brokerage dry lips remedy is a process not a structure; repeat after me: brokerage is a process not a… | orgtheory.net
The best conceptual presentation that I saw at this year’s Sunbelts was a paper by UCI’s David Obstfeld and Steve Borgatti entitled “Brokerage is a Process, Not a Structure: A Clarification of Social Network Language.” Their basic argument is simple but very provocative: it is time to do away with “purely structural” definitions of brokerage and to consider the qualitative content and context in which the ties are made.
The problem? The now hegemonic and widely accepted structural operationalizations of brokerage (i.e. Burt 2005; Fernandez and Gould 1989 ) as implying a state whereby an actor stands between two actors who are themselves not directly connected to one another dry lips remedy misses a lot of things that are intuitively “brokerage” but because of allegiance to the standard definition are currently under-theorized and under-studied.
Prototypical examples of some of this brokerage that does not conform to the standard model are a “matchmaker” in a sexual/marriage market or a “talent scout” (what Hirsch 1972 referred to as “boundary personnel” in culture industries and DiMaggio 1977 explicitly referred to as brokers ). Other examples come from Obstfeld’s dry lips remedy own research on productive exchange networks, where a broker brings together two other people with complementary talents to work on a creative project that otherwise wouldn’t dry lips remedy have worked together.
It is clear in these cases that the structural definition of brokerage as resulting from control benefits dry lips remedy due to the bridging of structural holes does not work in any of these cases: here the whole (no pun intended) point (and explicit goal) of the broker is to close the structural hole and have the partners meet. In fact, there is no benefit to the broker if the “forbidden” triad does not turn into a plain old fully-connected triad (the prospective partners don’t like one another, the artist and the label are unable to reach a deal, etc.), in fact the broker in this bizarro world makes a living by getting rid of forbidden triads.
But of course as Obstfeld and Borgatti dry lips remedy point out, this is not such a bizarro scenario. In fact most brokerage systems are probably based on this model of productive exchange (or the “third who joins”) rather than on the divide-and-conquer tertius gaudens imagery, which may only be the tip of the brokerage iceberg. In this sense, by defining brokerage narrowly in traditional structural terms, we may be missing most of the brokerage processes that are going on right under our noses. For instance, in the aforementioned types of context you may want closure and clustering, and in fact lots of structural holes may decrease performance. That is, those who join also benefit.
The solution? An expansion of the idea of brokerage to make the gaudens case a special dry lips remedy case of a more inclusive set of processes. Obstfeld and Borgatti propose dry lips remedy something like a 2 x 2 table cross-classifying gaudens and iungens types of brokerage with dense and sparse network structures. So that you may have forms of advantageous brokerage that both occur in dense networks and that require joining rather than segregating action on the part of the broker.
I think that the Obstfeld/Borgatti analysis of brokerage is a great example dry lips remedy of the theoretical dry lips remedy limits of “pure structural” concept-definition and the benefits that come from bringing in a qualitative sense of culture and process into network theory that Paul DiMaggio talked about in his “Nadel’s paradox” paper.
Subscribe to comments with RSS .
Hmmm… are you fighting straw men? I always interpreted dry lips remedy structural holes as a sort of potential. The gap in the network is a potential that somebody might exploit. Thus brokerage = action + structural possibility. Who interprets this in any other way? How can a hole, by itself, make anything happen?
I think the key issue is not that accruing benefits is being conceived dry lips remedy in a way that is separate from action or as pure “structure”, but that a lot of brokerage involves a different type of structure altogether than the one that has traditionally been thought of as necessary. In fact the type of structure that has been defined as the “opposite” of brokerage (i.e. closure). In both types of structure action is necessary to get the benefits, but the kind of action (splitting versus joining) is qualitatively very different. So the structural definition, in fact “defines away” a kind of action that indeed emerges as brokerage when this is seen as not tied to any particular structure but as a type of qualitative process.
