Network Thinking

Readings

• Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American journal of sociology, 94, S95-S120. 

• Uzzi, 1996. The Sources and Consequences of Embeddedness for the Economic Performance of Organizations: The Network Effect. American Sociological Review. [read the ethnographic part. Ignore the quant]

• Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American journal of sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.

• Burt, R. S. (2002). The social capital of structural holes. The new economic sociology: Developments in an emerging field, 148(90), 122. 

• Podolny, J. M. (2001). Networks as the pipes and prisms of the market. American journal of sociology, 107(1), 33-60. [focus on theory]

• Borgatti, S.P. & Halgin, D.S. (2011). On Network Theory. Organization Science. September/October 2011 22(5):1168-1181 [read pp 1170-1191]

• Lin, N. (1999). Social networks and status attainment. Annual review of sociology, 25(1), 467-487. [just the main points]

  • future steve: replace this with different Lin article

• DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American sociological review, 147-160. [read the part before the propositions]

• McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual review of sociology, 27(1), 415-444. 

• Emerson, R. M. (1962). Power-Dependence Relations. American Sociological Review, 27(1), 31–41. 

  • Dependency theory

Supplementary readings

• Centola, D. (2015). The social origins of networks and diffusion. American Journal of Sociology, 120(5), 1295-1338. 

• (handout) Mechanisms of Network Dynamics

• Forrest R. Pitts, 1978/79. The Medieval River Trade Network of Russia Revisited. Social Networks 1:285-292 [pdf] [summary]

• Coleman, J., Katz, E., & Menzel, H. (1957). The diffusion of an innovation among physicians. Sociometry, 20(4), 253-270. 

• Chen, H., Mehra, A., Tasselli, S., & Borgatti, S. P. (2022). Network dynamics and organizations: A review and research agenda. Journal of Management, 48(6), 1602-1660. 

• Granovetter, M. (2018). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. In The sociology of economic life (pp. 22-45). Routledge. 

Questions to think about

• What do networks explain?

• What are some standard explanatory mechanisms in network analysis?

• What explains who is connected to whom?

• What is social capital? How do the various conceptions differ?

• How does social capital relate to human capital?

• What is social influence?

Slides

• intro

Notes

• Notes | Theory

Note to future Steve:

• you need to include an additional diffusion paper