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...trays an actor as actively trying to co-opt those with whom it has dependencies. Convergence. Studies of this type seek to explain common attitudes and practices in terms of similar network environments, usually conceptualized as centrality or structural equivalence (e.g., Galaskiewicz & Burt, 1991). Actors are structurally equivalent to the extent they are connected to the same third parties, regardless of whether they are tied to each other (Lorrain &White, 1971). A classic paper in this vein is Erickson’s (1988) use of structural equivalence to explain common attitude formation. Similarly, DiMaggio and Powell (1983, p. 148) andDiMaggio (1986, p. 360) usemeasures of structural equivalence tomodel S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 1005 the notion of organizational isomorphism. The mechanisms generating similarity between two organizations have to dowith sharing the same environments and/or recognition of each other as appropriate role models. In general, studies in the tradition of institutional theory fit here. Contagion. Studies of this type seek to explain shared attitudes, culture, and practice through interaction (e.g., Davis, 1991; Geletkanycz &Hambrick, 1997; Ha...

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... away from individualist, essentialist and atomistic explanations toward more relational, contextual and systemic understandings. The shift can be seen in fields as diverse as literary criticism, in which consideration of literary works as self-contained immutable objects has given way to seeing texts as embedded in a system of meaning references decoded by myriad interacting readers (Barthes, 1977; Kristeva, 1980), and physics, in which there is no hotter topic than modeling the evolution of every kind of network including collaboration in the film industry and co-authorship among academics (Barabasi, 2002; Newman, 2002). ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-617-552-0450; fax: +1-617-552-4230. E-mail address: borgatts@bc.edu (S.P. Borgatti). 0149-2063/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0149-2063(03)00087-4 992 S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 Figure 1. Exponential growth of publications indexed by Sociological Abstracts containing “social network” in the abstract or title. The rapid increase of network research in management creates the need for a review and classification of what is being done in this area. That is the ...

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...Mayo, 2002; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997), mobility (Boxman, De Graaf & Flap, 1991; Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001; Seidel, Polzer & Stewart, 2000), employment (Fernandez, Castilla & Moore, 2000; Krackhardt & Porter, 1985, 1986), individual performance (Baldwin & Bedell, 1997; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 2001; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne & Kraimer, 2001), individual creativity (Burt, 2003; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003), entrepreneurship (Baron & Markman, 2003; Renzulli, Aldrich & Moody, 2000; Shane & Stuart, 2002), and team performance (Hansen, 1999; Tsai, 2001). Detailed reviews are available by Adler and Kwon (2002), Portes (1998), and Lin (2001). While much of the earlier work on these organizational themes generally characterized social capital as ties to resource-filled others, the publication of Burt’s structural holes book (1992) redirected attention to the shape or topology of an actor’s ego-network. Specifically, Burt equates social capital with the lack of ties among an actor’s alters, a condition he names structural holes. He argues that the spanning of structural holes provides the actual mechanism relatingweak ties to positive outcomes inGranovetter’s (1973) strength of weak ties theory. Burt’...

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...vestigate tendencies for respondents to over-report ties to high status individuals (Brewer, 2000;Krebs&Denton, 1997;Webster, 1995) and to see themselves asmore central than others do (Johnson & Orbach, 2002; Kumbasar, Romney & Batchelder, 1994). The social cognition field clearly has much to offer the field of transactive memory, since groups can exploit the knowledge of their members only to the extent that their cognitive maps of ‘who knows what’ and ‘who knows who knows what’ are accurate. Group Processes Awell-established area of research, with roots in classical social psychology (e.g., Allen, 1977; Homans, 1950; Newcomb, 1961), is concerned with how physical proximity, similarity of beliefs and attitudes, amount of interaction, and affective ties are interrelated. For example, in parallel streams of work, Friedkin and Johnsen (1990, 1999) and Carley (1991) have developed network models of how interacting individuals influence each other to produce homogeneity of beliefs. A nice review of the culture-cognition-networks intersection is provided by Kilduff and Corley (2000). For reviews of the effects of proximity on social S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991...

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...antage, in this industry, R&D collaborations provide firms with experience managing ties and access to more diverse sources of information which in turn increase firms’ centrality and their subsequent ties. Knowledge Management The term “knowledge management” may soon disappear as practitioners rush to disassociate themselves from the relatively unsuccessful effort to use technological solutions to help organizations store, share and create new knowledge. The current mantra is that knowledge creation and utilization are fundamentally human and above all social processes (Brown & Duguid, 2000; Davenport & Prusak, 1998). One thread (which suffers from a lack of rigorous empirical research) is based on communities of practice (Brown&Duguid, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Orr, 1996; Tyre & von Hippel, 1997; Wenger, 1998). The basic idea is that new practices and concepts emerge from the interaction of individuals engaged in a joint enterprise; the classic example is members of a functional department, such as claims processors in an insurance firm. The processes in community of practice theory resemble those of traditional social influence theory (Friedkin & Johnsen, 1999), which emphasizes homogeneity of beliefs,...

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...ger, 1991; Orr, 1996; Tyre & von Hippel, 1997; Wenger, 1998). The basic idea is that new practices and concepts emerge from the interaction of individuals engaged in a joint enterprise; the classic example is members of a functional department, such as claims processors in an insurance firm. The processes in community of practice theory resemble those of traditional social influence theory (Friedkin & Johnsen, 1999), which emphasizes homogeneity of beliefs, practices, and attitudes as an outcome. They also overlap with and would strongly benefit from revisiting classic social psychology work (Homans, 1950; Newcomb, 1961) on the processes connecting agreement, similarity and interaction in groups, not to mention network diffusion research (Rice & Aydin, 1991; Rogers, 1995). Another thread is based on transactive memory (Hollingshead, 1998; Moreland, Argote & Krishnan, 1996; Rulke & Galaskiewicz, 2000; Wegner, 1987). Here the notion is that 998 S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 knowledge is distributed in different minds, and to make use of it effectively, individuals need to know who knows what (see social cognition section, below). In addition, Borgatti and...

