intermediaries, such firms achieve a better mix of search and stability, and thus higher performance, amidst crisis. These advantages disappear when other intermediaries are present. This implies that firms frequently exposed to crisis may benefit from constructing entry barriers around their bridging positions in collaboration networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a parsimonious model of network formation with introductions in the presence of intermediation rents. Introductions allow two nodes to form a new connection on favorable terms with the help of a common neighbor. The decision to form links via introductions is subject to a trade-off between the gains from having a direct connection at lower cost and the potential losses for the introducer from lower intermediation rents. When nodes take advantage of introductions, stable networks tend to exhibit a minimum amount of clustering. At the same time, intermediary nodes have incentives to protect their position, and stable networks can exhibit nodes exploiting structural holes, that is, bridges across otherwise unconnected parts of the network earning intermediation rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power battery recycling (PBR) has triggered profound changes in the industrial chain of electric vehicles (EVs). The PBR innovation network provides information channels and resource conditions for enterprises, but the mechanism of its impact on the synergistic innovation benefits and sustainable development ability of EV and PBR enterprises still needs further exploration. In this paper, we collect patent data for PBR from 2012 to 2020, identify the structural characteristics of innovation networks, and construct a synergy game model for PBR technology, aiming to analyze the synergistic effect of network embedding and knowledge spillover in PBR enterprises on technological innovation. First, we find that the PBR innovation network exhibits the small-world effect, which has a double-edged sword effect on technological cooperation innovation. Second, structural holes benefits of the main body of PBR technological innovation have a significant impact on cooperation innovation behavior. Third, the enhancement of the relevance and deep complementarity of knowledge cooperation is sufficient to make up for the input cost of PBR technological cooperation innovation, with additional benefits created by the increase in the output of structural holes. However, companies tend to be more inclined toward non-cooperative innovation as the knowledge spillover effect of the innovation network increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open innovation communities (OICs) have been expanding the scope of enterprises’ innovation activities, and their effective functioning hinges on the ongoing knowledge contributions from users. However, the research on the impact of contractual governance mechanisms on users’ knowledge-contribution behaviors has yet to be further explored. In this study, we provide a comprehensive definition of implicit contracts in OICs, clarify their dimensions, investigate their impact on users’ knowledge contribution, and explore how users’ network positions moderate these effects. Subsequently, we employ a questionnaire survey combined with web crawling to collect user data and empirically test the theoretical hypotheses. The results demonstrate that both user-user implicit contracts (i.e., user reciprocity, user trust, and user recognition) and user-community implicit contracts (i.e., community incentives, community trust, and community support) significantly and positively affect user knowledge contribution. Furthermore, users’ structural holes exert a significant positive moderating effect on these relationships. Notably, the moderating effect of network centrality is only significant in the influence of user-community implicit contracts, and not significant in the relationship between user-user implicit contracts and user knowledge contribution. The insights derived from this study offer valuable practical guidance for effectively operating and managing OICs.

