Network analysis is one of the most promising currents in sociological research, and yet it has never been subjected to a theoretically informed assessment and critique. This article outlines the theoretical presuppositions of network analysis. It also distinguishes between three different (implicit) models in the network literature of the interrelations of social structure, culture, and human agency. It concludes that only a strategy for historical explanation that synthesizes social structural and cultural analysis can adequately explain the formation, reproduction, and transformation of networks themselves. The article sketches the broad contours of such a theoretical synthesis in the conclusion.

Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency

This article presents a two-faceted (structural and cultural) approach to organizational learning. The structural facet focuses on organizational learning mechanisms, which are institutionalized st...

Organizational Learning Mechanisms A Structural and Cultural Approach to Organizational Learning

Much research in the last two decades has demonstrated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision making and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be interpreted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experimenter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the model response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implications of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance errors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations underlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Unexpected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?-Open Peer Commentary-Differences, games, and pluralism

Attempting to formalize Granovetter's embeddedness argument, rational choice theorists have viewed social relationships as repeated games. This article argues that role theory would provide a better metatheoretical perspective on embeddedness. A preliminary sketch of role theory suggests a promising theoretical methodology. To illustrate, I construct a repeated‐game model in which the players are not individuals but roles (a profit‐maximizing “businessperson” and nonstrategic “friend”); the businessperson role acts strategically in light of a metatule that governs intrapersonal role switching.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/210003

Toward a role-theoretic conception of embeddedness

Knowledge about work processes is a prerequisite for performing work. We investigate whether a certain mode of knowledge, knowing-why, affects work performance and whether the knowledge held by different work roles matters for work performance. We operationalize these questions in the specific domain of data production processes and data quality. We analyze responses from three roles within data production processes, data collectors, data custodians, and data consumers, to investigate the effects of different knowledge modes held by different work roles on data quality. We find that work roles and the mode of knowledge do matter. Specifically, data collectors with why-knowledge about the data production process contribute to producing better quality data. Overall, knowledge of data collectors is more critical than that of data custodians.

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Knowing-Why About Data Processes and Data Quality

Preface and acknowledgements 1. Rationality 2. States that are essentially by-products 3. Sour grapes 4. Belief, bias and ideology References Index.

Rationally Inaccessible Rationality@@@Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality.

Learning from (and about) March@@@Organizational Learning: Papers in Honor of (and by) James G. March. Organization Science, Volume 2.

List of Figures and TablesAcknowledgmentsList of AcronymsIntroduction: Expecting the Unexpected3Ch. 1The Origins of Accidents11Ch. 2Nuclear Weapons Safety during the Cuban Missile Crisis53Ch. 3Intelligence and Warning during the Cuban Missile Crisis117Ch. 4Redundancy and Reliability: The 1968 Thule Bomber Accident156Ch. 5Learning by Trial and Terror204Ch. 6The Limits of Safety250Index281

John F. Padgett

Papers

Rationally Inaccessible Rationality@@@Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality.

Learning from (and about) March@@@Organizational Learning: Papers in Honor of (and by) James G. March. Organization Science, Volume 2.

The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons.