Distance and Social Relations

Boalt, Gunnar; Janson, Carl-Gunnar

doi:10.1177/000169935700200104

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…This study provides solid evidence that social selection mechanisms do not operate homogeneously over time. The study also demonstrates with unique clarity the risks of modeling social mechanisms and social relations as timeless rather than as contingent on specific times (when) and places (where) people meet (Abbott, 2007). Without information on the exact timing of individual social encounters, the authors would have concluded that tendencies toward homophily were absent during the party.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

From Ties to Events in the Analysis of Interorganizational Exchange Relations

Bianchi

Lomi

2022

Organizational Research Methods

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Relational event models expand the analytical possibilities of existing statistical models for interorganizational networks by: (i) making efficient use of information contained in the sequential ordering of observed events connecting sending and receiving units; (ii) accounting for the intensity of the relation between exchange partners, and (iii) distinguishing between short- and long-term network effects. We introduce a recently developed relational event model (REM) for the analysis of continuously observed interorganizational exchange relations. The combination of efficient sampling algorithms and sender-based stratification makes the models that we present particularly useful for the analysis of very large samples of relational event data generated by interaction among heterogeneous actors. We demonstrate the empirical value of event-oriented network models in two different settings for interorganizational exchange relations—that is, high-frequency overnight transactions among European banks and patient-sharing relations within a community of Italian hospitals. We focus on patterns of direct and generalized reciprocity while accounting for more complex forms of dependence present in the data. Empirical results suggest that distinguishing between degree- and intensity-based network effects, and between short- and long-term effects is crucial to our understanding of the dynamics of interorganizational dependence and exchange relations. We discuss the general implications of these results for the analysis of social interaction data routinely collected in organizational research to examine the evolutionary dynamics of social networks within and between organizations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

From Ties to Events in the Analysis of Interorganizational Exchange Relations

Bianchi

Lomi

2022

Organizational Research Methods

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“…Anti‐dualists like me believe that all human agency, intentions and choices, as well as any agent's success in life, is (metaphysically speaking) 3 thoroughly dependent on what other people do or have done – on behaviors, technologies, and other materials that can be described in social structural terms. Structures constitute intrinsic parts of what anybody does or thinks (Abbott, 2007; Barnes, 2000; Collins, 2004; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Fuchs, 2001), indeed of who one is : there is no “core” to any agency or agent, or to humanity, personhood or self, independent from and unshaped by structural determinants 4…”

Section: Anti‐dualistic Ontologies’ Conflict With Voluntarismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In social theory I concur with Latour (2005) that individual and agentive – just like collective and structural – terms are “groupings,” categories that bring certain things together and leave others out, and that their referents should not be presumed to exist independently from us “group makers, group talkers, and group holders” (p. 32). What any action and, hence, agent (and intention) is depends on (and changes with) the socio‐cultural environment (e.g., Abbott, 1927/1988, 2007, pp. 7–10; Dewey, 1927/1988, p. 357), other people's behavioral structures (e.g., Crossley, 2011, pp.…”

Section: Anti‐dualistic Ontologies’ Conflict With Voluntarismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Agency in Anti‐Dualistic Social Ontologies: A Compatibilist Notion

Piiroinen

2023

J Theory Soc Behav

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Anti‐dualistic social ontologies, those highlighting the intrinsic interdependency of agency and structure as two sides of the same coin, are sometimes criticized for failing to provide a satisfactory account of autonomous – capable and free – agency, or even denying the reality of such agency. This paper contests these claims, arguing that anti‐dualistic ontologies only conflict with autonomous agency when the latter is understood in a highly voluntaristic sense, whose ideational roots go to what philosophers of free will call “incompatibilist” intuitions of freedom. Those intuitions suggest that actions (intentions, decisions) ultimately determined by extrinsic causes lack the kind of freedom presupposed by moral responsibility, so when agentive autonomy is presumed to involve such freedom, it does indeed cohere poorly with the anti‐dualistic picture of intrinsically structured agency. Herein, however, an alternative, “compatibilist” notion of autonomy is advanced, such that does not conflict with extrinsic determination and is therefore congruent with anti‐dualistic social ontologies.

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“…Actors belonging to the same geographic unit (e.g., city, country or state) as the innovator also have superior access to the template. The geographic concentration of social relations reflects a variety of factors: the greater odds that individuals in close proximity encounter one another (Festinger et al, 1950), the high costs of maintaining distant ties (Zipf, 1949;Boalt and Janson, 1957), and the prevalence of local cultures (Benedict, 1934). We therefore expect that actors physically close to a source of knowledge have better access to it: Hypothesis 2: A nearby knowledge recipient's advantage in receiving and applying knowledge over a distant recipient peaks for knowledge of intermediate interdependence.…”

Section: Social Boundaries and Template Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informational Complexity and the Flow of Knowledge Across Social Boundaries

Fleming

Rivkin²,

Sorenson

2007

Applied Evolutionary Economics and Economic Geography

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Business School LEE FLEMING Harvard Business School Scholars from a variety of backgrounds-economists, sociologists, strategists, and students of technology management-have sought a better understanding of why some knowledge disperses widely while other knowledge does not. In this quest, some researchers have focused on the characteristics of the knowledge itself (e.g., Polanyi, 1966; Reed and DeFillippi, 1990; Zander and Kogut, 1995) while others have emphasized the social networks that constrain and enable the flow of knowledge (e.g., Coleman et al., 1957; Davis and Greve, 1997). This chapter examines the interplay between these two factors. Specifically, we consider how the complexity of knowledge and the density of social relations jointly influence the movement of knowledge. Imagine a social network composed of patches of dense connections with sparse interstices between them. The dense patches might reflect firms, for instance, or geographic regions or technical communities. When does knowledge diffuse within these dense patches circumscribed by social boundaries but not beyond them? Synthesizing social network theory with a view of knowledge transfer as a search process, we argue that knowledge inequality across social boundaries should reach its peak when the underlying knowledge is of moderate complexity. 1 To test this hypothesis, we analyze patent data and compare citation rates across three types of social boundaries: within versus outside the firm, geographically near to versus far from the inventor, and internal versus external to the technological class. In all three cases, the disparity in knowledge diffusion across these borders is greatest for knowledge of an intermediate level of complexity.

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Distance and Social Relations

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

From Ties to Events in the Analysis of Interorganizational Exchange Relations

From Ties to Events in the Analysis of Interorganizational Exchange Relations

Autonomous Agency in Anti‐Dualistic Social Ontologies: A Compatibilist Notion

Informational Complexity and the Flow of Knowledge Across Social Boundaries

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