Background: Limited studies have explored the relationship among cross-organizational and multidisciplinary medical staff. Aim: The present study conducted an in-depth examination and validation of the influence of complex cross-organization and multidisciplinary social networks on the job performance of team members. Method: Multi-level hierarchical regression analysis was used to assess the impact of the centrality and the characteristics of structural holes in social networks (i.e., advice network, information network, friendship network, and trust network) on job performance. Results: The in-closeness centrality of the advice network (β = 0.176, p < 0.05) and the betweenness centrality of the trust network (β = 0.126, p < 0.05) had positive effects on task performance. The in-closeness centrality of the advice network (β = 0.226, p < 0.05; β = 0.213, p < 0.05) and the CI (1 − constraint index) of the friendship network (β = 0.130, p < 0.05; β = 0.132, p < 0.05) had positive effects on contextual performance and overall job performance. Meanwhile, the out-closeness centrality of the information network (β = −0.368, p < 0.01; β = −0.334, p < 0.05) had a negative effect on contextual performance and overall job performance. Conclusions: This study investigates the relationship between healthcare professionals' job performance and their social networks, taking into account the perspectives of cross-organizational and multidisciplinary teams. The study contributes to the effort of breaking down barriers between different disciplines and organizations, and ultimately, improving the quality of healthcare delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old adage "it is not what you know, but who you know" suggests that in connection(s) lies the key(s) to success. But what does success mean, and for how long will it last? What does the choice of partner, and network connections say about the performance implications of contracting, particularly in the case of a public–private partnership? With countries such as the United States accounting for the world's largest buyer (of any and everything), several suppliers eagerly await their opportunity to contract with large government entities, but is it always a wise decision? Such questions remain largely unexplored and require answers. This research provides answers to these questions by integrating congruence, and network theory to investigate how government contracting impacts private suppliers' financial performance and how suppliers' supply chain network connections moderate this relationship. Results using panel data over several years suggest that while contracting with government bolsters' short‐term financial performance (ROA), it negatively affects long‐term supplier performance (Tobin's Q). In addition, the prominence of a firm's connections (i.e., who they know) and the composition of these connections enhances the performance gains, highlighting the critical role of a firm's network structure on their performance within the contracting relationship. We therefore find that the power of supply chain network connections enhances the short‐term positive effects and mitigates the long‐term adverse effects when contracting with government buyers, as the relationship is not always universally positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades, government agencies have been under increasing institutional pressures to improve performance while engaging the public in decision-making processes. This study aims to explore how agency managers perceive institutional pressures and how these pressures shape their network behaviors for interagency collaboration. Specifically, this research focuses on structural holes, which refer to network positions that connect otherwise-disconnected agencies. Drawing on the literature of public management, citizen participation, and social networks, this research develops a theoretical model of an agency's network position and proposes hypotheses. This research tested two hypotheses using network and survey data collected from agency managers in the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2009. The results of the study showed that agencies under greater performance pressure tended to locate themselves in interagency networks with structural holes, while agencies facing greater citizen participation demands tended to embed themselves in interagency networks with fewer structural holes. This implies that performance pressure drives city agencies to seek competitive structural positions in interagency networks, while citizen participation demands lead agencies to locate in dense interagency networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking some enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta of China as samples, this paper discusses the impact of coupling open innovation on innovation performance and the moderating role of network position and knowledge integration ability. The results show that there is a positive correlation between coupling open innovation and innovation performance. Both network centrality and structural holes positively regulate this relationship. In the knowledge integration ability, the two elements of socialization ability and cooperation-coordination ability also play a positive moderating role. The research results enrich the literature of coupling open innovation and help to provide theoretical reference for enterprises to implement coupling innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex scientific questions often require collaboration between scientists to access scientific instruments (deS. Price, Res Policy 13:3–20, 1984; Shrum et al. 2007, Structures of scientific collaboration, The MIT Press, 2007), knowledge and social capital from scientists outside of their immediate networks (Burt, Am J Sociol 110:349–399, 2004; Collins, Tacit and explicit knowledge, University of Chicago Press, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo8461024.html, 2012; Granovetter, Am J Sociol 78:1360–1380, 1973; Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy (Repr. (with corr.)). Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962). Synchrotron radiation facilities are a unique case to explore this type of collaboration, as external scientists going to the facility to do their ordinary research work are common. These external users use complex scientific instrumentation that could require the additional accumulated knowledge of internal scientists and staff more familiar with the technical and social aspects of the instruments. These collaborations sometimes result in a co-authored publication with internal staff, employed in these facilities. However, this is not always the case. Data from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) shows that most often, external scientists do not include internal staff in the co-author fields of the subsequent publication from scientific work done in one (or more) instruments in these facilities. Instrument collaboration networks are constructed and analysed over the period 2000–2018 for the different scientific instruments within the facility. A strong relationship between the level of external collaboration and the structure of the networks is found and explored. The results provide further insight into factors that shape collaboration and knowledge transfer, also relevant to policy makers and facility managers seeking to promote these activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has shown that firms' ego network configurations—i.e., structural holes or network closure—help them achieve superior innovation outcomes. However, little is known about how the stability of the firm's ego-network composition affects the firm's innovation. In this paper, we investigate the outcomes of ego-network stability in an alliance context, arguing that stability actually reduces innovation for the focal firm. We further investigate two contingencies—namely, the structural holes the focal firm spans and the geographic concentration of its inventive activities—that moderate the detrimental innovation effects of ego network stability. Focal firms can limit the negative effects of ego-network stability on innovation by spanning structural holes in their alliance portfolios, whereas the negative effects are worsened when the focal firms' inventive activities are geographically concentrated in a single country. We empirically test our hypotheses using 198 biopharmaceutical firms headquartered in the United States over a 21-year period from 1985 to 2005. Our results support our predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As teams become prevalent in contemporary science, how to establish collaborations is key to tomorrow's breakthrough, which has broad implications to individual scientists, institutions, and funding agencies. In this paper, we focus on the association between collaboration networks and scientists producing novel and disruptive research, based on the publication data from the American Physical Society. In particular, we focus on the role of spanning structural holes on producing novel and disruptive research. Our primary finding is that scientists whose collaboration networks span over structural holes in their collaboration networks not only produce more novel and disruptive research, but also have higher chance to produce novel and disruptive research. Although both male and female scientists benefit from structural holes, we find suggestive evidence that female researchers benefit more. This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between structural holes and novel/disruptive research in the field of physics, which has policy implications for nurturing scientists and developing science policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jiayuan Liu,1 Yilin Zhu,2 Jianzhou Yan1 1School of International Pharmaceutical Business, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 2Human Resource Department, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Yilin Zhu; Jianzhou Yan, Email phd12jl@mail.wbs.ac.uk; 1020122251@cpu.edu.cnBackground: CSR performance is significantly affected by the degree of knowledge exchange. As Chinese firms have increasingly engaged in CSR activities, significant attention has been paid to how groups of stakeholders share and exchange knowledge resources strategically to increase their CSR performance. A guanxi network is an important facilitator in the mobilization of knowledge in CSR activities. This study explores how stakeholders strategically leverage their guanxi and structural holes to affect the efficacy of knowledge exchange to increase CSR performance.Methods: A mixed-methods research approach was employed to gather data from the stakeholders of a Chinese digital firm iStone. Specifically, 325 questionnaires and social network analyses were collected as well as 55 semi-structured interviews were conducted to test the hypotheses.Results: As a result, structural holes impede knowledge exchange among stakeholders in their guanxi network, but guanxi moderates this impeding effect. In addition, knowledge exchange promotes CSR performance.Conclusion: By developing a mechanism to reveal how stakeholders’ structural hole filling behavior influences their CSR performance, our study places an emphasis on reciprocal resource exchange which generates several implications for CSR performance enhancement. In addition, by demonstrating how structural hole controllers’ become ‘structural hole fillers’ under the moderating influence of guanxi, this study recognizes the cultural contingency that conditions the effect of structural holes on knowledge exchange. This study also suggests stakeholders to cultivate guanxi with their network members who own yet-to-be-filled structural holes to fill their holes and increase firms sustainable performance by giving renqing, returning renqing, earning mianzi and giving mianzi.Keywords: structural holes, guanxi, knowledge exchange, CSR performance, a stakeholder network

