Rafael Wittek
Biographic Data
| ID | 119673 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rafael Wittek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rafael |
| FAMILY NAME | Wittek |
| SIGNATURE | WITTEK R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8473-6984 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 175 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Atomized community
This study examines how individual values shape intra-group relationships among highly skilled Chinese migrants in Germany. By integrating Schwartz’s value theory with Heinich’s pragmatic approach to valuation, it explores how values formed through authoritarian socialization in China continue to structure migrants’ relational patterns in transnational contexts. Drawing on Arendt’s theorization of atomization and using ‘Confucian appearance with …
Lights, camera, cancellation
Lights, camera, cancellation
Nous examinons comment la cancel culture affecte les opportunités de carrière des acteurs et réalisateurs à Hollywood. Deux hypothèses concurrentes sont testées : l’existence de trous structuraux dans les réseaux sociaux peut en atténuer l’impact ; la densité des réseaux offre au contraire des avantages en termes de solidarité. En analysant, à partir d’ IMDb entre 2000 et 2023, les données de co-apparition de plus de 1 500 acteurs et 600 réalisat…
Beyond democratic exposure
This study examines how authoritarian socialisation creates enduring psychological configurations that shape political disaffection among highly skilled Chinese migrants in Germany. Drawing on 62 in-depth interviews, we investigate how individuals who possess significant socioeconomic resources and substantial access to democratic institutions nevertheless exhibit persistent political disaffection. Our analysis reveals that political disaffection…
The co-evolution of informal social status and gossip in workplace social networks
This study examines the co-evolution of informal social status and the three positions in a gossip triad – gossip senders, receivers, and objects – in the workplace. Two different social mechanisms are proposed to explain these interrelationships, suggesting relationships between gossip and informal social status in the opposite direction. First, the social bonding perspective suggests that gossip bonds between actors in a gossip triad shape thei…
How institutions decay
When organizations solve collective action problems or realize values, they do so by means of institutions. These are commonly regarded as self-stabilizing. Yet, they can also be subject to endogenous processes of decay, or so we argue. We explain this in terms of psychological and cultural processes, which can change even if the formal structures remain unchanged. One key implication is that the extent to which norms, values and ideals motivate …
Competing norms and shifting saliences. How norm beliefs affected behavior among Dutch health care interns during the Covid-19 lockdown
A social norm clearly pre- or proscribes which kind of behavior is appropriate in a given situation. However, there are situations in which two competing norms apply, meaning that two opposing types of behavior are potentially legitimate. This study examines such a scenario among health care students during the initial COVID-19 lockdown in the Netherlands in 2020. The students faced two potentially competing norms, choosing between continuing to …
Understanding sustainable cooperation
Societies need cooperation that is sustainable. We argue that understanding the mechanisms of sustainable cooperation requires a connection between current analyses of individual interactions and their institutional contexts, and studies of long-term patterns of cooperation at the societal level. We propose a focus on where institutional level arrangements connect with individual level decision making, namely where people interact in families, co…
Resonating with nature-cultural representation of nature relations
Recent research points to societies’ fading “connectedness” to nature as one of the factors impeding the transition toward more effective attempts to mitigate the climate crisis. However, the conditions affecting human–nature connectedness are still little understood. Building on Rosa’s Theory of Resonance and the Cultural Consensus Model, we conceptualize the climate crisis as a culturally contingent crisis of relatedness. With this novel approa…
The Evolution of Reputation-Based Cooperation
Gossiping and its reputation effects are viewed as the most powerful mechanism to sustain cooperation without the intervention of formal authorities. Being virtually costless, gossiping is highly effective in monitoring and sanctioning norm violators. Rational individuals cooperate in order to avoid negative reputations. But this narrative is incomplete and often leads to wrong predictions. Goal Framing Theory, a cognitive-behavioral approach anc…
Cooperation sustainability in small groups
Cooperation sustainability presents a complex social phenomenon. Two common approaches have been used to study the sustainability of cooperation in small groups: endogenous processes (dynamic) and exogenous factors (static approaches). The present study integrates existing research by investigating how the interplay between exogenous and endogenous conditions affects cooperation in small groups. To uncover endogenous group dynamics in an online P…
Combining Language Training and Work Experience for Refugees with Low-Literacy Levels
Learning the host society’s language and finding a job are important steps for the societal integration of refugees. Especially language proficiency is a key barrier for the integration of low literates. Often language training and gaining work skills are separated during the integration procedure. We investigated a 1-year pilot program for refugees with low-literacy levels in the Netherlands, which combined language training (daily classes, work…
