Page - (000131) - in Knowledge and Networks

124 search for new competitive advantages. Learning as a relational and interactive pro- cess can be captured through the study of advice networks. In organized contexts it is usually possible to consult with someone through social exchange in which mem- bers obtain advice in exchange for recognition of the advisor’s status and authority (Blau, 1955), which can be called epistemic status. Members with epistemic status usually have hierarchical authority, professional authority, or expert authority, if not two or even all three of these forms of authority combined (Lazega, 1992).6 The case is based on an organizational and longitudinal network study of advice- seeking among judges at the Commercial Court of Paris. The French Commercial Court is a judicial, local, first-level consular jurisdiction dealing with commercial litigation and bankruptcies in the French economy.7 Its judges are unpaid lay volun- teers from the local business community, and they are expected to pool their experi- ence and knowledge of business practices and customs in order to find solutions to conflicts therein. They are elected or coopted for 2- or 4-year terms (but no more than 14 years) by an electoral body composed of other judges already sitting at the same court and by representatives of the trade associations of the Chamber of Commerce of their local jurisdiction. Most consular judges remain for the whole 14-year tenure, allowing social groups to form and be sustained within the organization. Of the 156 consular judges at the Commercial Court of Paris in 2005, 38 % were bankers and insurers, for the financial industry is currently the only one that can afford to send large numbers of senior managers to perform as judges in such an institution (see Lazega, Lemercier, & Mounier, 2006; Lazega & Mounier, 2009, 2012; Lazega, Mounier, Snijders, & Tubaro, 2012; Lazega, Sapulete, & Mounier, 2011). The court is composed of 20 specialized and general chambers dealing with bankruptcies and widely diverse forms of commercial litigation (such as corporate law, European Union law, international law, unfair competition, multimedia, and new technologies). It handles around 12 % of all the commercial litigation in France, including large and complex cases for which companies decide not to go to arbitra- tion courts. The consular judges rotate annually from one chamber to another. The policy of rotating judges across the chambers is intended to prevent corruption and 6 Expert authority can be defined as professional authority exercised among nonprofessionals, i.e. by sharing minimal knowledge for action with the latter across the professional/lay boundary. 7 An explanation of the term consular is in order. The consulat was a mode of urban government practiced in the Middle Ages in the southern part of the Kingdom of France by cities with a right to self-administration and self-defense. Consulatus is a noun formed from consul, meaning “coun- cil.” The word referred to a community’s ability to deliberate in an assembly (likewise called the consulat.). Urban communities governed by a consulat could call themselves cities. All had mar- kets, and many had fairs. In a régime consulaire the community governed itself through consuls, who varied in number and qualification. Merchants organized as socially distinct guilds occupied a pivotal place in the régime consulaire. Drawing on the lex mercatoria (commercial law), they managed to negotiate, with the emerging French state, something akin to joint regulation of their business activities within the consulat framework: Their local self-regulation was to be founded on the state’s sanctioning power. The state, whose own administration was still embryonic, may para- doxically have seen this cooptation by local merchants as a means of further extending its central control over the country. A major component of the consular regime is the tribunal de commerce, or commercial court, whose purview evolved over time. E. Lazega