Digital Commons Network^™

The Pervasive Effects Of Network Content, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

While network research has become increasingly important to our understanding of organizations, there is growing speculation that the current structural approach may misspecify the nature of network effects by ignoring variation in the content of relational ties (e.g., Podolny and Baron 1997). Network research to date has focused on the structural properties of networks—the overall patterns of connection—to the neglect of qualitative dimensions of relationships (Ibarra 1992). Several recent studies have explicitly called for new research dedicated to “delineating the critical role of tie content” in organizational networks (Gulati and Westphal 1999: 499). Studying tie content, according to these authors, …