Imprinting and contested practices
This paper studies how organizational leaders' early private‐sector leadership experiences impact adopting a contested organizational practice, temporary employment, in public organizations. We employed unique organization/year‐level register panel data on the executive careers of the directors of Dutch public organizations and the prevalence of temporary employment in organizations they lead. Fixed‐effect regression analyses of 29,031 organizati…
Karl Polanyi en wat hij niet zag aankomen
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Workplace gossip and the evolution of friendship relations
Gossip is a pervasive phenomenon in organizations causing many individuals to have second-hand information about their colleagues. However, whether it is used to inform friendship choices (i.e., friendship creation, friendship maintenance, friendship discontinuation) is not that evident. This paper articulates and empirically tests a complex contagion model to explain how gossip, through its reputational effects, can affect the evolution of frien…
Interpersonal Antecedents to Selective Disclosure of Lesbian and Gay Identities at Work
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees’ sexual identitymay be considered a concealable stigmatised identity. Disclosing it to others at work could potentially lead to discrimination and rejection, hence threatening their inclusion. Therefore, they may hide their sexual identity instead, which may then come at the cost of, e.g., guilt for not living authentically. However, disclosure is a continuum—rather than a dichotomy—meaning that LGB work…
Evaluator perceptions of NGO performance in disasters
Providing aid in times of increasing humanitarian need, limited budgets, and mounting security risks is challenging. This paper explores in what organisational circumstances evaluators judge, positively and negatively, the performance of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards. It assesses whether and how, as perceived by expert evaluators, CARE and Oxfam successfully met multiple…
Shaping resilience
The covid-19 pandemic has strained organizational systems, with the health care field particularly affected given sudden surges of demand and changes of policy. The pandemic showcases the need to understand how social systems can be resilient to such external shocks. Drawing on ‘joint production motivation' theory, this article offers a theoretical framework linking a social system’s resilience with individual behavior. We examine a population st…
Collaborative production networks among unequal actors
We develop a model of strategic network formation of collaborations to analyze the consequences of an understudied but consequential form of heterogeneity: differences between actors in the form of their production functions. We also address how this interacts with resource heterogeneity, as a way to measure the impact actors have as potential partners on a collaborative project. Some actors (e.g., start-up firms) may exhibit increasing returns t…
The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation
Reputations can make or break citizens, communities, or companies. Reputations matter for individual careers, for one’s chances of finding a partner, for a profession’s credibility, or for the value of a firm’s stock options – to name but a few. The key mechanism for the creation, maintenance, and destruction of reputations in everyday life is gossip – evaluative talk about absent third parties. Reputation and gossip are inseparably intertwined, …
Social Network Characteristics and Their Associations With Stress in Older Adults
The absence of a stress-reducing effect from network closure suggests that balance matters more. Future research would benefit from considering balance when examining the characteristics of social networks that impinge on mental health outcomes in older adults
Setting a Good Example? The Effect of Leader and Peer Behavior on Corruption among Indonesian Senior Civil Servants
Standard anticorruption interventions consist of intensified monitoring and sanctioning. Rooted in principal‐agent theory, these interventions are based on the assumption that corrupt acts follow a rational cost‐benefit calculation by gain‐seeking individuals. Given their mixed results, however, these interventions require closer scrutiny. Building on goal‐framing theory, the authors argue that rule compliance requires a salient normative goal fr…
The impact of older person’s frailty on the care-related quality of life of their informal caregiver over time
Health professionals observing decreasing psychological well-being of an older person and increasing hours of informal care provision should be aware of the considerable problems this may bring to their informal caregiver, and should tailor interventions to support informal caregivers according to their specific needs and problems
Global Diversity and Local Consensus in Status Beliefs
Formal models of status construction theory suggest that beliefs about the relative social worth and competence of members of different social groups can emerge from face-to-face interactions in task-focused groups and eventually become consensual in large populations. We propose two extensions of earlier models. First, we incorporate the microlevel behavioral assumption of status construction theory that people can become resistant to belief cha…
Combining informal care and paid work
An increasing number of people combine paid work with the provision of informal care for a loved one. This combination of work and care may cause difficulties, necessitating adaptations at work, i.e. work arrangements. The present study explores what types of work arrangements are used by working caregivers, and which caregiver, care and work characteristics are associated with the use of these work arrangements. Within the Lifelines Informal Car…
