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The Network Paradigm in Organizational Research: A Review and Typology

Stephen P. Borgatti, +1 more
- 01 Dec 2003 - 
- Vol. 29, Iss: 6, pp 991-1013
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TLDR
This paper reviewed and analyzed the emerging network paradigm in organizational research and developed a set of dimensions along which network studies vary, including direction of causality, levels of analysis, explanatory goals, and explanatory mechanisms.
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This article is published in Journal of Management.The article was published on 2003-12-01 and is currently open access. It has received 2845 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Organizational network analysis.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Healthcare IT Adoption: An Analysis of Knowledge Transfer in Socioeconomic Networks

TL;DR: It is shown that knowledge flow in provider networks plays a key role in fostering technology diffusion in initial years, allowing the contagion effect to set in sooner for quicker adoption in later years, therefore, recent efforts at multiple levels to form integrated healthcare delivery networks should accelerate HIT adoption.
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Understanding (in)formal learning in an academic development programme: A social network perspective

TL;DR: The authors triangulated social network analysis with qualitative free exercise responses and found that participants developed on average 4.00 internal and 3.63 external relations, and discussed teaching 128 times per year with externals.
Journal ArticleDOI

Talent Management and Career Development: What it Takes to Get Promoted

TL;DR: This paper investigated managerial skills that are essential for managers' job promotion and found that a manager's own experience, expertise, and network size positively affect promotion odds, while strong colleagues decrease promotion odds.
Journal ArticleDOI

Social support timing and persistence in nascent entrepreneurship: exploring when instrumental and emotional support is most effective

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how the timing of social support, both emotional and instrumental support, affects entrepreneurial persistence of nascent entrepreneurs and found that emotional support is more relevant earlier on during venture development, while instrumental support is most relevant for entrepreneurs who begin their businesses in earlier life stages.
Journal ArticleDOI

Network Structure, Collaborative Context, and Individual Creativity:

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose that the level of collaboration in a network can be independent from that network's structural characteristics, such that it moderates the effects of closed and brokering network positions on the acquisition of knowledge that supports creativity.
References
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Book

Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

TL;DR: This work has shown that legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice is not confined to midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, non-drinking alcoholics and the like.
Book

Diffusion of Innovations

TL;DR: A history of diffusion research can be found in this paper, where the authors present a glossary of developments in the field of Diffusion research and discuss the consequences of these developments.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Strength of Weak Ties

TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another, and the impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored.
Book ChapterDOI

The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them, and describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative.
Book

Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity

TL;DR: Identity in practice, modes of belonging, participation and non-participation, and learning communities: a guide to understanding identity in practice.
Frequently Asked Questions (8)
Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "The network paradigm in organizational research: a review and typology" ?

In this paper, the authors review and analyze the emerging network paradigm in organizational research. The authors begin with a conventional review of recent research organized around recognized research streams. Next, the authors analyze this research, developing a set of dimensions along which network studies vary, including direction of causality, levels of analysis, explanatory goals, and explanatory mechanisms. The authors use the latter two dimensions to construct a 2-by-2 table cross-classifying studies of network consequences into four canonical types: structural social capital, social access to resources, contagion, and environmental shaping. 

In addition, the authors have proposed a typology of network research, which cross-classifies network studies according to the classic dimensions of explanatory mechanisms and explanatory goals or styles. What is new here is that this seemingly arcane distinction may be traceable to different underlying conceptions of how ties work ( girders vs. flows ), and applies to all kinds of network research, including distinguishing between the two major variants of social capital theory. 

The dimension of explanatory goals/styles distinguishes between an orientation toward modeling variation in performance and other value-laden outcomes, and an orientation toward modeling homogeneity in actor attributes, such as attitudes or practices. 

Recent organizational research on homophily has focused on its effects on group and individual performance outcomes (e.g., Ibarra, 1992; Krackhardt & Stern, 1988; Reagans & Zuckerman, 2001). 

Since sociologists began to dominate network research in the 1970s, the proposition that an actor’s position in a network has consequences for the actor has occupied a central place in network thinking. 

Until networks had legitimacy, there was little point in trying to publish papers on how networks come to be or change over time. 

Social capital studies seek to explain variation in success (i.e., performance or reward) as a function of social ties, whereas diffusion and social influence studies seek to explain homogeneity in actor attitudes, beliefs and practices, also as a function of social ties. 

The authors also note that while the objective is to review current research (primarily the last five years), the authors include older references in order to anchor a stream of work in a research tradition.