Center for Culture, Organizations and Politics - Previously Affiliated

Networks have recently acquired a prominent spot among the mechanisms used to understand differences between organizations. This is probably a due response to the need for understanding an economic world which is increasingly relational in nature. In many of these studies, the focus has been on the association between the organization and the network in which it is embedded, defined for one of the relationships which are deemed critical for the organization (such as a communication network or an advice network). However, while this work helps in exploring the effects of network structure on organizations, it does not capture the fact that within the same organizational network each actor is simultaneously involved in many relationships, which all at the same time affect its choice of action.

The goal of this work is to bring this multiplexity into the picture. I am doing so by investigating the effects of multiplex embeddedness (defined as the degree of an organization’s involvement in different types of relationships, within a given network) on critical organizational variables, such as growth and internal structure. In this process, I also try to understand what is the influence of two additional variables such as firm’s location (being part of the industrial district) and presence of institutional elements (being an industry association member) on network structure, as well as on its effects on the organization.