Structural Holes
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Structural Holes
Structural holes is a concept from social network research, originally developed by Ronald Stuart Burt. The study of structural holes spans the fields of sociology, economics, and computer science. Burt introduced this concept in an attempt to explain the origin of differences in social capital. Burt’s theory suggests that individuals hold certain positional advantages/disadvantages from how they are embedded in neighborhoods or other social structures. A structural hole is understood as a gap between two individuals who have complementary sources to information. The concept Most social structures tend to be characterized by dense clusters of strong connections, also known as network closure. The theory relies on a fundamental idea that the homogeneity of information, new ideas, and behavior is generally higher within any group of people as compared to that in between two groups of people. An individual who acts as a mediator between two or more closely connected groups of peop ...
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Social Network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics. Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations". Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalize ...
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Ronald Stuart Burt
Ronald Stuart Burt (born 1949) is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. He is most notable for his research and writing on social networks and social capital, particularly the concept of structural holes in a social network. Biography Originally a pre-medical major, Burt earned his B.A. in social and behavioral sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 1971 with a focus on social psychology. He earned a M.A. in Sociology from The State University of New York at Albany in 1973 working with Nan Lin. He moved to the University of Chicago to work with mathematical sociology professor James Samuel Coleman and earned his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1977. His dissertation committee also included the social network analyst Edward Laumann. Prior to joining the University of Chicago in 1993, he was a professor of sociolog ...
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Social Capital
Social capital is "the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interpersonal relationships, a shared sense of Identity (social science), identity, a shared understanding, shared Social norm, norms, shared Value (ethics), values, Trust (social sciences), trust, cooperation, and Reciprocity (social psychology), reciprocity. Social capital is a measure of the value of resources, both Tangibility, tangible (e.g., public spaces, private property) and intangible (e.g., Social actor, actors, human capital, people), and the impact that ideal creators have on the resources involved in each relationship, and on larger groups. Some have described it as a form of capital that produces Public good (economics), public goods for a common purpose, although this does not align with how it has been measured. Social capital has been used to expla ...
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Social Structure
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings, or purposes. Examples of social structure include family, religion, law, economy, and class. It contrasts with "social system", which refers to the parent structure in which these various structures are embedded. Thus, social structures significantly influence larger systems, such as economic systems, legal systems, political systems, cultural systems, etc. Social structure can also be said to be the framework upon which a society is established. It determines the norms and patterns of relations between the various institutions of the society. Since the 1920s, the term has been in general use in social science, especially as a variable whose sub-components needed to be disti ...
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Triadic Closure
Triadic closure is a concept in social network theory, first suggested by German sociologist Georg Simmel in his 1908 book ''Soziologie'' 'Sociology: Investigations on the Forms of Sociation'' Triadic closure is the property among three nodes A, B, and C (representing people, for instance), that if the connections A-B and A-C exist, there is a tendency for the new connection B-C to be formed. Triadic closure can be used to understand and predict the growth of networks, although it is only one of many mechanisms by which new connections are formed in complex networks.Easley, D, & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, crowds, and markets: reasoning about a highly connected world. Cornell, NY: Cambridge Univ Pr. History Triadic closure was made popular by Mark Granovetter in his 1973 article ''The Strength of Weak Ties''.Granovetter, M. (1973).The Strength of Weak Ties", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, Issue 6, May 1360-80. There he synthesized the theory of cognitive balance firs ...
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Comparative Advantage
In an economic model, agents have a comparative advantage over others in producing a particular good if they can produce that good at a lower relative opportunity cost or autarky price, i.e. at a lower relative marginal cost prior to trade. Comparative advantage describes the economic reality of the work gains from trade for individuals, firms, or nations, which arise from differences in their factor endowments or technological progress. (The absolute advantage, comparing output per time (labor efficiency) or per quantity of input material (monetary efficiency), is generally considered more intuitive, but less accurate — as long as the opportunity costs of producing goods across countries vary, productive trade is possible.) David Ricardo developed the classical theory of comparative advantage in 1817 to explain why countries engage in international trade even when one country's workers are more efficient at producing ''every'' single good than workers in other countries. He ...
