Page - (000026) - in Knowledge and Networks

14 Network Evolution and Social Outcomes Part II of the book addresses the matter of network evolution and its impact on indi- viduals and regions. Emmanuel Lazega offers a neostructural perspective on how organized mobility and relational turnover (OMRT) constitute important dimen- sions of the social context in which social mechanisms are deployed. He investi- gates how rotation across a carrousel of organizational places and subsequent relational turnover create a relational infrastructure that shapes the social process of collective learning. An advice network among lay judges serves as an empirical context in which to develop a “spinning-top model” of collective learning. It accounts for the dynamics of these networks, in particular their cyclical centraliza- tion and decentralization over time, with OMRT in the organization providing the energy that drives this evolution. Emmanuel Lazega identifies stability from move- ment at the heart of collective learning and from its multilevel character and consequences. Charles Kirschbaum investigates how the relational environment mediates indi- vidual possibilities. He studies a 40-year evolution in jazz to analyze how that rela- tional field affects the trajectories of individual musicians. By using relational data on the credits of 5571 albums to extract social-network statistics, he builds ideal- typical trajectories of musicians’ paths. Additionally, Kirschbaum uses methods of block-modeling to map the field’s development in light of the positioning of trajec- tory types and the evolution of styles. He demonstrates how the field of jazz moved from a normative to a more competitive structure as older generations were co- opted by new ones. The ninth chapter advances knowledge about the topology and evolution of collaboration networks in a policy-anchored, high-tech district in Italy. Laura Prota, Maria Prosperina Vitale, and Maria Rosaria D’Esposito use prespecified block- modeling to identify the structural configuration of collaboration over time, tracing the evolutionary path of collaboration within the district. Providing an assessment of the district management strategy, their empirical results show that initial collabo- ration assumed a core–periphery configuration characterized by a single, small bridging core of research organizations. Gradually, this configuration changed, developing a large cohesive nucleus connected to global partners through general- ized bridging ties. Jörg Sydow and Friedemann Koll investigate the possibility of designing regional technological capabilities by injecting related variety into regional development processes not only in terms of knowledge resources but also of agents, activities, and relations—a problem they conceptualize as “platforming.” Using a case-study approach to the electromobility initiative in Germany, the authors investigate the potential of platforming for unlocking such path dependencies. The empirical results lead them to conclude that platforming may contribute to path-forming, but not necessarily to path-breaking, at a regional level. The final chapter in this section takes up the question of tie formation and gover- nance from the perspective of agency. Studying a high-tech firm employing 116 professionals, authors Martin Kilduff, Ajay Mehra, Dennis Gioia, and Stephen J. Glückler et al.