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Dyadic multi-dimensionality informs the variation that exists within and between network ties and suggests that ties are not all the same and not all equally strategic. This chapter presents a model of dyadic evolution grounded in dyadic multi-dimensionality and framed within actor-level, dyadic-level, endogenous, and exogenous contexts. These contexts generate both strategic catalysts that motivate network action and bounded agency that may constrain such network action. Assuming the need to navigate within bounded agency, the model highlights three strategic processes that demonstrate how dyadic multi-dimensionality underlies the evolution of strategic network ties.

The research community currently employs four very different versions of the social network concept: A social network is seen as a set of socially constructed role relations (e.g., friends, business partners), a set of interpersonal sentiments (e.g., liking, trust), a pattern of behavioral social interaction (e.g., conversations, citations), or an opportunity structure for exchange. Researchers conventionally assume these conceptualizations are interchangeable as social ties, and some employ composite measures that aim to capture more than one dimension. Even so, important discrepancies often appear for non-ties (as dyads where a specific role relation or sentiment is not reported, a specific form of interaction is not observed, or exchange is not possible).

Investigating the interplay across the four definitions is a step toward developing scope conditions for generalization and application of theory across these domains.

This step is timely because emerging tools of computational social science – wearable sensors, logs of telecommunication, online exchange, or other interaction – now allow us to observe the fine-grained dynamics of interaction over time. Combined with cutting-edge methods for analysis, these lenses allow us to move beyond reified notions of social ties (and non-ties) and instead directly observe and analyze the dynamic and structural interdependencies of social interaction behavior.

This unprecedented opportunity invites us to refashion dynamic structural theories of exchange that advance “beyond networks” to unify previously disjoint research streams on relationships, interaction, and opportunity structures.

To understand the phenomena of people revealing regrettable information on the Internet, we examine who people think they’re addressing, and what they say, in the process of interacting with those not physically or temporally co-present.

We conduct qualitative analyses of interviews with student bloggers and observations of five years’ worth of their blog posts, drawing on linguists’ concepts of indexical ground and deictics. Based on analyses of how bloggers reference their shared indexical ground and how they use deictics, we expose bloggers’ evolving awareness of their audiences, and the relationship between this awareness and their disclosures.

Over time, writers and their regular audience, or “chorus,” reciprocally reveal personal information. However, since not all audience members reveal themselves in this venue, writers’ disclosures are available to those observers they are not aware of. Thus, their overdisclosure is tied to what we call the “n-adic” organization of online interaction. Specifically, and as can be seen in their linguistic cues, n-adic utterances are directed toward a non-unified audience whose invisibility makes the discloser unable to find out the exact number of participants or the time they enter or exit the interaction.

Attention to linguistic cues, such as deictics, is a compelling way to identify the shifting reference groups of ethnographic subjects interacting with physically or temporally distant others.

We describe the social organization of interaction with undetectable others. n-adic interactions likely also happen in other on- and offline venues in which participants are obscured but can contribute anonymously.

This chapter applies social exchange theory to corruption. If two parties exhibit corrupt behaviors, secrecy becomes a new joint good, making the two parties more dependent on each other (an increase in total power). Since no external enforcement mechanisms are available in illicit exchanges, the initial reciprocal exchange pattern shifts toward negotiated or productive forms of exchange. Such forms of exchange, however, tend to leave traces, either because the amount of traded resources increases or the contingencies between the behaviors become more visible to the outside. Using the larger network structure, in which corrupt exchanges are embedded, to deal with the problem of detection also is Janus-faced. Adding more ties to the exchange increases either the competition between several potential exchanges partners (exclusively connected network) or the risk of nonreciprocity and whistle blowing (positively connected network). By showing that illicit relations are inherently unstable, we specify some of the scope conditions of social exchange theory.

In today's knowledge-based economy, the ability to produce highly novel and practical ideas is critical to an organization's survival. This paper draws upon social perspectives of creativity (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003) and the vital role of recombinant information in creative development (Barron & Harrington, 1981; Hargadon, 2003) to explore information exchange probabilities; exchanges among group members who are deep-level similar fosters incremental creative potential while information exchanges among group members who are deep-level dissimilar fosters radical creative potential. The dynamics of attraction suggest group members are most likely to interact with people who are least likely to facilitate radical creativity. Using a computer simulation we examine how proximity may be used to facilitate information exchanges among deep-level diverse group members to increase the potential for radical creativity. Results suggest the use of proximity to create strong ties among deep-level dissimilar group members may facilitate radical creativity in groups.

A book on case study research would be remiss without a chapter that introduces the reader to relevant literature on personal exchanges and face-to-face talk. Chapter 9 offers a conceptual property–space analysis for theory and research on personal exchanges including talk. The chapter describes a study on face-to-face conversation analysis (i.e., talk) in a buyer–seller context. The study includes examining forty transactions between actual insurance salespersons (n=3) and prospective clients (n=57) interacting in field settings. The chapter reports the relationships between purchase behavior and the frequency of key orientation and bargaining statements made by the salespersons and customers. The findings support the importance of studying social factors, influence, and situation variables in constructing a general conceptualization of exchange relationships.

This conceptual paper examines and evaluates patronage and clientage as a system of interrelated dyadic exchanges between unequals through which goods and services circulate, flowing both up and down through stratified societies. The parties involved may be in different places socially and geographically.

Data are presented for Brazil from the period of the Old Republic beginning in the 1890s, through the end of the Military Dictatorship in mid-1980s, and finally to the present, ending with today’s conditional cash transfer programs. The data are examined against the background of a 15th century book, O Livro da Virtuosa Bemfeituria (The Book of the Virtuous Benefits), written by a Portuguese Prince influential in the expansion and discoveries as a guide for princes and great lords that is used in the paper very much in the way that Adam Smith’s writings are used for most economic behavior today.

There are striking parallels over this long historical period in the behaviors referred to as patronage and clientage that may be conceptualized as an older (traditional) way of ordering the flow of goods and services (distributing them), alternative and parallel to market mechanisms that have, and continue to operate in Brazilian society.

Patronage and clientage are often-misunderstood behaviors, sometimes referred to as corrupt, that alternatively may be explained and understood as part of a still viable and operational socio-cultural system that goes back to a period before the colonization of Brazil.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

The paper is the story of the marginalization of the concept of networks of dyadic exchanges or patronage and clientage by Brazilian intellectuals and Brazilianist academics. I contend that though it is a pervasive pattern in the culture of the nation, Brazilian intellectuals wrote about patronage/clientage as an aspect of politics that is responsible for the country's backwardness and underdevelopment. Anthropologists, for the most part, judged it to be exploitative of the people involved and believed that it should be eliminated. The Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT), as it implemented a highly commended conditional cash transfer program to help the poor, attempted to replace it with an alternative way they believed electoral politics ought to be conducted. I suggest that the pattern continues to be more than exchanges between political office seekers and voters in Brazil as it transcends the political, economic, and religious categories of modernity and may provide the most needy with what the labor market does not.