Stephen P Borgatti

University of Kentucky | UKY · LINKS Center for Social Network Analysis

When one thinks of a network tie, a certain prototypical image comes to mind: a relationship where interaction is fairly frequent, active, positive, and largely routine. Most social network research examines such ties. Yet the literature has increasingly identified certain types of ties that do not necessarily fit this standard mold, such as dorman...

Best Paper Proceedings, Organizational Behavior Division.

This paper reviews the growing body of work on network dynamics in organizational research, focusing on a corpus of 187 articles -- both “micro” (i.e., interpersonal) and “macro” (i.e., interorganizational) -- published between 2007 and 2020. We do not see “network dynamics” as a single construct; rather, it is an umbrella term covering a wide terr...

Social networks are ubiquitous. The science of networks has shaped how researchers and society understand the spread of disease, the precursors of loneliness, the rise of protest movements, the causes of social inequality, the influence of social media, and much more. Egocentric analysis conceives of each individual, or ego, as embedded in a person...

Burt (1992) proposed two principal measures of structural holes, effective size and constraint. However, the formulas describing the measures are somewhat opaque and have led to a certain amount of confusion. Borgatti (1997) showed that, for binary data, the effective size formula could be written very simply as degree (ego network size) minus aver...

This study examines the role of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and collaborative engagement on the performance of rural economic development organizations. The authors theorize that an organization’s EO and collaborative engagement, determined by levels of active engagement within a regional collaboration network, impact its ability to accomplish...

Research on negative ties has focused primarily on the harm they do. In this paper, we show that negative ties can also have beneficial effects. We argue that, like positive ties, negative ties can link actors together in the minds of observers. As a result, we theorize that negative ties with high-status actors can benefit a focal actor, whereas n...

Research on negative ties has focused primarily on the harm they do. In this paper, we show that negative ties can also have beneficial effects. We argue that, like positive ties, negative ties can link actors together in the minds of observers. As a result, we theorize that negative ties with high-status actors can benefit a focal actor, whereas n...

Most networks examined so far involve connections between nodes all of the same type, known as one‐mode networks. This chapter examines partitioning and clustering in multimode network data. A number of techniques have been developed for dealing with non‐binary data or more precisely non‐network type data. The chapter first concentrates on two mode...

Social ties with high‐status others can be a potent signal of an individual's underlying quality and future promise. Individuals in competitive markets, therefore, have an incentive to publicly claim connections to high‐status others. However, cognitive limitations and biases can make social network connections difficult for observers to reliably d...

In the wake of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), research ethics governance does not just affect the ethical dimensions of social research but also the range of scientific decisions available to researchers. Because of the sensitive status of personal data and the aversion to even minimal risk by what we call “moral bureaucracies”...

We offer best-practice recommendations for journal reviewers, editors, and authors regarding data collection and preparation. Our recommendations are applicable to research adopting different epistemological and ontological perspectives—including both quantitative and qualitative approaches—as well as research addressing micro (i.e., individuals, t...

Research on negative ties has focused primarily on the harm they do. In this paper, we show that negative ties can also have beneficial effects. We argue that, like positive ties, negative ties can link actors together in the minds of observers. As a result, we theorize that negative ties with high-status actors can benefit a focal actor, whereas n...

Brokerage has assumed an increasingly important role in social network research and organizing more generally. Social network research has traditionally defined brokerage in structural terms as a broker who stands between two disconnected parties. Alongside this structural definition, network research has generally made assumptions about, but rarel...

Two mode social network data consisting of actors attending events is a common type of social network data. For these kinds of data it is also common to have additional information about the timing or sequence of the events. We call data of this type two-mode temporal data. We explore the idea that actors attending events gain information from the...

The nonprofit literature has directed attention to exploring how features of the broader structure of exchanges within regional collaboration networks impact the dynamics and outcomes of a single partnership. This study examines how partners’ relative positions within a collaboration network impact their interdependence and collaborative success. O...

Sample size determination for open-ended questions or qualitative interviews relies primarily on custom and finding the point where little new information is obtained (thematic saturation). Here, we propose and test a refined definition of saturation as obtaining the most salient items in a set of qualitative interviews (where items can be material...

GLM statistical model results for the 28 examples. (DOCX)

The original data for the 28 examples. (XLSX)

We adopt a sociopolitical perspective to examine how an employee's political skill works in conjunction with social network structure to relate to the employee's innovation involvement and job performance. We find that employee innovation involvement mediates the relationship between political skill and job performance and that the number of struct...