Corporate alliances have become an important way for firms to share the resources and costs of innovation. However, whether corporate technology alliances can effectively enhance the ambidextrous green innovation (AGI) capabilities of firms is a question that still needs to be answered. Building networks of corporate technology alliances based on joint patent application data from the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) for the period of 2015–2019, this study investigated the impact of network centrality and structural hole characteristics on exploitative green innovation (IGI) and exploratory green innovation (RGI) from the perspective of internal and external pressures. The empirical results showed that (1) network centrality and structural holes could promote AGI and that the impact on IGI was greater than that on RGI. However, an examination based on lagged effects found a greater impact on RGI. (2) The impact of alliance networks on AGI was positively moderated by internal and external pressures. (3) There were complementary effects between the internal and external pressures. Our study emphasized that it was important to balance AGI to win short-term and long-term competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of social network analysis has focused on learning in communication networks among collaborators in which actors can make direct inquiries to seek clarification about alters' behavior or views. But such inquiries are typically not possible among rivals. Learning among rivals occurs primarily in observational networks in which actors must make inferences of the logics guiding their competitors' behavior in markets. What promotes interpretive advantage in these networks of observation? We combine multimarket competition theory and structural hole theory to highlight the benefits of multiple exposure to disconnected competitors. In network-analytic terms we suggest that competitors' interpretive advantage lies in non-redundant dyadic closure, especially when dealing with uncertain market niches. Dyadic closure, measuring ego's exposure to her direct competitors in multiple markets, increases the ability to interpret competitors' observed behavior. Redundancy, measuring the extent to which ego's competitors are exposed to each other, reduces the diversity of views to which ego is exposed and hence the capacity to cope with uncertainty. We test our hypothesis by analyzing the network of competition created by securities analysts and the stocks they cover. We find that estimates issued by an analyst with multiple exposures to disconnected competitors are more accurate when confronted by more challenging, high risk, high reward, volatile stocks. Shifting the focus from direct social ties to the cognitive ties that link actors based on the objects, problems, or issues to which they pay attention, we develop a new approach to network analysis. Observation networks, we argue, operate neither as pipes nor as prisms but can be better conceived as scopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this note, I derive simple formulas based on the adjacency matrix of a network to compute measures associated with Ronald S. Burt's structural holes (effective size, redundancy, local constraint, and constraint), together with the measure called improved structural holes introduced in 2017. This can help to see these measures within a unified computation framework because they can all be expressed in matricial form. These formulas can also be used to define naïve algorithms based on matrix operations for their computation. Such naïve algorithms can be used for small- and medium-sized networks, where exploiting the sparsity of the matrices and efficient triangle listing techniques are not necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much is known about how brokerage positions in social networks help individuals improve their own performance, we know little about the impact of brokers on those around them. Our study investigates brokerage as a public good. We focus on the positive and negative externalities of specific kinds of brokers: "hubs," who act as the main interfaces between members of their own network community ("network neighbors") and members of other communities. Because hubs access diverse knowledge and perspectives, they create positive externalities by providing novel ideas to their network neighbors. But hubs also generate negative externalities: extensive cross-community activity puts heavy demands on their attention and time, so that hubs may not provide strong commitment to their neighbors' projects. Because of this, network neighbors experience different externalities from hubs depending on their own formal role in projects. We use insights from our fieldwork in the French television game show industry to illustrate the mechanisms at play, and we test our theory with archival data on this industry from 1995 to 2012. Results suggest that the positive externalities of hubs help their neighbors contribute to the success of projects when these neighbors hold creativity-focused roles; yet the negative externalities of hubs hinder their neighbors' contributions when they hold efficiency-focused roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the mechanisms underpinning returns to brokerage positions by considering the role of individuals’ strategic orientation toward brokering. We conceptualize individuals’ strategic orientations in terms of arbitraging versus collaborating behaviors enacted when occupying a brokerage position. Leveraging a novel data set collected in a global consumer product company, we theorize and find evidence for the fact that arbitraging and collaborating orientations have differential effects on the relationship between brokerage and performance, significantly impacting on individuals’ ability to extract value from brokerage. We discuss the implications of these findings for the structural analysis of informal networks in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharing members with other online communities can be problematic for community responsiveness, as less member time and attention become available for the focal community. However, member time and attention spent externally have the potential to generate knowledge that bolsters the