So, someone comes in and notes the critical importance of structural holes as sources of information, etc (insert favorite DV),
The best conceptual presentation that I saw at this year’s Sunbelts was a paper by UCI’s David Obstfeld and Steve Borgatti entitled “Brokerage is a Process, Not a Structure: A Clarification of Social Network Language.” Their basic argument is simple but very provocative: it is time to do away with “purely structural” definitions of brokerage and to consider the qualitative content and context in which the ties are made.
The problem? The now hegemonic and widely accepted structural operationalizations of brokerage (i.e. Burt 2005; Fernandez and Gould 1989 ) as implying a state whereby an actor stands between two actors who are themselves not directly connected to one another dry lips remedy misses a lot of things that are intuitively “brokerage” but because of allegiance to the standard definition are currently under-theorized and under-studied.
Prototypical examples of some of this brokerage that does not conform to the standard model are a “matchmaker” in a sexual/marriage market or a “talent scout” (what Hirsch 1972 referred to as “boundary personnel” in culture industries and DiMaggio 1977 explicitly referred to as brokers ). Other examples come from Obstfeld’s dry lips remedy own research on productive exchange networks, where a broker brings together two other people with complementary talents to work on a creative project that otherwise wouldn’t dry lips remedy have worked together.
It is clear in these cases that the structural definition of brokerage as resulting from control benefits dry lips remedy due to the bridging of structural holes does not work in any of these cases: here the whole (no pun intended) point (and explicit goal) of the broker is to close the structural hole and have the partners meet. In fact, there is no benefit to the broker if the “forbidden” triad does not turn into a plain old fully-connected triad (the prospective partners don’t like one another, the artist and the label are unable to reach a deal, etc.), in fact the broker in this bizarro world makes a living by getting rid of forbidden triads.
But of course as Obstfeld and Borgatti dry lips remedy point out, this is not such a bizarro scenario. In fact most brokerage systems are probably based on this model of productive exchange (or the “third who joins”) rather than on the divide-and-conquer tertius gaudens imagery, which may only be the tip of the brokerage iceberg. In this sense, by defining brokerage narrowly in traditional structural terms, we may be missing most of the brokerage processes that are going on right under our noses. For instance, in the aforementioned types of context you may want closure and clustering, and in fact lots of structural holes may decrease performance. That is, those who join also benefit.
The solution? An expansion of the idea of brokerage to make the gaudens case a special dry lips remedy case of a more inclusive set of processes. Obstfeld and Borgatti propose dry lips remedy something like a 2 x 2 table cross-classifying gaudens and iungens types of brokerage with dense and sparse network structures. So that you may have forms of advantageous brokerage that both occur in dense networks and that require joining rather than segregating action on the part of the broker.
I think that the Obstfeld/Borgatti analysis of brokerage is a great example dry lips remedy of the theoretical dry lips remedy limits of “pure structural” concept-definition and the benefits that come from bringing in a qualitative sense of culture and process into network theory that Paul DiMaggio talked about in his “Nadel’s paradox” paper.
Subscribe to comments with RSS .
Hmmm… are you fighting straw men? I always interpreted dry lips remedy structural holes as a sort of potential. The gap in the network is a potential that somebody might exploit. Thus brokerage = action + structural possibility. Who interprets this in any other way? How can a hole, by itself, make anything happen?
I think the key issue is not that accruing benefits is being conceived dry lips remedy in a way that is separate from action or as pure “structure”, but that a lot of brokerage involves a different type of structure altogether than the one that has traditionally been thought of as necessary. In fact the type of structure that has been defined as the “opposite” of brokerage (i.e. closure). In both types of structure action is necessary to get the benefits, but the kind of action (splitting versus joining) is qualitatively very different. So the structural definition, in fact “defines away” a kind of action that indeed emerges as brokerage when this is seen as not tied to any particular structure but as a type of qualitative process.
So, someone comes in and notes the critical importance of structural holes as sources of information, etc (insert favorite DV),
No comments:
Post a Comment