From emv@umich.edu Mon Nov 30 22:27:30 1998 Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 00:39:55 -0500 (EST) From: Edward Vielmetti To: vacuum@egroups.com Subject: [vacuum] #11: The Network Structure of Social Capital Welcome to Vacuum. This issue special welcome to readers who found Vacuum via Chris Locke's EGR, through Peter Merholz's peterme.com, and through Jerry Michalski's jerrys-brain list. Also special welcome to readers who are confused and upset why they are getting this stuff - if you don't want to read Vacuum, send mail to vacuum-unsubscribe@egroups.com and the system will try its best to do the rest. Sorry this is late in coming, that's the subject of #12. The Network Structure of Social Capital (ron.burt@gsb.uchicago.edu) In part of my recent over-fondness with Six Degrees (really, it's a parlor game, but perhaps a useful one) a conversation started up that carried over to e-mail. The ad hoc collection of people on tap for that interaction included Jock Gill, who put forth the following proposals. We were talking about political action in the face of the growing trend toward self-employment, telecommuting, and other activities that make the traditional workplace interactions that promote civic activity difficult. Abstracting severely: Jock Gill: >>> 1] Promote joining and participating in visible networks. These >>> will be of great use to Free Agents for many other purposes other >>> than politics. Judi Clark: >> Define "visible" -- as in sixdegrees? a posting on usenet? a >> posting to a mailing list? They get increasingly one-sided in >> terms of who can see whom. Where is the usability line drawn? Jock Gill: > I am thinking of as yet uninvented new forms of flora. Beyond > email and news groups -- very primitive zero order approximations of what > we need. So I got to thinking about visible networks and in particular what existing organizations out there might be looking at the same problem but using a different vocabulary or coming at it from a different angle. A bit of nonspecific searching later, I ran across an organization called the "International Network for Social Network Analysis" (sounded promising, and it was). Mostly academic sociologists, using tools that were influenced heavily by the need of social scientists to study things they can measure easily. A few cool pictures of social networks using visualization tools that are worth looking at. "The Network Structure of Social Capital" by Ronald Burt at the U Chicago Graduate School of Business is one paper that held my attention. "Social capital" is a metaphor for the accumulated wealth built up in a personal network; better connected people have more social capital, and as a result they gain advantages in social situations. Burt's thesis is that social capital depends on not just the size of your social network, but also its nature and structure. Here's a brief summary. If you're looking to get ahead, you should aim to build a circle of work and personal contacts that is broad and diverse. The more diverse your contacts, the more likely it is that you will find an opportunity through them. It's particularly important not to narrow your networking efforts to a single clique of all like-minded people who all know each other and don't mix much with others; maintaining such connections gets in the way of more productive efforts that bring in a steady mix of new faces. When you have a network that gives you the opportunity to connect two widely diverse parts of an enterprise together, or when you can bring friends together who know you but don't know each other, you stand in the role of _gaudius tertius_, "the third who benefits". Even if you don't explicitly control the relationship (now I don't want to sound too mercenary here; remember, this is social science, not Emily Post) you will still benefit from the control of and access to flow between two elements that have been insulated from each other. The pieces of an organization's or a population's network that don't communicate much are insulated by what Burt calls "Structural Holes" (the title of one of his books). He goes into detail studying behavior and networks of senior managers in an organization trying to find structural holes and predicting with a fair degree of accuracy who will get ahead in the corporate game by how big people's networks are (bigger is better), how centered their networks are on their bosses (all things equal, you'd rather know people who your boss doesn't -- but take advantage of your boss's network to bootstrap your own) and the overlaps in their contacts networks (be the bridge between people who don't know each other). A good read, if you're into theory, though a bit of a slog at times. The author appears to bear a bit of a grudge against some fellow academics who disagree with his conclusions - those academics went off and formed a little clique that's busy quoting each other and recommending that senior managers build little cliques within their own companies. I believe that eclectic networks bring the best results persuasion by my nature. (Witness Vacuum.) Vacuum Ann Arbor Dinner A nice event at Sheehan Shah; true to form the place was mostly empty, so the bonus of having nine people show when eight were expected did not daunt us in the list. Food - well, people don't make special trips to Ann Arbor for Indian food. Next time in Ann Arbor at the Blue Nile also on Washington St. When? Vaguely mid-December. I will be travelling to Orlando for the IETF meetings beginning of December. If you are one of the 2 or 3 thousand people who will descend there and assemble into what are laughingly called "working groups", or more to the point if you're going to assemble in collections in the hallways where the real networking and news gathering and Internet planning gets done, drop me a note and we can do a Vacuum dinner there. Internet Audio: Assistive Media Deb is reading for this Ann Arbor non-profit at www.assistivemedia.org . Real Audio magazine articles, way cool and well done. My ISDN internet connection is just good enough to stream a couple minutes of audio cross-country while I'm doing something else before it gives up with "net congestion - buffering" -- this stuff is getting better all the time but I am still happy to have a real radio. though you never get 30-minute long radio shows with this sort of content. Music Review: Brave Combo's "Group Dance Epidemic" The wacky bunch from Denton TX comes through again with a CD full of classic dance tunes such as the Hokey Pokey, the Hustle, and others to make you want to shake your booty. No lyrics included, but the liner notes have the dance steps. thanks Ed References from this issue: peterme.com http://www.peterme.com Chris Locke's Entropy Gradient Reversals http://www.rageboy.com Jerry's Brain http://www.egroups.com/list/jerrys-brain sociate http://www.sociate.com Six Degrees http://www.sixdegrees.com Ron Burt (U Chicago) http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/ronald.burt/index.html Ron Burt's "Structural Holes" (Amazon) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674843711/tubed Internet Engineering Task Force http://www.ietf.org Assistive Media http://www.assistivemedia.org Brave Combo http://www.brave.com/bo (I am not making this up) Brave Combo "Group Dance Epidemic" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000003LD/tubed ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Web-based e-mail groups -- http://www.eGroups.com