R S Burt
Biographic Data
| ID | 1011 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R S Burt |
| GIVEN NAMES | R S |
| FAMILY NAME | Burt |
| SIGNATURE | BURT R S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7947-2101 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 108 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1992 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 108 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Jargonization, Language Development, and Team Performance
Contingent bridge supervision
Guanxi and Structural Holes
The Chinese word guanxi distinguishes a kind of relationship that is familiar, consequential for network predictions of performance, and consistent with—but not yet distinguished in—network theory. Phrased in terms of network theory, the Chinese term guanxi can be viewed as a tie that has become strong through its history such that trust within the relationship is high and independent of the surrounding network. As such, a guanxi tie can function…
Team talk
We began this work intending to illustrate the network origins of jargon, a signal feature of team learning and the division of labor. In the process, we came to recognize the substantive importance of message timing, which we discuss as the pulse of a network. This paper describes our route to that recognition. We analyze data from a renovated classic network experiment providing empirical support for three hypotheses. The first, and most famili…
From Structural Holes
Network brokerage and the perception of leadership
Social network and family business
The networks and success of female entrepreneurs in China
More or less guanxi
Structural Holes versus Network Closure as Social Capital
This chapter discusses two network structures that have been argued to create social capital. The closure argument is that social capital is created by a network of strongly interconnected elements. The structural hole argument is that social capital is created by a network in which people can broker connections between otherwise disconnected segments. Structural holes separate nonredundant sources of information, sources that are more additive t…
Social Capital
Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Part I. Social Capital: Networks and Embedded Resources -- 1 Building a Network Theory of Social Capital Nan Lin -- WHAT IS CAPITAL? -- WHY DOES SOCIAL CAPITAL WORK? -- PERSPECTIVES AND CONTROVERSIES IN SOCIAL CAPITAL -- CONCEPTUALIZING AND MEASURING SOCIAL CAPITAL -- Embedded Resources and Network Locations -- Measuring Social Capital as Assets in Networks -- Sampling …
Social network and temporal discounting
For reasons of social influence and social logistics, people in closed networks are expected to experience time compression: The more closed a person's network, the steeper the person's discount function, and the more narrow the expected time horizon within which the person deliberates events and behavior. Consistent with the hypothesis, data on managers at the top of three organizations show network closure associated with a social life compress…
Reinforced structural holes
Social Network Analysis
We provide an overview of social network analysis focusing on network advantage as a lens that touches on much of the area. For reasons of good data and abundant research, we draw heavily on studies of people in organizations. Advantage is traced to network structure as a proxy for the distribution of variably sticky information in a population. The network around a person indicates the person's access and control in the distribution. Advantage i…
How many names are enough? Identifying network effects with the least set of listed contacts
Network-Related Personality and the Agency Question
The more consistent a person’s network across roles and the more relevant that consistency is for achievement, the more important agency is for understanding network effects on achievement. With network, experience, and achievement data on persons playing multiple characters in a virtual world, evidence is presented to support two conclusions: (1) About a third of network structure is consistent within persons across roles: that is, those who in …
Network Duality of Social Capital
This book showcases new innovative research in economics, politics, sociology, and management regarding the topic. Leading scholars from a variety of disciplines present ground-breaking new research exploring the still-undiscovered value of social capital. The book employs a self-consciously multi-disciplinary approach to address two objectives: reaching out and reaching in. Through theoretical and empirical scholarship, the authors explore the m…
Teaching executives to see social capital
Brokerage and Closure
Social Capital, the advantage created by location in social structure, is a critical element in business strategy. Who has it, how it works, and how to develop it have become key questions as markets, organizations, and careers become more and more dependent on informal, discretionary relationships. The formal organization deals with accountability; Everything else flows through the informal: advice, coordination, cooperation friendship, gossip, …
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
This article outlines the mechanism by which brokerage provides social capital. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of op-tions otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital. I review evidence consistent with…
The Social Structure of Competition
A player brings capital to the competitive arena and walks away with profit determined by the rate of return where the capital was invested. The market production equation predicts profit: invested capital, multiplied by the going rate of return, equals the profit to be expected from the investment. You invest a million dollars. The going rate of return is 10 percent. The profit is one hundred thousand dollars. Investments create an ability to pr…
