Distribution Of Ties Research Articles

Evolution of collaboration and optimization of impact: self-organization in multinational research

The expanding presence of multinational research teams highlights the importance of characterizing the outcomes of international collaboration. Herein, we characterize the organization of international collaborations over four decades and report several advances which may be instructive of strategies to promote effective multinational teams. First, we uncover immutable and scale-dependent collaborative behaviors of countries governing the degree of foreign interactions and distribution of ties in multinational research. Second, we show an increased likelihood over time for countries to collaborate with nations of unequal scientific, economic, and social stature. Third, we demonstrate that temporal changes in foreign interactions result in the optimization of citation gains globally despite a lack of an association between the incidence of ties and impact in scientific relationships. These findings suggest that the assembly of multinational teams is naturally bounded and a self-organizing process. We propose that competing altruistic and egocentric citation priorities may influence partner selection resulting in modern multinational teams engendering greater absolute citation measures. Central to self-organizing systems such as market economies is the preservation of autonomy and easy diffusion of information, suggesting that enforcing these elements in science may enhance multinational teams.

The Impact of Political Opportunities on Interorganizational Networks: A Comparison of Migrants' Organizational Fields

This article analyzes patterns of collective action in the field of immigration by looking at relational dynamics in two different local political settings. Drawing on a relational approach to the study of collective action, the general assumption is that the specific political opportunity structure (POS) in the field of immigration shapes the logics of interaction of migrants' associations. To test this hypothesis, we compare migrants' organizational networks in two cities characterized by two different opportunity structures—Lyon and Zurich. We thus apply network analysis to examine the density, the structural patterns, and the distribution of ties amongst organizations in the two cities. Results suggest that specific opportunities in the two contexts, by providing differential institutional access to migrant associations and publicly recognizing different collective identities, partly shape the relational patterns in the field and thus the modes of coordination of collective action adopted by migrants' organizations.

All Politics is Not Local: Networks and Influence in North Carolina from 1993 to 2008

Using social network and standard statistical analysis as well as state lobbying data from North Carolina and federal lobbying data, this project studies the structure of lobbying at the state level. Little research has explored the connections between special interests represented at both the national and state levels and possible associations with lobbying influence. A significant number of lobbying organizations, including law firms, engage in lobbying at the federal level as well as the state level. Moreover, the structure of relations among lobbying organizations appear to exhibit a truncated scale-free distribution of ties in which a small number of organizations garner the majority of ties. Law firms and other lobbying firms that operate at the federal and state levels seem to be the critical nodes in terms of the structure of the overall network. The results suggest that law firms that are more central in the network of lobbying organizations, that are rated as influential by their peers in state politics, and that operate at both the state and federal levels are more likely to garner client ties.

The relational antecedents of project-entrepreneurship: Network centrality, team composition and project performance

The relational antecedents of project-based enterprises have not yet received systematic investigation. These ventures are typically created by individual freelancers who are usually embedded in networks of collaborative relationships that convey the information and resources required to carry out new projects. Using a relational perspective of entrepreneurial discovery and team composition, we analyze the performance determinants of project-entrepreneurs, namely the individuals who are responsible for launching and carrying out those projects. We argue that project-entrepreneurs’ performance is related to their degree of centrality within the social network, and their familiarity with the selected project-team as captured by the distribution of ties among team members. We test our hypotheses within the Hollywood Film Industry over the period 1992–2003. The findings point to the existence of diminishing returns to centrality and performance benefits from assembling teams that combine old-timers and newcomers. The theoretical contributions and implications of the study are discussed.

Crisis, Connections, and Class: How Social Ties Affect Household Welfare

Summary In this paper, I illustrate the effects of different types of social ties on the welfare of Indonesian households and draw out implications for debates around state and community development efforts, empirical analysis, and project design. Guided by social capital theory, the analysis indicates that certain social ties can be a means of improving welfare for poor families. The distribution of different ties varies with socio-economic class, however, and each type is linked to distinct resources. The distribution of ties may be shifting in Indonesia, with greater access for poor households to state-sponsored ties and accompanying resources.

Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks

This article describes the structure of the adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents residing in a midsized town in the midwestern United States. Precise images and measures of network structure are derived from reports of relationships that occurred over a period of 18 months between 1993 and 1995. The study offers a comparison of the structural characteristics of the observed network to simulated networks conditioned on the distribution of ties; the observed structure reveals networks characterized by longer contact chains and fewer cycles than expected. This article identifies the micromechanisms that generate networks with structural features similar to the observed network. Implications for disease transmission dynamics and social policy are explored.

Cohesion and information strategies in academic writing: Analysis of passages in three disciplines

This article reports on a study that examines samples of academic writing from a linguistic perspective. Using a model derived from theories of cohesion and information structure, the study analyzes cohesion and information strategies in samples of published writing in three disciplines (counseling psychology, biology, and history), discusses the findings of the analysis, and makes suggestions on how the findings can be applied in future research and teaching. Chi-square comparisons of data revealed significant differences ( p < .01) in cohesive density and in comparisons of the use of lexical ties: types, number of words entering into lexical ties, and the distribution of lexical ties in themes and rhemes. Differences were also found in the numbers of marked and unmarked clauses and in the types of marking used in the sample passages. Fewer significant differences in distributions of ties were found in themes than in rhemes, suggesting significant differences in the ways in which given and new information are managed in diverse disciplines. The study represents an attempt to present textual evidence for researchers investigating how different epistemological assumptions are reflected in academic writing.