Cambridge Core - Research Methods In Politics - Egocentric Network Analysis - by Brea L. Perry

Individuals differ in how accurately they perceive their social environment, but research and theory provide conflicting predictions on whether powerful people are more or less accurate than others. Drawing on social network theory and the situated cognition theory of power, we examine the relationship between individuals' formal and informal power...

This techniques guide provides a brief answer to the question: How to choose a dichotomization threshold? We propose a two step approach to selecting a dichotomization threshold. We illustrate the approaches using two datasets and provide instructions on how to perform these approaches in R and UCINET.

A variety of node-level centrality measures, including purely structural measures (such as degree and closeness centrality) and measures incorporating characteristics of actors (such as the Blau's measure of heterogeneity) have been developed to measure a person's access to resources held by others. Each of these node-level measures can be placed o...

What kind of person is likely to emerge as an informal leader in the workplace? Experimental research shows that high self-monitors—who tend to adjust their attitudes and behaviors to the demands of different situations—emerge as informal leaders in temporary groups. By contrast, low self-monitors—who tend to be true to themselves in terms of consi...

Betweenness centrality is generally regarded as a measure of others' dependence on a given node, and therefore as a measure of potential control. Closeness centrality is usually interpreted either as a measure of access efficiency or of independence from potential control by intermediaries. Betweenness and closeness are commonly assumed to be relat...

In social network analysis, two nodes are considered structurally equivalent if they have the same neighborhoods – that is, they are connected to the same others. Initially introduced as a convenience for creating reduced models of networks, it was soon seen as a way to formalize the concept of relational role or position. To the extent that charac...

We present a theory of social capital dynamics. In particular, we examine how individuals in organizations respond to events such as performance evaluations by changing whom they interact with and the extent to which they utilize their contacts. We argue that positive performance feedback from supervisors increases levels of self-efficacy and resul...

This study describes the patterns of collaboration among economic development organizations (EDOs) in eastern Kentucky. Economic development organizations work to improve the economic conditions of their respective locales. They operate in a region facing many historical barriers to economic sustainability, and where resource scarcity is the norm....

In this article, we examine the social structure of workplace relationships (both actual and desired ties) in networked distributed work. We focus on the role of human agency in forming networks needed to succeed in this environment. In particular, we address how employee work engagement enables individuals to occupy the network positions that they...

Social networks are not just patterns of interaction and sentiment in the real world; they are also cognitive (re)constructions of social relations, some real, some imagined. Focusing on networks as mental entities, our essay describes a new method that relies on stylized network images to gather quantitative data on how people "see" specific aspec...

Is social network analysis just measures and methods with no theory? We attempt to clarify some confusions, address some previous critiques and controversies surrounding the issues of structure, human agency, endogeneity, tie content, network change, and context, and add a few critiques of our own. We use these issues as an opportunity to discuss t...

We argue for a broadened approach to brokerage by distinguishing between brokerage emphasizing a particular structural pattern in which two otherwise disconnected alters are connected through a third party ("brokerage structure") and the social behavior of third parties ("brokerage process"). We explore a processual view of brokerage by examining t...

Social network analysts have often collected data on negative relations such as dislike, avoidance, and conflict. Most often, the ties are analyzed in such a way that the fact that they are negative is of no consequence. For example, they have often been used in blockmodeling analyses where many different kinds of ties are used together and all tie...

Two important leadership posts in American neurology are the presidents of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the American Neurological Association (ANA). In this article, we use social network analysis, based on graph theory, to map the professional ties of presidents of the AAN and ANA since 1948. We examined whether institution ranking...

We offer a theory and measure for determining powerful nodal positions based on potential inter-actor control in “politically charged” networks, which contain both allies and adversaries. Power is derived from actors that are dependent on the focal actor and sociometrically weak, either due to a lack of alternative allies or from being threatened b...

A bird's-eye view: Using social network analysis to improve knowledge creation and sharing A significant yet often overlooked component of people's information environments is composed of the relationships that they use to acquire information and knowledge. Social network analysis (SNA) allows managers to visualize and understand the myriad of rela...

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and widespread adoption of a new class of information technologies, commonly known as social media. Researchers often rely on social network analysis (SNA) in attempting to understand these technologies, often without considering how the novel capabilities of social media platforms might affect th...

We develop a multistage self-regulatory perspective on job search effort assuming active job seekers conducting job searches within a job search goal life span. Specifically, we propose that time pressure increases as the goal of finding employment becomes more proximal, while job search uncertainty decreases. Based on these premises, we integrate...

