The following explanation of network structural embeddedness and constraint comes from my University of Kentucky colleague, Ajay Mehra. I am simply the delivery boy.
Wally Ferrier
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The notion of structural embeddedness is often traced to Granovetter's (1985) AJS piece, in which he argued against, on the one hand, the "undersocialized" or atomized view of economic action and the "oversocialized" (driven by internalized societal norms) view on the other. Granovetter's paper can be read as an exhortation to take the social relations among economic actors seriously in understanding why they do what they do. The concept of structural constraint was elaborated in Burt (1992). The general idea here is that an actor is constrained to the extent that the actor's contacts are themselves interconnected. Burt (1992) presents several different measures to get at this concept empirically-- e.g., his network constraint measure, effective size, etc. The extent to which one's contacts' contacts are interconnected will tend to be positively related to structural constraint, but there is more than one way to measure the concept of constraint. *********************
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 5:31 AM, Ashraf Naeem
<Naeem.Ashraf@euromed-management.com> wrote:
Bonjour,
Appreciate if respected members of this community could advise whether two constructs represent the same network characteristic i.e. whether common third party ties (Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999; Polidoro, Ahuja, & Mitchell, 2011) and structural constraint (Burt, 1992) represent the same network characteristics.
Response is highly appreciated.
Best Regards,
Naeem ASHRAF
Doctorant en Science de Gestion
CERGAM
Université d'Aix-Marseille III
KEDGE Business School (Euromed Management),
Marseille,
France
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Walter J. Ferrier, Ph.D.
Gatton Endowed Associate Professor of Management
Gatton College of Business and Economics
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
859-257-9326