Summary
Contents
In this book, leading methodologists address the issue of how effectively to apply the latest developments in social network analysis to behavioural and social science disciplines. Topics examined include: ways to specify the network contents to be studied; how to select the method for representing network structures; how social network analysis has been used to study interorganizational relations via the resource dependence model; how to use a contact matrix for studying the spread of disease in epidemiology; and how cohesion and structural equivalence network theories relate to studying social influence. The book also offers some statistical models for social support networks.
Networks of Interorganizational Relations
Networks of Interorganizational Relations
For decades, a closed-system framework dominated organizational analysis. Although some works, such as Selznick's (1949) study of the Tennessee Valley Authority, had focused on organizational environments, it was only in the 1970s that the environment began to play a major role in organizational research. As attention shifted to the environment, researchers focused more on interorganizational relations. At the same time, network analysis was emerging from the small groups lab and being applied to real life settings. Because of its focus on the relations among social actors, network analysis was seen by many organizational researchers in the 1970s as a logical way to study relations among organizations (Aldrich & Whetten, 1981; Evan, 1978; Paulson, 1985; Van de ...