Subjective socioeconomic status and health in cross-national comparison
Income and Income Inequality as Social Determinants of Health
Two of the most prominent phenomena in the study of social determinants of health, the socio-economic gradient in health and the income inequality–health association, have both been suggested to be explainable by the mechanism of status comparisons. This, however, has rarely ever been tested in a direct fashion. In this article, we explicate and test this mechanism by assessing the role of social comparison orientation. Research has shown that in…
Receiving Instrumental Support in Late Parent–Child Relationships and Parental Depression
Heterogeneity in physical needs and resources of older individuals must be taken into account when assessing the effects of instrumental support on mental health
The Evolution of Intra-Organizational Trust Networks
Based on the distinction between expressive and instrumental motives, six theoretical mechanisms for the formation of trust relationships are elaborated and empirically tested. When expressive motives drive tie formation, individuals primarily attach emotional value to social relationships. Three mechanisms have been tested: the homophily, the balancing, and the gossiping effect. When instrumental, control-related, motives drive tie formation, ac…
After the Reform
Proponents of new public management (NPM) expect public organizations to become more flexible and adaptive after administrative reforms, effectively showing convergence with patterns of organizational change in the private sector. This "convergence argument" is tested with a sample of 61 public and 61 private organizations in the Netherlands. We analyze whether public organizations, after 20 years of NPM reform, have changed their organizational …
Social Network Characteristics and Their Associations With Stress in Older Adults
The absence of a stress-reducing effect from network closure suggests that balance matters more. Future research would benefit from considering balance when examining the characteristics of social networks that impinge on mental health outcomes in older adults
The co-evolution of power and friendship networks in an organization
Despite the pivotal role that both power and interpersonal trust play in a multitude of social exchange situations, relatively little is known about their interplay. Moreover, previous theorizing makes competing claims. Do we consider our relatively more powerful exchange partners to be less trustworthy, as rational choice reasoning would suggest? Or do more complex psychological mechanisms lead us to trust them more, as motivated cognition reaso…
The impact of humanitarian context conditions and individual characteristics on aid worker retention
High employee turnover rates constitute a major challenge to effective aid provision. This study examines how features of humanitarian work and aid workers' individual characteristics affect retention within one humanitarian organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Holland. The study extends existing research by providing new theoretical explanations of employment opportunities and constraints and by engaging in the first large-scale quantita…
Combining informal care and paid work
An increasing number of people combine paid work with the provision of informal care for a loved one. This combination of work and care may cause difficulties, necessitating adaptations at work, i.e. work arrangements. The present study explores what types of work arrangements are used by working caregivers, and which caregiver, care and work characteristics are associated with the use of these work arrangements. Within the Lifelines Informal Car…
Social capital and employee well-being
Nous estimons que les explications sociologiques proposées dans le cadre du capital social pour expliquer le bien-être individuel sont incomplètes car elles ne font pas de distinction entre les mécanismes d'influence interpersonnelle et de sélection d'une part, et les processus cognitifs intrapersonnels d'autre part. Dans ce but, trois modèles théoriques de l'interaction dynamique entre la confiance interpersonnelle et la satisfaction au travail …
Imprinting and contested practices
This paper studies how organizational leaders' early private‐sector leadership experiences impact adopting a contested organizational practice, temporary employment, in public organizations. We employed unique organization/year‐level register panel data on the executive careers of the directors of Dutch public organizations and the prevalence of temporary employment in organizations they lead. Fixed‐effect regression analyses of 29,031 organizati…
Shaping resilience
The covid-19 pandemic has strained organizational systems, with the health care field particularly affected given sudden surges of demand and changes of policy. The pandemic showcases the need to understand how social systems can be resilient to such external shocks. Drawing on ‘joint production motivation' theory, this article offers a theoretical framework linking a social system’s resilience with individual behavior. We examine a population st…
Mimetic trust and intra‐organizational network dynamics
Dynamic network models based on the homophily principle are criticized for neglecting organizational context conditions and the impact of role structures on the evolution of intra‐organizational trust networks. Using a neo‐institutional framework it is argued that individuals in competitive environments will attempt to reduce uncertainty about the trustworthiness of potential trustees by imitating the sociometric choice behavior of persons in sim…