focal community’s responsiveness. Little is known about when member time and attention spent externally become such generative resources. Building on and extending the knowledge collaboration theory of online communities, we examine the network conditions that enable the generative effect of member time and attention spent externally on community responsiveness. We propose a contingent model wherein a focal community’s external bridging (the extent of bridging nonredundant communities) and internal bonding (the extent of cohesion among members) jointly moderate the effects of member time and attention spent externally on community responsiveness. We theorize that external bridging provides the opportunity to access novel external knowledge and that internal bonding improves the motivation to share knowledge to assist others. Our results show that member time and attention spent externally have a positive effect on community responsiveness only in the presence of both external bridging and internal bonding. The study has important implications for advancing the boundary conditions regarding generative resources and online knowledge collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do global value chains (GVCs) affect a firm's innovation impact? Working as international communities, GVCs are rich in knowledge and resource interchange. The prior literature has focused on knowledge absorbing or internal knowledge transfer within firms for in-house innovation. However, scant research has focused on promoting innovation across interfirm networks in a GVC context. This article develops a new concept of interfirm transformative capacity as a firm's ability to transfer developed technology knowledge across time, space, and firm networks. In this article, we explore three mechanisms of interfirm transformative capacity in GVCs: 1) choosing knowledge intermediaries, 2) transmitting and maintaining knowledge over time and space, and 3) reactivating and synthesizing knowledge. We predict that engagement in a lead firm's GVC, structural holes, and network centrality will affect a focal firm's innovation impact as a result of interfirm transformative capacity. Integrator suppliers have higher innovation impacts than modular suppliers. To test these three mechanisms, we build a novel dataset from a five-year panel of Apple suppliers and their patent impacts. The results support our hypotheses related to the mechanisms of interfirm transformative capacity. Our theoretical elaboration and empirical findings have significant implications for innovation policy within, and governance of, GVCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital concept has become popular over the past decades. What is not known in literature and worth investigating is the network designs and nature that enhance the development of new learning ideas and knowledge creation. The aim of the paper is to examine network structure dimensions, namely centrality (bonding) and structural holes (bridging or looser ties) of social capital formed within higher education networks that stimulate the development of new ideas and knowledge creation of the participants in the networks across multiple domains of science. This study employs negative binomial regression on a sample of participants within a higher education network to predict the development of new ideas and knowledge creation. The results show that the different features of social capital dimensions influence the development of new ideas and knowledge creation of the participants in the networks differently. Specifically, the study reveals that the brokerage network appears to be more relevant than cohesion in the Ghanaian higher education institution networks. When knowledge creation is decomposed into different fields of science, Health Science is found to be the most productive. The decomposing of the knowledge creation into different fields of science remains a value of this study.

The prevalence of online user-generated content has attracted great interest in textual sentiment analysis, which provides a low-cost yet effective way to discern consumers and markets. A mainstream of sentiment analysis is to construct a classification model with Bag-of-Words (BoW) features, but the large vocabulary base and skewed distribution of term frequency consistently pose research challenges, which is made even worse by the limited valid sentiment labels. In light of this, in this paper, we propose a novel method called Structural Holes based Sentiment Classifier (SHSC) for BoW-based sentiment classification. The key to SHSC is to reinforce the classification contribution of semantically rich words with clear-cut sentiment polarity. To this end, a word co-occurrence network is carefully constructed to represent both high and low frequency words. The work to find classification-inefficient words is then transformed into the identification of so-called bridge nodes that occupy the positions of structural holes in the network. Two interesting measures, i.e., information advantage rank and control advantage weight, are then designed elaborately for this purpose, which are based on the proposed sentiment-label propagation and short-path computation algorithms, respectively. SHSC finally feeds this information as the key regularizers into a simple regression model to guide parametric learning. Extensive experiments on real-world text datasets demonstrate the advantage of our SHSC model over competitive benchmarks, particularly when sentiment labels are scarce. The effectiveness of uncovering structural holes for sentiment classification is also carefully verified with some robustness checks and demonstration cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the behavioral theory of the firm, we empirically examine how starting strategies and syndication networks can influence venture capital (VC) firms' problemistic search. We propose that: (a) depending on a VC's strategic starting point, that is, the VC's extent of specialization, the directionality of problemistic search may change to either expanding or contracting search