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...ception of embeddedness as context for economic action. Network Organizations and Organizational Networks Intertwined with the embeddedness literature is the literature on network organization (see Baker & Faulkner, 2002; Podolny & Page, 1998, for reviews). During the 1980s and 1990s, “network organization” (and related terms) became a fashionable description for organizational forms characterized by repetitive exchanges among semi-autonomous organizations that rely on trust and embedded social relationships to protect transactions and reduce their costs (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Eccles, 1981; Jarillo, 1988; Powell, 1990). Much of this research argued that as commerce became more global, hypercompetitive and turbulent, both markets and hierarchies displayed inefficiencies as modes of organizing production (Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990). In their place, a network organizational form emerged that balanced the flexibility of markets with the predictability of traditional hierarchies (Achrol, 1997; Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990; Snow, Miles & Coleman, 1992; see Rice & Gattiker, 2000, for a different view). While there is general agreement on the benefits of this new organizational form, its o...

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... determine when interlocks have the effects they do (Davis & Greve, 1997; Gulati & Westphal, 1999; Haunschild & Beckman, 1998). Joint Ventures and Inter-firm Alliances Over the last twenty years, research on joint ventures and inter-firm alliances has proliferated (for a review, see Gulati, 1998). There appears to be a growing consensus that inter-organizational alliances and joint ventures have significant impacts on firm-level outcomes such as the performance of startups and new firms (Baum&Calabrese, 2000; Stuart, 2000), firm valuations (Das, Sen & Sengupta, 1998), organizational learning (Anand & Khanna, 2000; Kale, Singh & Perlmutter, 2000; Kraatz, 1998; Oliver, 2001), and innovation (Powell, Koput & Smith-Doerr, 1996). S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 997 Like the board interlock literature, and unlike many other areas of network investigation, the joint ventures/alliances literature has focused as much on the antecedents of networks as on their outcomes. A variety of approaches are used to explain why organizations form joint ventures and alliances and how they choose their partners. One view, echoing both transaction cost economics and the logic of resourc...

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...beddedness perspective Granovetter (1985) explicitly contrasted it with transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1975), later theorists have tended to marry the two (Blumberg, 2001; DiMaggio & Louch, 1998; Jones, Hesterly & Borgatti, 1997). Indeed, transaction cost economics (TCE) does seem very consistent with embeddedness theory since TCE is an unmistakably relational theory. In a deeper sense, however, TCE reverses the traditional logic of embeddedness by reasserting the primacy of economic performance as a driver of exchange behavior. For example, the blend of embeddedness and TCE found in Jones et al. (1997) has social ties existing because of the competitive advantage they afford through safeguarding economic transactions. Some have gone as far as explicitly including utility maximization functions in simulation models of embeddedness (Montgomery, 1998). Counterbalancing this trend, Dacin, Ventresca and Beal (1999) revive the work of Zukin and DiMaggio (1990) and emphasize the original conception of embeddedness as context for economic action. Network Organizations and Organizational Networks Intertwined with the embeddedness literature is the literature on network organization (see Baker & Faul...

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...tes accurate perceptions to power, and, in a case study (Krackhardt, 1992), suggests that a union failed to succeed in unionizing a plant because it didn’t understand the ‘who respects whom’ network among the employees (see also Baron & Markman, 2003). Another stream of research considers how actors develop the perceptions that they do. Within this stream, some approach this as modeling the level of actor accuracy. For example Casciaro (1998) found that an actor’s personality, hierarchical position, and centrality in the network affected the accuracy of her perception of the network (see also Kenny, 1994). Another approach seeks to uncover patterns in perceptual errors. For example, several studies investigate tendencies for respondents to over-report ties to high status individuals (Brewer, 2000;Krebs&Denton, 1997;Webster, 1995) and to see themselves asmore central than others do (Johnson & Orbach, 2002; Kumbasar, Romney & Batchelder, 1994). The social cognition field clearly has much to offer the field of transactive memory, since groups can exploit the knowledge of their members only to the extent that their cognitive maps of ‘who knows what’ and ‘who knows who knows what’ are accurate. Gro...

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...s to show that network variables have consequences for important outcome variables that traditional fields already care about. Until networks had legitimacy, there was little point in trying to publish papers on how networks come to be or change over time. Another reason for favoring consequences has been the structuralist heritage of the field. 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. This is the structuralist paradigm championed by Blau (1977) and especially Mayhew (1980) and expressed in the network context by Wellman (1988). In general, networks are seen as defining the actor’s environment or context for action and providing opportunities and constraints on behavior. Hence, studies that examine the consequences of networks are typically consistent with the structuralist agenda. In contrast, studies that examine the causes of network variables often clash with structuralism because they explain the network in terms of actor personalities and latent propensities (e.g., Mehra et al., 2001), which is anathema to the strong structural...

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... (1990) and emphasize the original conception of embeddedness as context for economic action. Network Organizations and Organizational Networks Intertwined with the embeddedness literature is the literature on network organization (see Baker & Faulkner, 2002; Podolny & Page, 1998, for reviews). During the 1980s and 1990s, “network organization” (and related terms) became a fashionable description for organizational forms characterized by repetitive exchanges among semi-autonomous organizations that rely on trust and embedded social relationships to protect transactions and reduce their costs (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Eccles, 1981; Jarillo, 1988; Powell, 1990). Much of this research argued that as commerce became more global, hypercompetitive and turbulent, both markets and hierarchies displayed inefficiencies as modes of organizing production (Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990). In their place, a network organizational form emerged that balanced the flexibility of markets with the predictability of traditional hierarchies (Achrol, 1997; Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990; Snow, Miles & Coleman, 1992; see Rice & Gattiker, 2000, for a different view). While there is general agreement on the benefits of this n...