Evaluator perceptions of NGO performance in disasters
Providing aid in times of increasing humanitarian need, limited budgets, and mounting security risks is challenging. This paper explores in what organisational circumstances evaluators judge, positively and negatively, the performance of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards. It assesses whether and how, as perceived by expert evaluators, CARE and Oxfam successfully met multiple…
The educational gradient in self-rated health in Europe
Research suggests that doctor–patient relations have evolved from a doctor-centered, paternalistic approach towards a more patient-centered, egalitarian model of interactions between physicians and their patients. Given the long-running debate on the positive relationship between education and health, the question arises how this development in doctor–patient relations affects social inequalities in health. First, we test to what extent egalitari…
Organizational Pathways to Compliant Reform Implementation
A technocratic pathway to public management reform stresses the need for committing sizeable resources to reform implementation. Building on an institutional framework, we argue that there are alternative pathways to compliant implementation for government agencies with limited resources. Our comparative study of 55 Mexican government agencies that were the object of the 2003 Civil Service Reform Act reveals the co‐occurrence of both technocratic…
Strong boundary control, weak boundary control and tailor-made solutions
To date, the gaps between actual and preferred working hours are mostly theorised and analysed at the individual level. This article provides new insights as to what extent different household arrangements relate to matches or mismatches concerning the achievement of a desired time allocation. The concept of household governance refers to regulations and practices families apply to keep work–family relationships under control, like the earner mod…
The co-evolution of informal social status and gossip in workplace social networks
This study examines the co-evolution of informal social status and the three positions in a gossip triad – gossip senders, receivers, and objects – in the workplace. Two different social mechanisms are proposed to explain these interrelationships, suggesting relationships between gossip and informal social status in the opposite direction. First, the social bonding perspective suggests that gossip bonds between actors in a gossip triad shape thei…
Resonating with nature-cultural representation of nature relations
Recent research points to societies’ fading “connectedness” to nature as one of the factors impeding the transition toward more effective attempts to mitigate the climate crisis. However, the conditions affecting human–nature connectedness are still little understood. Building on Rosa’s Theory of Resonance and the Cultural Consensus Model, we conceptualize the climate crisis as a culturally contingent crisis of relatedness. With this novel approa…
Interpersonal Antecedents to Selective Disclosure of Lesbian and Gay Identities at Work
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees’ sexual identitymay be considered a concealable stigmatised identity. Disclosing it to others at work could potentially lead to discrimination and rejection, hence threatening their inclusion. Therefore, they may hide their sexual identity instead, which may then come at the cost of, e.g., guilt for not living authentically. However, disclosure is a continuum—rather than a dichotomy—meaning that LGB work…
Collaborative production networks among unequal actors
We develop a model of strategic network formation of collaborations to analyze the consequences of an understudied but consequential form of heterogeneity: differences between actors in the form of their production functions. We also address how this interacts with resource heterogeneity, as a way to measure the impact actors have as potential partners on a collaborative project. Some actors (e.g., start-up firms) may exhibit increasing returns t…
Global Diversity and Local Consensus in Status Beliefs
Formal models of status construction theory suggest that beliefs about the relative social worth and competence of members of different social groups can emerge from face-to-face interactions in task-focused groups and eventually become consensual in large populations. We propose two extensions of earlier models. First, we incorporate the microlevel behavioral assumption of status construction theory that people can become resistant to belief cha…
Evil Tidings
A 'special attachment
Extending Hirschman's 'Exit-Voice-Loyalty' framework, the authors distinguish between attitudinal and relational aspects of loyalty. They hypothesize that co-workers' support for voice will moderate the effect of relational, but not attitudinal loyalty on voice. In line with the study's hypotheses, multilevel analyses of survey data on 204 voice actions (concerning three issues) of 121 employees in a Dutch public sector organization showed that t…
Inequalities in network structures
Closed Structures, Open Structures, Stable Structures
Structures fermées. structures ouvertes, structures stables - Etude de la forme structurale et de la stabilité temporelle des réseaux sociaux informels dans des organisations. Les hypothèses qui concement la forme structurelle et la stabilité des réseaux sociaux informels dans des organisations viennent de la théorie des organisations et de l'analyse dynamique des réseaux. Un test empirique exploratoire de ces hypothèses est fait avec la ré-analy…
Hartmut Esser
Sven Hildebrandt
Hartmut Esser
Mimetic trust and intra‐organizational network dynamics
