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Blockmodeling is viewed often as a data reduction method. However, this is a simplistic view of the class of methods designed to uncover social structures, identify subgroups, and reveal emergent roles. Worse, this view misses the richness of the method as a tool for uncovering novel human resource management (HRM) insights. Here, we provide a brief overview of some essentials of blockmodeling and discuss research questions that can be addressed using this approach in applied HRM settings. Finally, we offer an empirical example to illustrate blockmodeling and the types of information that can be gleaned from its implementation.

The arguments in this chapter address all three of the questions motivating this volume on network strategy. First, they focus on the issue of network evolution and show how networks can emerge and change over time. Second, the chapter tackles the issue of endogeneity and shows that, under certain conditions, some structural advantages do precede rather than follow network positions. Networks evolve over trajectories and the trajectories matter. Third, the arguments respond to the core question of network entrepreneurship: does the awareness of structural advantages available to network positions inspire managers, acting on behalf of organizations, to seek these advantages? In responding, this chapter challenges the idea that filling structural holes necessarily confers advantages on the actors filling them. It follows that the advantages of bridging are dependent not only on the network structure, when decisions regarding tie formation or deletion are made, but also on the costs of forming and maintaining ties relative to the benefits obtained from doing so.

In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).

We reformulate regression modeling so that ideas often associated with field theory and social network analysis can be brought to bear at every stage in the computation and interpretation of regression coefficients in studies of organizations. Rather than “transcending” general linear reality, we seek to get more out of it. We formulate a dual to regression modeling based on using the variables to learn about the cases. We illustrate our ideas by applying the new approach to a database of hundreds of violent extremist organizations, focusing on understanding which groups use or pursue unconventional weapons (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear).

The emergence of dyadic resource exchange relations in transition economies provides a unique opportunity to study the process by which interfirm exchange relations develop. I use data on China's 40 largest business groups and their 535 member firms in the first five years of business group formation to investigate the effects of environmental uncertainty, interfirm familiarity, and organizational flexibility on the strength of repeated interfirm resource exchange ties. I model 16,306 ordered pairs of dyadic relations as a function of organization, dyad, and regional covariates to evaluate ideas derived from resource dependence theory and research on social dilemmas. I find that even when less expensive alternatives are available, exchange ties are stronger when the sending firm has secure access to the resource and when the receiving firm is located in an uncertain environment. In addition, exchange ties are stronger between firms that had prior social connections, particularly when environmental uncertainty is high. Finally, the strength of ties decreases where the receiving firm is able to modify its basic priorities so as to do without the resource, particularly when the receiver is exposed to relatively high levels of environmental uncertainty. These results simultaneously lend support for some of the basic propositions of resource dependence theory, provide insight into the process by which interfirm relations develop, and identify relationships of interest to strategists and policy makers.

The purpose of this article is to empirically examine the relationship between managers' emotional exhaustion and the ethnic diversity, workload requirements, and friendship ties within their work-groups.

The research employs a full-network sample of all managers from an indigenously owned ethnically diverse IT firm located in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Using a social network design within a regression model, the relationship between managerial power and operational workload and the burnout dimension of emotional exhaustion is initially examined as a baseline model. Work-group ethnicity and friendship ties are then examined as moderators to this relationship. The authors then examine the role of work-group ethnicity and friendship ties as a buffer mechanism using an efficient frontier analysis where managers act as decision-making units.

The study indicates that ethnic diversity acts more as a “negative moderator” to emotional exhaustion, while friendship ties act as both a “positive moderator” and “buffer” to work-related emotional exhaustion.

This is one of the few empirical studies that has examined the issues of ethnic diversity and burnout using social network and efficient frontier methodologies. This is also one of the first empirical studies to investigate these issues using an in-depth, full-sample case study of actual, real-work network relationships.