Bridge decay
Social Capital
Leading scholars in the field of social networks from diverse disciplines present the first systematic and comprehensive collection of current theories and empirical research on the informal connections that individuals have for support, help, and information from other people. Expanding on concepts originally formulated by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, this seminal work will find an essential place with educators and students in the fields …
Attachment, decay, and social network
To study decay in attachment to an organization, I analyse data on women who obtained an MBA from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business (GSB). I measure attachment in terms of network embedding: an alumna is attached to the GSB to the extent that people close to her graduated from the GSB. Behavioral data corroborate the network data in that alumnae measured to be more attached are more likely to have joined an alumni club and m…
Decay functions
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
This article outlines the mechanism by which brokerage provides social capital. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of op-tions otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital. I review evidence consistent with…
Social Contagion and Innovation
Two classes of network models are used to reanalyze a sociological classic often cited as evidence of social contagion in the diffusion of technological innovation: Medical Innovation. Debate between the cohesion and structural equivalence models poses the following question for study: Did the physicians resolve the uncertainty of adopting the new drug through conversations with colleagues (cohesion) or through their perception of the action prop…
Models of Network Structure
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Positions in Networks
The existence of an actor as a set of asymmetric relations to and from every actor in a network of relations is specified as the position of the actor in the network. Conditions of strong versus weak structural equivalence of actor positions in a network are defined. Network structure is characterized in terms of structurally nonequivalent, jointly occupied, network positions located in the observed network. The social distances of actors from ne…
The Gender of Social Capital
Legitimacy affects returns to social capital. I begin with the network structure of social capital, explaining the information and control benefits of structural holes. The holes in a network are enterpreneurial opportunities to add value, and persons rich in such opportunities are expected to be more successful than their peers. Accumulating empirical research supports the prediction. However, women here pose a puzzle. The entrepreneurial networ…
A note on social capital and network content
Cohesion Versus Structural Equivalence as a Basis for Network Subgroups
Two basic approaches to network analysis are compared in terms of the network subgroups each produces. The relational approach, developing from traditional sociometry, focuses on relations between actors (individuals, groups, or corporations) and aggregates actors connected by cohesive bonds into 'cliques.' The positional approach focuses on the pattern of relations in which an actor is involved and aggregates actors with similar patterns, i.e., …
Kinds of Third-Party Effects on Trust
The simplest social context for trust is an isolated dyad-two people away from others. The more usual context is two people surrounded by various close friends, foes, and acquaintances. We argue that third-party gossip amplifies both the positive and the negative in a relationship, making ego and alter more certain of their trust (or distrust) in one another. We draw three broad conclusions from an analysis of network data on a probability sample…
The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders
Opinion leaders are more precisely opinion brokers who carry information across the social boundaries between groups. They are not people at the top of things so much as people at the edge of things, not leaders within groups so much as brokers between groups. The familiar two-step flow of communication is a compound of two very different network mechanisms: contagion by cohesion through opinion leaders gets information into a group, and contagio…
A note on sociometric order in the general social survey network data
Positions in Multiple Network Systems, Part One
Extending the conception of positions in networks (Burt, c) to the case of a multiple network system, a general conception of stratification and prestige in a system of actors is outlined. The status / role-set duality is preserved by defining these concepts as features of positions occupied by actors. Actors jointly occupying a status provide interchangeable indicators of role distance to the status. The actor-status epistemic linkage is thus is…
A note on strangers, friends and happiness
The Stability of American Markets
Much of the evidence of coordination between corporations and their markets comes from cross-sectional conducted within portions of the American economy during the past two decades. We know, especially for manufacturing during the late 1960s, that certain structural qualities of markets predict profits and the organization of large firms. But this evidence is open to an uncomfortable empirical question: To what extent did the social-structural qu…
Autonomy in a Social Topology
My purpose here is to define and illustrate a concept of "structural autonomy" based on recent developments in network analysis. The concept is stated in terms of the pattern of relations defining a network position, and it incorporates aspects of oligopoly from economics and group-affiliation from sociology. Eight hypotheses are derived from the proposed concept. These hypotheses concern the effects on autonomy of aspects of the pattern of relat…
Testing a Structural Theory of Corporate Cooptation
Moving away from description of directorate ties as a cooptive device, we test a theory explicitly predicting cooptive uses of corporate directorates from the structure of the market in which firms operate. The theory is based on a network model of structural autonomy. It takes as exogenous information the sales and purchase transactions between establishments in sectors of the economy, locates those sectors most constraining pricing discretion w…
Le capital social, les trous structuraux et l'entrepreneur
Ronald S. Burt, Le capital social, les trous structuraux et l'entrepreneur, Revue française de sociologie, Vol. 36, No. 4, Analyses de réseaux et structures relationnelles (Oct. - Dec., 1995), pp. 599-628
A note on missing network data in the general social survey
Confirmatory Factor-Analytic Structures and the Theory Construction Process
The confirmatory factor-analytic model of analysis is discussed in terms of the general process of constructing social theory-the generation of parameter estimates for a proposed structure, the assessment of a proposed structure, the interpretation of a proposed structure, and example applications. First-order, second-order, and structural equation confirmatory factor models are discussed in relation to Joreskog's model for the estimation of para…
Applied Network Analysis
Applied Network Analysis is a reference book on the methodology of network analysis -- the study of the structure of relations between people, groups or formal organizations. Illustrations from real research show the problems that arise in network analysis -- and how to resolve or avoid them. Primarily written by Burt and Minor, the book has the cohesion of a text while still using work from other leading network analysts
Interpretational Confounding of Unobserved Variables in Structural Equation Models
The problem of assigning empirical meaning to unobserved variables in structural equation models is discussed. Interpretational confounding is discussed as the assignment of the other than a priori assigned empirical meaning of an unobserved variable. Hypotheses conceming the possibility of interpretational confounding as a concomitant of a lack of point variability in unobserved variables are specified, and corresponding chi-square statistics ar…
Network-Related Personality and the Agency Question
The more consistent a person’s network across roles and the more relevant that consistency is for achievement, the more important agency is for understanding network effects on achievement. With network, experience, and achievement data on persons playing multiple characters in a virtual world, evidence is presented to support two conclusions: (1) About a third of network structure is consistent within persons across roles: that is, those who in …
Teaching executives to see social capital
Testing a structural model of perception
Another Look at the Network Boundaries of American Markets
Measuring transactions as proportional variables rather than as marginal variables produces important differences in our images of economic networks. Market boundaries defined by proportional transactions emphasize the differences among specialized markets (production markets with a single principal supplier or consumer market). Boundaries defined by marginal transaction pattern with multiple supplier and consumer markets). The results reported h…
Structure of Well-Being
A third aspect of individual well-being within a society is analyzed in terms of twelve sequential national probability surveys of individual well-being in the United States from April 1973 through May 1974. This third aspect, in contrast to (1) absolute levels of well-being and (2) feelings of power over individual well-being (i.e., anomie, alienation, and soon), concerns the cultural framework of interrelated dimensions, here discussed as the '…
Confirmatory Factor-Analytic Structures and the Theory Construction Process
The confirmatory factor-analytic model of analysis is discussed in terms of the general process of constructing social theory-the generation of parameter estimates for a proposed structure, the assessment of a proposed structure, the interpretation of a proposed structure, and example applications. First-order, second-order, and structural equation confirmatory factor models are discussed in relation to Joreskog's model for the estimation of para…
The differential impact of social integration on participation in the diffusion of innovations
Differential Effects of Information Channels in the Process of Innovation Diffusion
The inadequacy of our present conceptualization of the part played by channels of communication in the diffusion of innovations is explored. Present thought distinguishes two types of communication channels: (1) the mass media, versus (2) interpersonal channels. The inadequacy of this conceptualization—especially in underdeveloped areas—is outlined and rectified by introducing an intermediate type of communication channel: the local media. Using …
Corporate society
Interpretational Confounding of Unobserved Variables in Structural Equation Models
The problem of assigning empirical meaning to unobserved variables in structural equation models is discussed. Interpretational confounding is discussed as the assignment of the other than a priori assigned empirical meaning of an unobserved variable. Hypotheses conceming the possibility of interpretational confounding as a concomitant of a lack of point variability in unobserved variables are specified, and corresponding chi-square statistics ar…
