Key paper 1 Burt 1992 Structural Holes

Question 1

Rate of return

Answer 1

An opportunity to profit from the investment (affected by the structure of the network and they location of the player)

Question 2

3 types of capital

Answer 2

Financial, human (qualities and skills), social (relationships, owned jointly)

Question 3

2 network benefits

Answer 3

1) Information benefits: who knows about the opportunities and who gets to participate (access, timing and referrals)
2) Control benefits

Question 4

Benefit-rich networks

Answer 4

Player with contacts: (a) eslatblished in the places where useful bits of info are, and (b) providing reliable flow of info to and from those places.

Question 5

Largest info benefits when:

Answer 5

Large, diverse networks (with nonredundant contacts)

Question 6

Nonredundant and redundant ties

Answer 6

• Nonredundant ties are your bridges to other clusters
• Redundant ties includes your strong ties to close friends and colleagues, but also includes friends of friends, whom you meet only occasionally if at all.

Question 7

Structural holes

Answer 7

A relationship of nonredundancy between two contacts → two contacts (with a hole between them) provide network benefits that are in some degree additive rather than overlapping

Question 8

efficient-effective network

Answer 8

• Efficiency: max the number of nonredundant contracts to max the yield of structural holes per contact
• Effectiveness: distinguish (onderscheid) primary from secondary contacts in order to focus resources on preserving the primary contacts (here contacts are ports of access to clusters of people beyond)

Question 9

Bridges

Answer 9

The only connection between two otherwise separate clusters of strongly interconnected players

Question 10

Forbidden triad

Answer 10

When there is a strong connection between A and B and a strong connection between A and C, there must be some of a connection between B and C.
All bridges are weak ties.

Question 11

Tertius Gaudens

Answer 11

The third who benefits: bringing together players who are willing to negotiate, have sufficiently comparable resources to view one another’s preferences as valid, but won’t negotiate with each other directly to the exclusion of the tertius. –> can extract value or add value (strengthening the relation)

Question 12

Issue of motivation and solution

Answer 12

Issue: Knowing about an opportunity and being in a position to develop it are distinct from doing something about it.

Solution:
1) clarity of opportunity
- pushed by psychological need or cultural imperative to be entrepreneurs.
- pulled to entrepreneurial action by the promise of success
2) psychological need for entrepreneurial behavior –> player will build network around such behavior

Question 13

Players in a cluster are redundant by

Answer 13

• cohesion (strongly connected within the cluster)
• structural equivalence (connected with the same players beyond the cluster)

Question 14

primary and secondary holes

Answer 14

• Primary holes: holes between player’s direct contacts
• Secondary holes: holes between indirect contacts

Question 15

Depth of hole

Answer 15

The ease with which it can be developed for control and info benefits → when the hole is deep, it is easy to play them against one another with tertius strategies.

Where cohesion is low, there is a hole between players.