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...exposure to uncertainty, risk, and opportunism (Gulati, 1995; Starkey, Barnatt & Tempest, 2000). Another view, with links to institutional theory, is that alliances aremadewith larger, higher status firms in order to obtain access to resources and legitimacy (Stuart, 2000). A third perspective focuses on what can be learned from alliance partners. According to the learning perspective, joint ventures and alliances provide access to information and knowledge resources that are difficult to obtain by other means and which improve firm performance and innovation (Ilinitch, D’Aveni & Lewin, 1996; Kale et al., 2000; Kogut, 2000; Oliver, 2001; Powell et al., 1996; Rindfleisch & Moorman, 2001; Rosenkopf & Nerkar, 2001). These ideas are of course identical to the information side of the social capital literature, a pointmade explicitly byBurt (2003).Whilemuch of thework in this area focuses on dyadic relations, amore nuanced statement of the learning perspective argues that inter-firm network structures (not just dyadic relations between firms) affect learning and innovation (Kogut, 2000;Oliver, 2001; Powell et al., 1996). For example, Powell et al. (1996, p. 119) suggest that collaborations among biotechn...

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...dological implications of respondents’ inability to report their interactions accurately. Today, the interest is more theoretical and centered on the respondent’s model of the entire network in which they are embedded, rather than their own ties. One stream of research takes as premise that cognition of the network determines interaction, and interaction in turn changes the network (Carley & Krackhardt, 1996). A specific variant is concerned with the consequences of accurate perceptions of the network. For example, Krackhardt (1990) relates accurate perceptions to power, and, in a case study (Krackhardt, 1992), suggests that a union failed to succeed in unionizing a plant because it didn’t understand the ‘who respects whom’ network among the employees (see also Baron & Markman, 2003). Another stream of research considers how actors develop the perceptions that they do. Within this stream, some approach this as modeling the level of actor accuracy. For example Casciaro (1998) found that an actor’s personality, hierarchical position, and centrality in the network affected the accuracy of her perception of the network (see also Kenny, 1994). Another approach seeks to uncover patterns in perceptual err...

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..., Oldham, Cummings and Zhou (1995), and Rice and Gattiker (2000). A special case of the work on social proximity is homophily theory (see McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001, for a review). Homophily refers to the tendency for people to interact more with their own kind—whether by preference or induced by opportunity constraints (McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987)—as defined by such individual characteristics as race, gender, educational class, organizational unit, and so on. 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). On the positive side, interacting exclusively with similar others is thought to be efficient to the extent that similarity (a) facilitates transmission of tacit knowledge (Cross, Borgatti & Parker, 2001, p. 229), (b) simplifies coordination (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; O’Reilly, Caldwell & Barnett, 1989), and (c) avoids potential conflicts (Pelled, Eisenhardt & Xin, 1999; Pfeffer, 1983). On the other hand, limiting communication among dissimilar others prevents a group from reaping the benefits of diversity and promotes us-vs.-them thinking ...

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...pt that has symbiotically returned the favor and helped to fuel interest in social networks. In the most general terms, the concept is about the value of connections. It should be recognized that, to a great extent, social capital is “just” a powerful renaming and collecting together of a large swath of network research from the social support literature (Walker, Wasserman &Wellman, 1994) to social resource theory (Lin, 1982, 1988). In management, social capital promises to bring together a variety of research relating a person’s ties or network position to significant outcomes such as power (Brass, 1984; Brass & Burkhardt, 1993; Kilduff & Krackhardt, 1994), leadership (Brass & Krackhardt, 1999; Pastor, Meindl & Mayo, 2002; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997), mobility (Boxman, De Graaf & Flap, 1991; Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001; Seidel, Polzer & Stewart, 2000), employment (Fernandez, Castilla & Moore, 2000; Krackhardt & Porter, 1985, 1986), individual performance (Baldwin & Bedell, 1997; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 2001; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne & Kraimer, 2001), individual creativity (Burt, 2003; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003), entrepreneurship (Baron & Markman, 2003; Renzulli, Aldrich & Moody, 2...

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...Homans, 1950; Newcomb, 1961) on the processes connecting agreement, similarity and interaction in groups, not to mention network diffusion research (Rice & Aydin, 1991; Rogers, 1995). Another thread is based on transactive memory (Hollingshead, 1998; Moreland, Argote & Krishnan, 1996; Rulke & Galaskiewicz, 2000; Wegner, 1987). Here the notion is that 998 S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 knowledge is distributed in different minds, and to make use of it effectively, individuals need to know who knows what (see social cognition section, below). In addition, Borgatti and Cross (2003) suggest that individuals need to have certain kinds of relationships (e.g., mutual accessibility, low partner-specific transaction costs) in order to utilize each others’ knowledge. Transactive memory research contrasts with community of practice theory in its view of knowledge as remaining distributed even after being accessed, and in its lack of interest in how knowledge is generated in the first place. Social Cognition The term “social cognition” could easily include the transactional memory research reviewed above. However, in practice, it refers to the work of an entirely separate set of...

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...le the primary objective in both research streams was identifying the causes of interlock ties (Pfeffer, 1972; Palmer, 1983; Zajac, 1998), some of this early research used interlocks to predict similarity in organizational behaviors (Mizruchi, 1989). In recent years, the focus has shifted toward an informational perspective that sees interlocks as a means by which organizations reduce uncertainties and share information about acceptable and effective corporate practices. Scholars have used board interlocks to explain the diffusion of poison pills (Davis, 1991), corporate acquisition behavior (Haunschild, 1993), the adoption of organizational structures (Palmer, Jennings & Zhou, 1993), CEO pay premiums (Geletkanycz, Boyd & Finkelstein, 2001), joint venture formation (Gulati & Westphal, 1999), and the use of imitation strategies in general (Westphal, Seidel & Stewart, 2001). Several studies highlight the uncertainty reduction benefits of interlocks by arguing that they are more important in uncertain than certain environments (Carpenter & Westphal, 2001; Geletkanycz & Hambrick, 1997). One development in this literature, paralleling developments in the social capital literature, is that researchers ar...

