The study analyzes the social structure of competition. It addresses the consequences of voids in relational and resource networks. Competitive behavior can be understood in terms of player access to "holes" in the social structure of the competitive arena. Those "structural holes" are network...

Economic sociology is a rapidly expanding field, applying sociology's core insight--that individuals behave according to scripts that are tied to social roles--to economic behavior. It places homo economicus (that tried-and-true fictive actor who is completely rational, acts only out of...

What does it mean for a private enterprise in China to be embedded in a family? Our purpose here is twofold: (1) use social network analysis to describe what it means for a firm to be embedded in a family, (2) reveal from the application a new kind of firm, not family, yet akin to family. Armed...

We accomplish three tasks here. (1) We highlight the lack of cross-fertilization between research on network theory and the resource-based view of the firm (RBV). (2) We sketch by analogy what we believe should be a productive bridge between network brokerage as a core concept in network theory...

It is well known in economics, law, and sociology that reputation costs in a closed network give insiders a feeling of being protected from bad behavior in their relations with one another. A person accustomed to doing business within a closed network is therefore likely to feel at unusual risk...

Two basic approaches to network analysis are compared in terms of the network subgroups each produces. The relational approach, developing from traditional sociometry, focuses on relations between actors (individuals, groups, or corporations) and aggregates actors connected by cohesive bonds...