No abstract

No abstract

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. ANAND SWAMINATHAN University of California at DavisWe introduce the construct of network inertia, referring to a persistent organizational resistance to changing interorganizational network ties or difficulties that an organization faces when it attempts to dissolve old relationships and form new network ties. Previous research has neglected the process of network change in favor of an emphasis on identifying beneficial content effects of networks. We emphasize the constraints on network change and propose a multilevel conceptual model relating key sources of network inertia to changes in network ties. We also discuss the implications of network inertia for the evolution of networks.

Despite growing interest in social network brokerage, its psychological antecedents have been neglected. One possibility is that brokerage relates to self-monitoring personality orientation. High self-monitors, relative to low self-monitors, in adapting their self-presentations to the demands of different groups, may occupy positions as brokers between disconnected social worlds. For 162 Korean expatriate entrepreneurs in a Canadian urban area, the results showed that those high in self-monitoring tended to occupy direct brokerage roles within the Korean community--in terms of their direct acquaintances being unconnected with each other. Those high in self-monitoring also tended to occupy indirect brokerage roles--in terms of the acquaintances of their acquaintances being unconnected with each other. Finally, for recent arrivals, those high in self-monitoring tended to establish ties to a wider range of important non-Korean position holders outside the community. These results (which controlled for strongly significant effects of network size on individuals' brokerage within the community) suggest a ripple effect of self-monitoring on social structure and contribute to a clearer understanding of how personality relates to brokerage at different levels.