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...nard, Killworth, Kronenfeld & Sailer, 1985), which was concerned with the methodological implications of respondents’ inability to report their interactions accurately. Today, the interest is more theoretical and centered on the respondent’s model of the entire network in which they are embedded, rather than their own ties. One stream of research takes as premise that cognition of the network determines interaction, and interaction in turn changes the network (Carley & Krackhardt, 1996). A specific variant is concerned with the consequences of accurate perceptions of the network. For example, Krackhardt (1990) relates accurate perceptions to power, and, in a case study (Krackhardt, 1992), suggests that a union failed to succeed in unionizing a plant because it didn’t understand the ‘who respects whom’ network among the employees (see also Baron & Markman, 2003). Another stream of research considers how actors develop the perceptions that they do. Within this stream, some approach this as modeling the level of actor accuracy. For example Casciaro (1998) found that an actor’s personality, hierarchical position, and centrality in the network affected the accuracy of her perception of the network (see ...

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...eletkanycz, Boyd & Finkelstein, 2001), joint venture formation (Gulati & Westphal, 1999), and the use of imitation strategies in general (Westphal, Seidel & Stewart, 2001). Several studies highlight the uncertainty reduction benefits of interlocks by arguing that they are more important in uncertain than certain environments (Carpenter & Westphal, 2001; Geletkanycz & Hambrick, 1997). One development in this literature, paralleling developments in the social capital literature, is that researchers are beginning to study the contingencies that determine when interlocks have the effects they do (Davis & Greve, 1997; Gulati & Westphal, 1999; Haunschild & Beckman, 1998). Joint Ventures and Inter-firm Alliances Over the last twenty years, research on joint ventures and inter-firm alliances has proliferated (for a review, see Gulati, 1998). There appears to be a growing consensus that inter-organizational alliances and joint ventures have significant impacts on firm-level outcomes such as the performance of startups and new firms (Baum&Calabrese, 2000; Stuart, 2000), firm valuations (Das, Sen & Sengupta, 1998), organizational learning (Anand & Khanna, 2000; Kale, Singh & Perlmutter, 2000; Kraatz, 1998; Oliv...

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...e original conception of embeddedness as context for economic action. Network Organizations and Organizational Networks Intertwined with the embeddedness literature is the literature on network organization (see Baker & Faulkner, 2002; Podolny & Page, 1998, for reviews). During the 1980s and 1990s, “network organization” (and related terms) became a fashionable description for organizational forms characterized by repetitive exchanges among semi-autonomous organizations that rely on trust and embedded social relationships to protect transactions and reduce their costs (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Eccles, 1981; Jarillo, 1988; Powell, 1990). Much of this research argued that as commerce became more global, hypercompetitive and turbulent, both markets and hierarchies displayed inefficiencies as modes of organizing production (Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990). In their place, a network organizational form emerged that balanced the flexibility of markets with the predictability of traditional hierarchies (Achrol, 1997; Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990; Snow, Miles & Coleman, 1992; see Rice & Gattiker, 2000, for a different view). While there is general agreement on the benefits of this new organizatio...

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...avis & Greve, 1997; Gulati & Westphal, 1999; Haunschild & Beckman, 1998). Joint Ventures and Inter-firm Alliances Over the last twenty years, research on joint ventures and inter-firm alliances has proliferated (for a review, see Gulati, 1998). There appears to be a growing consensus that inter-organizational alliances and joint ventures have significant impacts on firm-level outcomes such as the performance of startups and new firms (Baum&Calabrese, 2000; Stuart, 2000), firm valuations (Das, Sen & Sengupta, 1998), organizational learning (Anand & Khanna, 2000; Kale, Singh & Perlmutter, 2000; Kraatz, 1998; Oliver, 2001), and innovation (Powell, Koput & Smith-Doerr, 1996). S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 997 Like the board interlock literature, and unlike many other areas of network investigation, the joint ventures/alliances literature has focused as much on the antecedents of networks as on their outcomes. A variety of approaches are used to explain why organizations form joint ventures and alliances and how they choose their partners. One view, echoing both transaction cost economics and the logic of resource dependency, is that alliances can be used to...

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...y (a) facilitates transmission of tacit knowledge (Cross, Borgatti & Parker, 2001, p. 229), (b) simplifies coordination (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; O’Reilly, Caldwell & Barnett, 1989), and (c) avoids potential conflicts (Pelled, Eisenhardt & Xin, 1999; Pfeffer, 1983). On the other hand, limiting communication among dissimilar others prevents a group from reaping the benefits of diversity and promotes us-vs.-them thinking (Krackhardt & Stern, 1988). At the individual level, homophily is seen as a mechanism maintaining inequality of status for minorities within organizations. For example, echoing Brass (1985), Ibarra (1992) suggests that if men have more power in an organization, homophily implies that men’s networks will contain more powerful people (i.e., other men) while women’s networks will include less powerful people (i.e., women), limiting their social capital. Other recent organizational network research on traditional social psychological topics includeswork on conflict (Joshi, Labianca&Caligiuri, 2002; Labianca, Brass&Gray, 1998; Nelson, 1989), social referent choices (Shah, 1998), leadership (Pastor et al., 2002), and ethical behavior (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs, 1998; Nielsen, 2003)....

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...tworks, and saw this as steering a middle road between over-socialized (role-based) and under-socialized (purely instrumental rational actor) approaches to explaining economic action. More recent empirical work has focused on the performance benefits of embedded ties, which are often associated with closer and more exclusive business relationships (Uzzi, 1997). A central theme in this research is that repetitive market relations and the linking of social and business relationships generate embedded logics of exchange that differ from those emerging in traditional arms-length market relations (DiMaggio & Louch, 1998; Uzzi, 1996, 1999; Uzzi & Gillespie, 2002). Embedded ties have been found to affect the choice of joint venture partners (Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999), S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 995 the cost of capital (Uzzi, 1999; Uzzi & Gillespie, 2002), consumer purchasing decisions (DiMaggio & Louch, 1998), the continuity of client relations (Baker, Faulkner & Fisher, 1998), and the performance of firms with close ties to both competitors (Ingram & Roberts, 2000) and suppliers (Uzzi, 1997). Despite the fact that in discussing his embeddedness perspective Granovette...