activities; and (b) depending on search direction, structural holes in syndication networks can either impede or facilitate the problemistic search process. In a sample of U.S. VC firms, we find results consistent with our predictions, which have important implications for entrepreneurship and organizational strategy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although few studies have explored predictors of congregational vitality (i.e., ministry-oriented strengths, not attendance or growth) and sustainability, inter-organizational relationships matter for organizational wellbeing because of their impact on trust, cooperation, and information access. However, investigating the relationship between social capital and congregational vitality and sustainability has not previously been possible due to data limitations. Purpose: This article investigates the extent to which brokerage, or bridging together otherwise disconnected congregations, predicts congregational vitality and sustainability in an inter-congregational network of religious congregations from eight counties encompassing and surrounding a major metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. Research on social networks between organizations suggests that brokerage can have positive, negative, and curvilinear relationships with organizational outcomes, and this literature does not provide a clear expectation for how brokerage might relate with congregational vitality and sustainability. Methods: OLS regressions are used to predict three forms of vitality and two forms of sustainability using inverse network constraint, a measure of brokerage, as well as a variety of control variables. Statistical significance is estimated through permutation tests, which account for the relationships between congregations. Results: Results indicate that brokerage is positively associated with community vitality and that staff/volunteer sustainability is highest for congregations with moderate levels of brokerage. Brokerage does not predict spiritual vitality, relational vitality, or financial sustainability. Conclusions and Implications: This article has practical implications for congregations. Bridging together otherwise disconnected congregations can provide a wide range of ideas, resources, and opportunities, and these benefits can help congregations seeking to minister in their communities. In addition, moderate levels of brokerage can provide more diverse information and resources as well as a supportive, trusting, and cooperative environment. This combination of benefits may be helpful for congregations to disclose challenges with and to seek resources related to staff/volunteer sustainability. In addition, this article contributes to the fields of: congregational studies through exploring predictors of congregational vitality and sustainability; sociology of religion through expanding research using social network analysis; inter-organizational networks, whose research on social capital and organizational outcomes is both complicated and conflicting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how prior relationships between construction industry project teams influence work outcomes. Drawing on social network literature, we theorize that factors like the frequency of partner interactions, resource requirements, and level of competition impact performance. Using a dataset of public infrastructure projects in the State of California, we test how network structures (structural holes and Simmelian ties) affect project performance. Longitudinal network analyses reveal a strong positive effect of cliques on project performance in the construction industry. Even when tested under varying conditions of stress—competition and access to valuable resources—the positive effect of cliques remained intact. This study links the social networking theory to construction cost overruns and shows that cliques between contractors and subcontractors affect project performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many empirical applications of structural holes theory rest on the assumption that there is a close relationship between network position, or 'structural diversity,' and access to complementary information, or 'information diversity.' Constraint, and to a lesser extent efficiency, are two measures that are typically used as measures of structural diversity, which is in turn used as a proxy for information diversity. In this article, we question the assumed relationship between structural and information diversity at the core of brokerage theory. We collected metadata for 864,450 journal articles from the Web of Science database, identified 1,192,488 authors, and constructed 13 different measures of information diversity that are based on the text data and co-authorship network structure. We correlated each of these measures with Burt's constraint and efficiency as measures of structural diversity, finding only weak correlations and low R2 values. Efficiency performs slightly better than constraint, however the strongest correlation was 0.56, corresponding to an R2 of 0.3163. Furthermore, the variance in this relationship is non-uniform and indicates that, aside from the poor correlation, other factors are likely important mediators to the relationship between efficiency and information diversity. We argue that this shows that, even in the best cases, neither constraint nor efficiency should be used as proxies for information diversity and make suggestions for more diligent treatment of information in structural holes and brokerage research. • Evaluates the assumption in structural holes theory that structural diversity is a good proxy for information diversity. • Uses data on collaborations among more than 1 million scientists from 25 research fields. • Constructs 13 network-based measures of information diversity. • Finds that structural diversity is not a good proxy for information diversity. • Researchers should use context-appropriate measures of information diversity rather than structural diversity as a proxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]