Positions in Networks
The existence of an actor as a set of asymmetric relations to and from every actor in a network of relations is specified as the position of the actor in the network. Conditions of strong versus weak structural equivalence of actor positions in a network are defined. Network structure is characterized in terms of structurally nonequivalent, jointly occupied, network positions located in the observed network. The social distances of actors from ne…
Positions in Multiple Network Systems, Part Two
Three basic research issues are addressed concerning the structure of relations among elite community decision-makers as an illustrative application of the conception of a system of actors as a social topology given in Part One (appearing in the previous issue of this journal): (1) What is the form of the role-sets defining statuses across which the elite are stratified? (2) What is the content of these role-sets, i.e., what is the substance of t…
Network Time Series from Archival Records
This chapter is a by-product of research supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SOC73-05504 A02) and a fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health (3-5690-43-3453). Participants in the Corporate Actor Project at the National Opinion Research Center were helpful in pointing out confusing aspects of an early draft of the chapter, portions of which were presented in the network analysis session of the 1975 annual meet…
Positions in Multiple Network Systems, Part Two
Ronald S. Burt, Positions in Multiple Network Systems, Part Two: Stratification and Prestige among Elite Decision-Makers in the Community of Altneustadt, Social Forces, Vol. 56, No. 2, Special Issue (Dec., 1977), pp. 551-575
Positions in Multiple Network Systems, Part One
Extending the conception of positions in networks (Burt, c) to the case of a multiple network system, a general conception of stratification and prestige in a system of actors is outlined. The status / role-set duality is preserved by defining these concepts as features of positions occupied by actors. Actors jointly occupying a status provide interchangeable indicators of role distance to the status. The actor-status epistemic linkage is thus is…
Power in a social topology
Feelings of power in a corporate society
Stratification and prestige among elite experts in methodological and mathematical sociology circa 1975
A structural theory of interlocking corporate directorates
Networks of Collective Action
Cohesion Versus Structural Equivalence as a Basis for Network Subgroups
Two basic approaches to network analysis are compared in terms of the network subgroups each produces. The relational approach, developing from traditional sociometry, focuses on relations between actors (individuals, groups, or corporations) and aggregates actors connected by cohesive bonds into 'cliques.' The positional approach focuses on the pattern of relations in which an actor is involved and aggregates actors with similar patterns, i.e., …
Applied Network Analysis
Structure of Well-Being
A third aspect of individual well-being within a society is analyzed in terms of twelve sequential national probability surveys of individual well-being in the United States from April 1973 through May 1974. This third aspect, in contrast to (1) absolute levels of well-being and (2) feelings of power over individual well-being (i.e., anomie, alienation, and soon), concerns the cultural framework of interrelated dimensions, here discussed as the '…
Relational equilibrium in a social topology
The purpose of this discussion is to transform the implicit equilibrium assumption endemic to network analysis into an explicit instrument for such analysis. I propose a formal model that brings together Coleman's restriction of Walras’ general equilibrium model and recent developments in describing the “social topology” of a multiple network system of actors such that a class of relational equilibria is defined. The specific equilibrium expected…
Structures of Well-Being
An example demonstrates that Joreskog's (1969) suggested sufficient condi tions for identifying unknown parameters in a confirmatory factor analytic model with correlated factors are not sufficrent. Sufficient conditions for identifying parameters in the class of models used by Burt et al. (1978) to estimate population structures of well-being from various indicators of satisfaction are given. The six hypotheses stated in Burt et al. are reconsid…
Disaggregating the effect on profits in manufacturing industries of having imperfectly competitive consumers and suppliers
Innovation as a structural interest
Testing a Structural Theory of Corporate Cooptation
Moving away from description of directorate ties as a cooptive device, we test a theory explicitly predicting cooptive uses of corporate directorates from the structure of the market in which firms operate. The theory is based on a network model of structural autonomy. It takes as exogenous information the sales and purchase transactions between establishments in sectors of the economy, locates those sectors most constraining pricing discretion w…
Network Power Structures from Informant Perceptions
Models of Network Structure
The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this ...Read More
Computer Science (55 works) · Psychology (53 works) · Sociology (53 works) · Economics (43 works) · Political science (42 works) · Social Psychology (38 works) · Social Capital and Networks (37 works) · Mathematics (30 works) · Business (29 works) · Complex Network Analysis Techniques (26 works)