Dynamic network models based on the homophily principle are criticized for neglecting organizational context conditions and the impact of role structures on the evolution of intra‐organizational trust networks. Using a neo‐institutional framework it is argued that individuals in competitive environments will attempt to reduce uncertainty about the trustworthiness of potential trustees by imitating the sociometric choice behavior of persons in sim…
The Evolution of Intra-Organizational Trust Networks
Based on the distinction between expressive and instrumental motives, six theoretical mechanisms for the formation of trust relationships are elaborated and empirically tested. When expressive motives drive tie formation, individuals primarily attach emotional value to social relationships. Three mechanisms have been tested: the homophily, the balancing, and the gossiping effect. When instrumental, control-related, motives drive tie formation, ac…
Abnehmende Abstraktion, Idealtypen, Erklärungslogik und Theorieverständnis bei Weber und der erklärenden Soziologie im Vergleich
AuszugHartmut Esser kommt das Verdienst zu, die Theorie der Rationalen Wahl — und hier insbesondere Siegwart Lindenbergs erweiterte Version derselben — einem breiteren Publikum zugänglich zu machen. Vielleicht mehr noch als bei den meisten soziologischen Theorierahmen nimmt die Explikation der Erklärungslogik sowie die Lösung der Probleme des systematischen Modellbaus in diesem erweiterten Ansatz eine zentrale Rolle ein. Die Methode der abnehmend…
Social capital and employee well-being
Nous estimons que les explications sociologiques proposées dans le cadre du capital social pour expliquer le bien-être individuel sont incomplètes car elles ne font pas de distinction entre les mécanismes d'influence interpersonnelle et de sélection d'une part, et les processus cognitifs intrapersonnels d'autre part. Dans ce but, trois modèles théoriques de l'interaction dynamique entre la confiance interpersonnelle et la satisfaction au travail …
Inequalities in network structures
Gulzige organisaties en de verdeling van betaalde en onbetaalde arbeid binnen huishoudens
Firm’s time greediness and the division of labour in the household . Although the body of literature documenting the division of labour between partners is large and continuously expanding, little is known about how demands and expectations from the workplace affect the division of labour between partners and how spouses use strategies to manage, or ‘govern’, the conflicting demands of work and family. Using data on 242 Dutch female employees, th…
Who are the objects of positive and negative gossip at work
Who speaks up to whom? A relational approach to employee voice
A 'special attachment
Extending Hirschman's 'Exit-Voice-Loyalty' framework, the authors distinguish between attitudinal and relational aspects of loyalty. They hypothesize that co-workers' support for voice will moderate the effect of relational, but not attitudinal loyalty on voice. In line with the study's hypotheses, multilevel analyses of survey data on 204 voice actions (concerning three issues) of 121 employees in a Dutch public sector organization showed that t…
The co-evolution of gossip and friendship in workplace social networks
Where do intra-organizational advice relations come from? The role of informal status and social capital in social exchange
Forthcoming Articles
After the Reform
Proponents of new public management (NPM) expect public organizations to become more flexible and adaptive after administrative reforms, effectively showing convergence with patterns of organizational change in the private sector. This "convergence argument" is tested with a sample of 61 public and 61 private organizations in the Netherlands. We analyze whether public organizations, after 20 years of NPM reform, have changed their organizational …
Structural Holes
Intra-Organizational Networks
Receiving Instrumental Support in Late Parent–Child Relationships and Parental Depression
Heterogeneity in physical needs and resources of older individuals must be taken into account when assessing the effects of instrumental support on mental health
Evil Tidings
Income and Income Inequality as Social Determinants of Health
Two of the most prominent phenomena in the study of social determinants of health, the socio-economic gradient in health and the income inequality–health association, have both been suggested to be explainable by the mechanism of status comparisons. This, however, has rarely ever been tested in a direct fashion. In this article, we explicate and test this mechanism by assessing the role of social comparison orientation. Research has shown that in…
Strong boundary control, weak boundary control and tailor-made solutions
To date, the gaps between actual and preferred working hours are mostly theorised and analysed at the individual level. This article provides new insights as to what extent different household arrangements relate to matches or mismatches concerning the achievement of a desired time allocation. The concept of household governance refers to regulations and practices families apply to keep work–family relationships under control, like the earner mod…
Altruism and Prosocial Behavior, Sociology of
Rationality and Society
The United States is a key player in the current state of alcohol, drug, and tobacco related issues, both as the highest consumer of illicit drugs in the world and as a leader in shaping international drug policy regarding legal sanctions. By locating alcohol, drugs, and tobacco within their sociocultural context, sociology provides an important foundation for understanding patterns of use, media and advertising influences, and social-control mec…
Psychology (30 works) · Political science (29 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Economics (16 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Business (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (10 works)