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... favor and helped to fuel interest in social networks. In the most general terms, the concept is about the value of connections. It should be recognized that, to a great extent, social capital is “just” a powerful renaming and collecting together of a large swath of network research from the social support literature (Walker, Wasserman &Wellman, 1994) to social resource theory (Lin, 1982, 1988). In management, social capital promises to bring together a variety of research relating a person’s ties or network position to significant outcomes such as power (Brass, 1984; Brass & Burkhardt, 1993; Kilduff & Krackhardt, 1994), leadership (Brass & Krackhardt, 1999; Pastor, Meindl & Mayo, 2002; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997), mobility (Boxman, De Graaf & Flap, 1991; Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001; Seidel, Polzer & Stewart, 2000), employment (Fernandez, Castilla & Moore, 2000; Krackhardt & Porter, 1985, 1986), individual performance (Baldwin & Bedell, 1997; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 2001; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne & Kraimer, 2001), individual creativity (Burt, 2003; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003), entrepreneurship (Baron & Markman, 2003; Renzulli, Aldrich & Moody, 2000; Shane & Stuart, 2002), and team performance (Hans...

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...tices. Scholars have used board interlocks to explain the diffusion of poison pills (Davis, 1991), corporate acquisition behavior (Haunschild, 1993), the adoption of organizational structures (Palmer, Jennings & Zhou, 1993), CEO pay premiums (Geletkanycz, Boyd & Finkelstein, 2001), joint venture formation (Gulati & Westphal, 1999), and the use of imitation strategies in general (Westphal, Seidel & Stewart, 2001). Several studies highlight the uncertainty reduction benefits of interlocks by arguing that they are more important in uncertain than certain environments (Carpenter & Westphal, 2001; Geletkanycz & Hambrick, 1997). One development in this literature, paralleling developments in the social capital literature, is that researchers are beginning to study the contingencies that determine when interlocks have the effects they do (Davis & Greve, 1997; Gulati & Westphal, 1999; Haunschild & Beckman, 1998). Joint Ventures and Inter-firm Alliances Over the last twenty years, research on joint ventures and inter-firm alliances has proliferated (for a review, see Gulati, 1998). There appears to be a growing consensus that inter-organizational alliances and joint ventures have significant impacts on firm-level outco...

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... members. For example, Putnam (2000) famously bemoans the fact that even though bowling has increased in popularity in the US over the years, bowling in leagues has declined. The ties created by such associations as organized bowling leagues are thought to knit together a society, ultimately contributing to a society’s ability to prosper. The argument is virtually identical to Granovetter’s (1973) classic analysis of Boston neighborhoods, though Granovetter doesn’t use the term social capital. The contrast in views of optimal network shapes has sparked a fruitful series of papers (Burt, 2001; Gargiulo & Benassi, 2000; Podolny & Baron, 1997). A similar and related line of investigation reverses the usual logic of social capital and examines the negative consequences of social capital—the so-called “dark side” in which social ties imprison actors in maladaptive situations or facilitate undesirable behavior (Gargiulo & Benassi, 1999; Gulati & Westphal, 1999; Portes & Landolt, 1996; Portes & Sensenbrenner, 1993; Putnam, 2000; Volker & Flap, 2001). Another new development in the social capital literature has been its use in explaining well-known relationships between minority status and job mobility. Seidel et...

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...ymbiotically returned the favor and helped to fuel interest in social networks. In the most general terms, the concept is about the value of connections. It should be recognized that, to a great extent, social capital is “just” a powerful renaming and collecting together of a large swath of network research from the social support literature (Walker, Wasserman &Wellman, 1994) to social resource theory (Lin, 1982, 1988). In management, social capital promises to bring together a variety of research relating a person’s ties or network position to significant outcomes such as power (Brass, 1984; Brass & Burkhardt, 1993; Kilduff & Krackhardt, 1994), leadership (Brass & Krackhardt, 1999; Pastor, Meindl & Mayo, 2002; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997), mobility (Boxman, De Graaf & Flap, 1991; Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001; Seidel, Polzer & Stewart, 2000), employment (Fernandez, Castilla & Moore, 2000; Krackhardt & Porter, 1985, 1986), individual performance (Baldwin & Bedell, 1997; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 2001; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne & Kraimer, 2001), individual creativity (Burt, 2003; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003), entrepreneurship (Baron & Markman, 2003; Renzulli, Aldrich & Moody, 2000; Shane & Stuart, 2002...

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...embedded logics of exchange that differ from those emerging in traditional arms-length market relations (DiMaggio & Louch, 1998; Uzzi, 1996, 1999; Uzzi & Gillespie, 2002). Embedded ties have been found to affect the choice of joint venture partners (Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999), S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 995 the cost of capital (Uzzi, 1999; Uzzi & Gillespie, 2002), consumer purchasing decisions (DiMaggio & Louch, 1998), the continuity of client relations (Baker, Faulkner & Fisher, 1998), and the performance of firms with close ties to both competitors (Ingram & Roberts, 2000) and suppliers (Uzzi, 1997). Despite the fact that in discussing his embeddedness perspective Granovetter (1985) explicitly contrasted it with transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1975), later theorists have tended to marry the two (Blumberg, 2001; DiMaggio & Louch, 1998; Jones, Hesterly & Borgatti, 1997). Indeed, transaction cost economics (TCE) does seem very consistent with embeddedness theory since TCE is an unmistakably relational theory. In a deeper sense, however, TCE reverses the traditional logic of embeddedness by reasserting the primacy of economic performance as a driver of exch...