A procedure is described for finding sets of key players in a social network. A key assumption is that the optimal selection of key players depends on what they are needed for. Accordingly, two generic goals are articulated, referring to key player problem in positive (KPP-1) and negative (KPP-2) terms. KPP-1 is defined as the identification of key...

Individuals differ in the accuracy of their perceptions of the social environment, but research and theory provide conflicting predictions on whether those with power are more or less accurate than others. Drawing on social network theory and the situated focus theory of power, we examine the relationship between individuals’ formal power and their...

Workplace attitudes are known to be contagious through social networks, but less is known about how employees resolve heterogeneous influences to determine their own attitudes. We investigate this question by analyzing the individual social networks of 84 employees at a Mid-western manufacturing and sales company who had friends with divergent comm...

Heterogeneity in host association patterns can alter pathogen transmission and strategies for control. Great apes are highly social and endangered animals that have experienced substantial population declines from directly transmitted pathogens; as such, network approaches to quantify contact heterogeneity could be crucially important for predictin...

There have been two distinct approaches to two-mode data. The first approach is to project the data to one-mode and then analyze the projected network using standard single-mode techniques, also called the conversion method. The second approach has been to extend methods and concepts to the two-mode case and analyze the network directly with the tw...

Project affiliation networks (i.e., individuals connected through common project team memberships) create fruitful junctures to understand how individuals are connected to others in their social contexts, especially in distributed organizations. Advances in technology-mediated environments further help individuals develop connections with their col...

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and widespread adoption of a new class of information technologies, commonly known as social media. Researchers often rely on social network analysis (SNA) in attempting to understand these technologies, often without considering how the novel capabilities of social media platforms might affect...

A brief overview of social network theory & social network analysis methodology and their applications in the field of anthropology.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the field of social network analysis (SNA), including both theory and method, as applied to the understanding of organizations. It starts with a discussion of fundamental concepts of SNA. Examples of network concepts at dyadic level, node-level and group or whole network level of analysis are...

In a paper examining informal networks and organizational crisis, Krackhardt and Stern (1988) proposed a measure assessing the extent to which relations in a network were internal to a group as opposed to external. They called their measure the E–I index. The measure is now in wide use and is implemented in standard network packages such as UCINET...

In this article we review foundational aspects of personal network analysis (also called ego network analysis) and introduce E-NET (Borgatti 2006), a computer program designed specifically for personal network analysis. We present the basic steps for personal network data collection and use E-NET to review key measures of personal network analysis...

Project RAP (Risk Avoidance Partnership) trained 112 active drug users to become peer health advocates (PHAs). Six months after baseline survey (N(bl) = 522), 91.6% of PHAs and 56.6% of community drug users adopted the RAP innovation of giving peer intervention, and 59.5% of all participants (N(6m) = 367) were exposed to RAP innovation. Sociometric...

In this article we review foundational aspects of personal network analysis (also called ego network analysis) and introduce E-NET (Borgatti 2006), a computer program designed specifically for personal network analysis. We present the basic steps for personal network data collection and use E-NET to review key measures of personal network analysis...

Virtually all of the extensive previous research investigating the effect of information systems proficiency on performance has been conducted at the individual level. Little research has investigated the relationship between IS proficiency and performance at the group level. In this paper, we argue that IS proficiency at the group level may be mor...

The use of network theory and methods to explain and predict outcomes related to complex systems is on the rise across a range of sciences, from physics and biology to sociology and psychology. Indeed, the applicability of network ideas across seemingly disparate systems is one of the most distinctive and promising features. Network theory represen...

Research on social networks has grown considerably in the last decade. However, there is a certain amount of confusion about network theory-for example, what it is, what is distinctive about it, and how to generate new theory. This paper attempts to remedy the situation by clarifying the fundamental concepts of the field (such as the network) and c...

Gatekeepers play a critical role in determining what creative products eventually reach audiences. Although they have been discussed in the literature on cultural production, they have rarely been studied systematically. In particular, we know little about how gatekeepers use their social networks to manage search and selection processes in markets...

IntroductionThe Abstract ModelMethodology and Empirical IllustrationThe Model in Anthropological ContextConsensus Analysis in PracticeConclusion References

Network optimization needs to use many terms and notions used in graph theory. In this chapter we seek to introduce most of the graph theory terms and notions used in the book. We also introduce some concepts used in the study of algorithms. To explain these concepts, we will make use of a fictitious map of one of the facilities of the fictitious G...