This study examines the role of a major environmental shock in triggering change in the social structure of an organizational field. Based on the longitudinal analysis of changing network configurations in the global airline industry, we explore how logics of attachment shift before, during and after an exogenous shock and how the rewiring of network ties in response to the shock may act as a countervailing force to the network dynamics that drive field stratification. Using the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 as a natural experiment, our work reveals how shocks may affect key mechanisms of network evolution thus altering tie distribution and access among members of the field. Overall this article contributes to emergent literature on field dynamics by exposing the evolution of interorganizational dynamics when external events produce unsettled times that render extant logics brittle and open prospect for change.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link Forthcoming in Strategic Organization 1The social and economic bases of network multiplexity: Exploring the emergence of multiplex ties AbstractThe goal of this paper is to shed light on the role of tie content in the evolution of multiplex ties -i.e., ties featuring both an economic and a social component -in interorganizational networks. We clarify and extend the theoretical framework on network multiplexity by testing the extent to which two distinct tie content-related logics -social interaction and economic exchange -and their underlying mechanisms lead to the emergence of multiplex ties. Results from a longitudinal network analysis of firms located in an Italian multimedia cluster support our hypotheses, confirming that both social and economic drivers contribute to the emergence of network multiplexity, and that social ties have a stronger impact than economic ties on this process, thus providing further insight into the microdynamics of network evolution.

In the last two decades a lot of research has been devoted to unveiling the processes through which organizations learn and store knowledge. This research is typically concerned with organizations lastingly engaged in the provision of goods or services. Permanency is usually presumed in order for the encoding of inferences from history to take place. But what if organizational permanency cannot be assumed ex-ante? Project firms represent an interesting case in point. A project firm is a transient form of organization that ceases to exist as soon as its single target is achieved, as such it does not exhibit stable structures nor does it exhibit ostensible history-based paths upon which to build its choices and nurture its organizational knowledge. This apparent paradox can be resolved, in part, by extending the view from the isolated project to the relational context in which project firms operate. Using longitudinal data from the U.S. feature film industry, we show that the process of organizational formation and dissolution that characterizes this context is underpinned by patterns of enduring collaborations among interdependent industry participants. We build on these findings to speculate on processes of learning and remembering that interpenetrate project firms’ boundaries, by being embedded within a texture of stable interpersonal ties. Copyright Springer 2005film industry, organizational impermanence, organizational learning, project firms, repeated collaborations,

No abstract

This work concerns the role of winemakers as independent consultants of wineries with respect to recent changes in the Italian wine industry. Internationalisation and new consumption styles have turned the wine market into a mass market. Furthermore, new actors have emerged that mediate the convergence of supply and demand, and foster the adoption of new winemaking practices. Innovations in winemaking have had to overcome the resistance of the advocates of the traditional conception of quality, institutionalised by the denomination of origin regulations. Independent winemaking consultants and industry media, mainly wine guides, were key actors behind the innovations that fit the new context. We document the growing importance of winemaking consultants, and how they have been complemented by wine guides. We analyse the networks of wineries induced by the multiple affiliations of winemakers, as reported by the oldest Italian guide, I Vini di Veronelli, in the period 1997 -2006. In these networks two wineries are tied if a winemaker has an affiliation with both of them. We analyse the evolution of these networks, and assess whether the structural position of a winery is associated with the ratings of its wines.