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...61), is concerned with how physical proximity, similarity of beliefs and attitudes, amount of interaction, and affective ties are interrelated. For example, in parallel streams of work, Friedkin and Johnsen (1990, 1999) and Carley (1991) have developed network models of how interacting individuals influence each other to produce homogeneity of beliefs. A nice review of the culture-cognition-networks intersection is provided by Kilduff and Corley (2000). For reviews of the effects of proximity on social S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 999 interaction, see Kiesler and Cummings (2002), Oldham, Cummings and Zhou (1995), and Rice and Gattiker (2000). A special case of the work on social proximity is homophily theory (see McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001, for a review). Homophily refers to the tendency for people to interact more with their own kind—whether by preference or induced by opportunity constraints (McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987)—as defined by such individual characteristics as race, gender, educational class, organizational unit, and so on. Recent organizational research on homophily has focused on its effects on group and individual performance outcomes (e.g., ...

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...y & Batchelder, 1994). The social cognition field clearly has much to offer the field of transactive memory, since groups can exploit the knowledge of their members only to the extent that their cognitive maps of ‘who knows what’ and ‘who knows who knows what’ are accurate. Group Processes Awell-established area of research, with roots in classical social psychology (e.g., Allen, 1977; Homans, 1950; Newcomb, 1961), is concerned with how physical proximity, similarity of beliefs and attitudes, amount of interaction, and affective ties are interrelated. For example, in parallel streams of work, Friedkin and Johnsen (1990, 1999) and Carley (1991) have developed network models of how interacting individuals influence each other to produce homogeneity of beliefs. A nice review of the culture-cognition-networks intersection is provided by Kilduff and Corley (2000). For reviews of the effects of proximity on social S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 999 interaction, see Kiesler and Cummings (2002), Oldham, Cummings and Zhou (1995), and Rice and Gattiker (2000). A special case of the work on social proximity is homophily theory (see McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001, for a revi...

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... to significant outcomes such as power (Brass, 1984; Brass & Burkhardt, 1993; Kilduff & Krackhardt, 1994), leadership (Brass & Krackhardt, 1999; Pastor, Meindl & Mayo, 2002; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997), mobility (Boxman, De Graaf & Flap, 1991; Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001; Seidel, Polzer & Stewart, 2000), employment (Fernandez, Castilla & Moore, 2000; Krackhardt & Porter, 1985, 1986), individual performance (Baldwin & Bedell, 1997; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 2001; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne & Kraimer, 2001), individual creativity (Burt, 2003; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003), entrepreneurship (Baron & Markman, 2003; Renzulli, Aldrich & Moody, 2000; Shane & Stuart, 2002), and team performance (Hansen, 1999; Tsai, 2001). Detailed reviews are available by Adler and Kwon (2002), Portes (1998), and Lin (2001). While much of the earlier work on these organizational themes generally characterized social capital as ties to resource-filled others, the publication of Burt’s structural holes book (1992) redirected attention to the shape or topology of an actor’s ego-network. Specifically, Burt equates social capital with the lack of ties among an actor’s alters, a condition he names structural holes. He argues tha...

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...002), and ethical behavior (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs, 1998; Nielsen, 2003). A renewed interest in the interaction between personality and network position is evident in Mehra et al. (2001), who suggest that high self-monitors are more likely to achieve positions of high centrality, and Burt, Janotta and Mahoney (1998), who relate personality to structural holes. There is also a large body of continuing work on the evolution of group structure, ranging from empirical investigations of network change (Burkhardt & Brass, 1990; Burt, 2000; Shah, 2000), to general mathematical models of change (Doreian & Stokman, 1997; Snijders, 2001), to the fast-growing area of agent-based simulation studies (for a review, see Macy & Willer, 2002). For example, Carley (1991) uses agent-based models to investigate group stability, while Zeggelink (1994, 1995) examines the growth of friendship networks, and Macy and Skvoretz (1998) simulate the development of trust networks. Dimensions of Network Research In this section, we examine the dimensions along which network studies vary, including direction of causality, level of analysis, explanatory mechanisms, and explanatory goals. The first two dimensions, while important, a...

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...l department, such as claims processors in an insurance firm. The processes in community of practice theory resemble those of traditional social influence theory (Friedkin & Johnsen, 1999), which emphasizes homogeneity of beliefs, practices, and attitudes as an outcome. They also overlap with and would strongly benefit from revisiting classic social psychology work (Homans, 1950; Newcomb, 1961) on the processes connecting agreement, similarity and interaction in groups, not to mention network diffusion research (Rice & Aydin, 1991; Rogers, 1995). Another thread is based on transactive memory (Hollingshead, 1998; Moreland, Argote & Krishnan, 1996; Rulke & Galaskiewicz, 2000; Wegner, 1987). Here the notion is that 998 S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 knowledge is distributed in different minds, and to make use of it effectively, individuals need to know who knows what (see social cognition section, below). In addition, Borgatti and Cross (2003) suggest that individuals need to have certain kinds of relationships (e.g., mutual accessibility, low partner-specific transaction costs) in order to utilize each others’ knowledge. Transactive memory research contrasts wit...

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...ng on the benefits of social position. Indeed, the evaluative aspect is prominent in virtually all social capital studies, including those focusing on the so-called “dark side.” In contrast, the diffusion study is more interested in the process by which practices, for good or ill, spread through a system. Second, the social capital study emphasizes the possibilities for action that social ties provide the individual, whereas the diffusion study is implicitly about how the network changes the actor (in the sense of adopting a practice or developing an attitude). Like social attitude formation (Erickson, 1988) and social influence studies (Friedkin & Johnsen, 1999), network diffusion studies are exemplars of a structuralist tradition that emphasizes constraints (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983, p. 149), while the social capital literature concentrates on opportunities (Gargiulo & Benassi, 2000). The actor in social capital work is generally a very active agent who exploits the network position she finds herself in (or creates for herself). While Burt (1992) stops short of saying so, many of his readers (e.g., Steier & Greenwood, 2000) seem to add a rational actor assumption to social capital theory to the ...

