Organizational Social Network Research: Core Ideas and Key Debates

{{Summary The review concludes with discussing the five most controversial topics driving the stream of research forward including the role of actors characteristics, agency, and cognition, as well as cooperation versus competition, and boundary specification.
 * title=Organizational Social Network Research: Core Ideas and Key Debates
 * authors=Martin Kilduff, Daniel J. Brass
 * url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19416520.2010.494827
 * tags=social network, organizational social network, literature review
 * summary=The paper is a literature review on organizational social network research. It defines the core of research stream as comprising of four main ideas as the following.
 * 1) Social relations between actors: Social network research involves the study of a set of actors (individuals, organizations, etc.) and their relations that connects or separate them. Although sociological approach to social networks believes in structural determinism, organizational approach does not limit itself to investigating relations and extends it to individual properties as well.
 * 2) Embeddedness: refers to the extent to which economic transactions occur within the context of social relationships. Social network research believes that economic decisions and transactions are embedded in personal relationships. It is also mentioned that actors are embedded within a network to the degree that they have a preference for repeated transactions with network members. Embedde ties are characterized by having higher levels of trust, transfer of richer information, and greater problem solving capabilities.
 * 3) Structural patterning: The social network research assumes that beneath the complexity of relations there are patterns of connectivity; it looks for pattern with in absent ties, as well as within the present ones. Density of network structure is among the factors highly investigated. The denser the network, the more redundancy is there for flowing information through paths. Networks with higher density would have clear norms defining and enforcing proper behaviour. Network embeddedness not only looks at the structure of the social relations, but also examines its content as well. Tie strength is a function of time, intimacy, emotional intensity, and reciprocity. String-tie networks are supposed to be dense networks valuable for transferring complex knowledge. Weak ties are likely to give access to more diverse and useful  knowledge resources.
 * 4)  Utility of network connections: This last core idea of the research stream refers to the opportunities and constraints brought about by social networks affecting individual and group level outcomes. Structural hole perspective compares the utility effect of two different network types around the focal actor, one involving hole and the other involving closure. It argues that the actors with closed networks are disadvantaged in terms of information and control in comparison with actors whose network is rich in structural holes. Contacts in closed networks are supposed to have higher redundancy, thus less utility.

Comments
The authors have done a very thorough review of the extant literature and organized it around the four core ideas of the network research. It has called for departing from initial structural deterministic views to pursue the recent efforts in incorporating actor characteristics, agency and cognition. The review is not extended on the various perspectives addressing the issue. }}
 * journal=The Academy of Management Annals
 * pub_date=2010
 * subject=Business