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Gatekeeper
A gatekeeper is a person who controls access to something, for example via a city gate or bouncer, or more abstractly, controls who is granted access to a category or status. Gatekeepers assess who is "in or out", in the classic words of management scholar Kurt Lewin. Various figures in the religions and mythologies of the world serve as gatekeepers of paradisal or infernal realms, granting or denying access to these realms, depending on the credentials of those seeking entry. Figures acting in this capacity may also undertake the status of watchman, interrogator or judge. In the late 20th century the term came into metaphorical use, referring to individuals or bodies that decide whether a given message will be distributed by a mass medium. Gatekeeping roles Gatekeepers serve in various roles including academic admissions, financial advising, and news editing, along with many areas of the fine arts. An academic admissions officer might review students' qualifications based ...
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Network Structure
Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics * Networks, a graph with attributes studied in network theory ** Scale-free network, a network whose degree distribution follows a power law ** Small-world network, a mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors, but have neighbors in common * Flow network, a directed graph where each edge has a capacity and each edge receives a flow Biology * Biological network, any network that applies to biological systems * Ecological network, a representation of interacting species in an ecosystem * Neural network, a network or circuit of neurons Technology and communication * Artificial neural network, a computing system inspired by animal brains * Broadcast network, radio stations, television stations, or other electronic media outl ...
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Interpersonal Ties
In social network analysis and mathematical sociology, interpersonal ties are defined as information-carrying connections between people. Interpersonal ties, generally, come in three varieties: ''strong'', ''weak'' or ''absent''. Weak social ties, it is argued, are responsible for the majority of the embeddedness and structure of social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks. Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information. Included in the definition of ''absent ties'', according to the American sociologist Mark Granovetter, are those relationships (or ties) without substantial significance, such as "nodding" relationships between people living ...
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Mark Granovetter
Mark Sanford Granovetter (; born October 20, 1943) is an American sociologist and professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known as ''The Strength of Weak Ties'' (1973). In 2014 Granovetter was named a Citation Laureate by Thomson Reuters and added to that organization’s list of predicted Nobel Prize winners in economics. Data from the Web of Science show that Granovetter has written both the first and third most cited sociology articles. Education Granovetter earned an Bachelor of Arts degree in history at Princeton University (1965) and a PhD in sociology at Harvard University (1970). At Harvard his research was supervised by Harrison White. Career and research Granovetter is currently the Joan Butler Ford Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford and is the chair of the Department of Sociology. He previous ...
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Theorems
In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proved, or can be proved. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of the axioms and previously proved theorems. In the mainstream of mathematics, the axioms and the inference rules are commonly left implicit, and, in this case, they are almost always those of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice, or of a less powerful theory, such as Peano arithmetic. A notable exception is Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which involves the Grothendieck universes whose existence requires the addition of a new axiom to the set theory. Generally, an assertion that is explicitly called a theorem is a proved result that is not an immediate consequence of other known theorems. Moreover, many authors qualify as ''theorems'' only the most important results, and use the terms ''lemma'', ''proposition'' and ' ...
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Social Network Analysis
Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of ''nodes'' (individual actors, people, or things within the network) and the ''ties'', ''edges'', or ''links'' (relationships or interactions) that connect them. Examples of social structures commonly visualized through social network analysis include social media networks, memes spread, information circulation, friendship and acquaintance networks, business networks, knowledge networks, difficult working relationships, social networks, collaboration graphs, kinship, disease transmission, and sexual relationships. These networks are often visualized through ''sociograms'' in which nodes are represented as points and ties are represented as lines. These visualizations provide a means of qualitatively assessing networks by varying the visual representation of their nodes and edges to reflect attributes of in ...
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