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...o-opt those with whom it has dependencies. Convergence. Studies of this type seek to explain common attitudes and practices in terms of similar network environments, usually conceptualized as centrality or structural equivalence (e.g., Galaskiewicz & Burt, 1991). Actors are structurally equivalent to the extent they are connected to the same third parties, regardless of whether they are tied to each other (Lorrain &White, 1971). A classic paper in this vein is Erickson’s (1988) use of structural equivalence to explain common attitude formation. Similarly, DiMaggio and Powell (1983, p. 148) andDiMaggio (1986, p. 360) usemeasures of structural equivalence tomodel S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 1005 the notion of organizational isomorphism. The mechanisms generating similarity between two organizations have to dowith sharing the same environments and/or recognition of each other as appropriate role models. In general, studies in the tradition of institutional theory fit here. Contagion. Studies of this type seek to explain shared attitudes, culture, and practice through interaction (e.g., Davis, 1991; Geletkanycz &Hambrick, 1997; Harrison &Carroll, 2002; Haun...

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...s ability to prosper. The argument is virtually identical to Granovetter’s (1973) classic analysis of Boston neighborhoods, though Granovetter doesn’t use the term social capital. The contrast in views of optimal network shapes has sparked a fruitful series of papers (Burt, 2001; Gargiulo & Benassi, 2000; Podolny & Baron, 1997). A similar and related line of investigation reverses the usual logic of social capital and examines the negative consequences of social capital—the so-called “dark side” in which social ties imprison actors in maladaptive situations or facilitate undesirable behavior (Gargiulo & Benassi, 1999; Gulati & Westphal, 1999; Portes & Landolt, 1996; Portes & Sensenbrenner, 1993; Putnam, 2000; Volker & Flap, 2001). Another new development in the social capital literature has been its use in explaining well-known relationships between minority status and job mobility. Seidel et al. (2000) suggest that minorities have fewer ties (i.e., social capital) in the organization, and that people with fewer ties have less successful salary negotiations. Hence, a network process provides the mechanism that relates minority status to less successful salary negotiations. Similarly, McGuire (2000) conclu...

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... (dyadic, actor and network) do not necessarily correspond in a simple way to the type of entities being studied. For example, suppose we examine how an actor’s centrality in the communication network of an organization relates to her ability to innovate and solve problems (e.g., Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003). This is an actor-level analysis, one step up (i.e., more aggregate, fewer values) from the dyadic level. Now suppose we look at the communication networks of the top management team in 50 separate firms and correlate the density of each network with some aspect of firm performance (e.g., Athanassiou & Nigh, 1999). This, as we would expect, is a network- or group-level analysis, a step up from the actor level. But now suppose we do a network analysis of alliances among biotech firms, hypothesizing that firms with more alliance partners will be more successful (e.g., Powell et al., 1996). Surprisingly, we are now back at the actor level of analysis, probably invoking the same arguments that were used for the first actor-level hypothesis. This is not unusual in network research, where micro and macro can be very similar theoretically and methodologically (see Katz & Lazer, 2003, for a similar point of vi...

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...t al. (1997) has social ties existing because of the competitive advantage they afford through safeguarding economic transactions. Some have gone as far as explicitly including utility maximization functions in simulation models of embeddedness (Montgomery, 1998). Counterbalancing this trend, Dacin, Ventresca and Beal (1999) revive the work of Zukin and DiMaggio (1990) and emphasize the original conception of embeddedness as context for economic action. Network Organizations and Organizational Networks Intertwined with the embeddedness literature is the literature on network organization (see Baker & Faulkner, 2002; Podolny & Page, 1998, for reviews). During the 1980s and 1990s, “network organization” (and related terms) became a fashionable description for organizational forms characterized by repetitive exchanges among semi-autonomous organizations that rely on trust and embedded social relationships to protect transactions and reduce their costs (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Eccles, 1981; Jarillo, 1988; Powell, 1990). Much of this research argued that as commerce became more global, hypercompetitive and turbulent, both markets and hierarchies displayed inefficiencies as modes of organizing production (Mil...

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...er & Flap, 2001). Another new development in the social capital literature has been its use in explaining well-known relationships between minority status and job mobility. Seidel et al. (2000) suggest that minorities have fewer ties (i.e., social capital) in the organization, and that people with fewer ties have less successful salary negotiations. Hence, a network process provides the mechanism that relates minority status to less successful salary negotiations. Similarly, McGuire (2000) concludes that network characteristics explain the racial and gender differences in employee status, and James (2000) suggests that social capitalmediates the relationship between race and social support among organization managers. Taking the inverse point of view, Burt (1998) examines how gender moderates the relationship between social capital and mobility—finding that structural holes benefit men more than women. See Burt (1997) for additional work on contingencies affecting the value of social capital, a line of work that is also related to the “dark side” stream reviewed above. Embeddedness Like social capital, embeddedness has had fad-like success among organizational scholars, becoming enormously pop...

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...Gargiulo, 1999), S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 995 the cost of capital (Uzzi, 1999; Uzzi & Gillespie, 2002), consumer purchasing decisions (DiMaggio & Louch, 1998), the continuity of client relations (Baker, Faulkner & Fisher, 1998), and the performance of firms with close ties to both competitors (Ingram & Roberts, 2000) and suppliers (Uzzi, 1997). Despite the fact that in discussing his embeddedness perspective Granovetter (1985) explicitly contrasted it with transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1975), later theorists have tended to marry the two (Blumberg, 2001; DiMaggio & Louch, 1998; Jones, Hesterly & Borgatti, 1997). Indeed, transaction cost economics (TCE) does seem very consistent with embeddedness theory since TCE is an unmistakably relational theory. In a deeper sense, however, TCE reverses the traditional logic of embeddedness by reasserting the primacy of economic performance as a driver of exchange behavior. For example, the blend of embeddedness and TCE found in Jones et al. (1997) has social ties existing because of the competitive advantage they afford through safeguarding economic transactions. Some have gone as far as explicitly inclu...

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...ial networks. In the most general terms, the concept is about the value of connections. It should be recognized that, to a great extent, social capital is “just” a powerful renaming and collecting together of a large swath of network research from the social support literature (Walker, Wasserman &Wellman, 1994) to social resource theory (Lin, 1982, 1988). In management, social capital promises to bring together a variety of research relating a person’s ties or network position to significant outcomes such as power (Brass, 1984; Brass & Burkhardt, 1993; Kilduff & Krackhardt, 1994), leadership (Brass & Krackhardt, 1999; Pastor, Meindl & Mayo, 2002; Sparrowe & Liden, 1997), mobility (Boxman, De Graaf & Flap, 1991; Burt, 1997; Seibert, Kraimer & Liden, 2001; Seidel, Polzer & Stewart, 2000), employment (Fernandez, Castilla & Moore, 2000; Krackhardt & Porter, 1985, 1986), individual performance (Baldwin & Bedell, 1997; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 2001; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne & Kraimer, 2001), individual creativity (Burt, 2003; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003), entrepreneurship (Baron & Markman, 2003; Renzulli, Aldrich & Moody, 2000; Shane & Stuart, 2002), and team performance (Hansen, 1999; Tsai, 2001). Detailed review...

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...who knows what’ are accurate. Group Processes Awell-established area of research, with roots in classical social psychology (e.g., Allen, 1977; Homans, 1950; Newcomb, 1961), is concerned with how physical proximity, similarity of beliefs and attitudes, amount of interaction, and affective ties are interrelated. For example, in parallel streams of work, Friedkin and Johnsen (1990, 1999) and Carley (1991) have developed network models of how interacting individuals influence each other to produce homogeneity of beliefs. A nice review of the culture-cognition-networks intersection is provided by Kilduff and Corley (2000). For reviews of the effects of proximity on social S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 999 interaction, see Kiesler and Cummings (2002), Oldham, Cummings and Zhou (1995), and Rice and Gattiker (2000). A special case of the work on social proximity is homophily theory (see McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001, for a review). Homophily refers to the tendency for people to interact more with their own kind—whether by preference or induced by opportunity constraints (McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987)—as defined by such individual characteristics as race, gender, edu...

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... performance (e.g., Athanassiou & Nigh, 1999). This, as we would expect, is a network- or group-level analysis, a step up from the actor level. But now suppose we do a network analysis of alliances among biotech firms, hypothesizing that firms with more alliance partners will be more successful (e.g., Powell et al., 1996). Surprisingly, we are now back at the actor level of analysis, probably invoking the same arguments that were used for the first actor-level hypothesis. This is not unusual in network research, where micro and macro can be very similar theoretically and methodologically (see Katz & Lazer, 2003, for a similar point of view). This does not mean that we expect every theory that applies to networks of persons to apply as well to networks of organizations, since the agents have different capabilities and the relations have different meanings. It is just that structural explanations are much more likely to scale than are individualist or essentialist explanations, a fundamental tenet of the physics literature on networks (Barabasi, 2002). Consequences of Networks We turn now to developing a typology of studies, limiting our attention to research on the consequences of networks, which mak...

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...work or being located along the shortest path between otherwise unconnected actors. The benefits to the actor are principally a function of the topology of the local network, and ties are implicitly conceived of as forming a leverageable structure (Markovsky, Skvoretz, Willer, Lovaglia & Erger, 1993). At the network level of analysis, structural capital studies seek to relate the network structure of a group to its performance (e.g., Athanassiou &Nigh, 1999). This kind of study is one of the oldest in social network research, with dozens if not hundreds of exemplars, starting with the work of Bavelas (1950) at MIT, who investigated the relation between centralization and group performance (see the review by Shaw, 1971). Resource access. These studies comprise the connectionist flavor of social capital studies. In these studies, an actor’s success is a function of the quality and quantity of resources controlled by the actor’s alters (e.g., Anand&Khanna, 2000; Koka&Prescott, 2000; Oliver, 2001; Stuart, 2000). Ego’s ties with alters are conduits through which ego can access those resources. Different kinds of ties have different capacities for extracting resources (Borgatti & Cross, 2003). As with...

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...stry conditions lead to more or stronger ties (e.g., shouldwe expectmore cooperative ties among, say, cultural industries)? It does not help that “network organization” can refer to a logic of governance (Jones et al., 1997), a collection 996 S.P. Borgatti, P.C. Foster / Journal of Management 2003 29(6) 991–1013 of semi-autonomous firms (Miles & Snow, 1986), or an organization with “new” features such as flat hierarchy, empowered workers, self-governing teams, heavy use of temporary structures (e.g., project teams, task forces), lateral communication, knowledge-based, etc. (van Alstyne, 1997; Birkinshaw & Hagstrom, 2000; Hales, 2002). Adding to the linguistic chaos, some authors call these organizational forms “networks” and pronounce that, in the 21st century, firms must transform themselves from organizations into networks (Palmer & Richards, 1999), confusing those who think of organizations as already consisting of networks.With all of this, it is perhaps no surprise that studies of network organizations have generated “diverse, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory” findings (Sydow & Windeler, 1998). However, attempts to bring order to this area continue (Baker & Faulkner, 2002). Board Interlocks Empir...

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...d by repetitive exchanges among semi-autonomous organizations that rely on trust and embedded social relationships to protect transactions and reduce their costs (Bradach & Eccles, 1989; Eccles, 1981; Jarillo, 1988; Powell, 1990). Much of this research argued that as commerce became more global, hypercompetitive and turbulent, both markets and hierarchies displayed inefficiencies as modes of organizing production (Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990). In their place, a network organizational form emerged that balanced the flexibility of markets with the predictability of traditional hierarchies (Achrol, 1997; Miles & Snow, 1992; Powell, 1990; Snow, Miles & Coleman, 1992; see Rice & Gattiker, 2000, for a different view). While there is general agreement on the benefits of this new organizational form, its ontological status remains somewhat unclear. An early debate in this research tradition was whether network organizations represented an organizational form intermediate between markets and hierarchies (Eccles, 1981; Thorelli, 1986; Williamson, 1991) or whether they represented an entirely new organizational form characterized by unique logics of exchange (Powell, 1990) similar to those described...