Page - (000295) - in Knowledge and Networks

292 Following the original definition put forward by Gould and Fernandez (1989), gatekeeping is a specific form of brokerage that corresponds to structural position in transaction networks, in which “an actor can selectively grant outsiders access to members of his or her own group” (p. 92). By extension, in regional studies gate- keepers are generally understood to be individuals (and sometimes organizations) that enable knowledge transfer among different spatial units, e.g., industrial clus- ters, cities, or regions (Giuliani & Bell, 2005; Graf & Krüger, 2011; Morrison, 2008; Morrison, Rabellotti, & Zirulia, 2013). The uniqueness of this function rests on two specific features: (a) Gatekeepers establish exclusive linkages with outside actors and/or knowledge sources and (b) they guarantee knowledge transfer and absorp- tion within their proximate working and social environments. In short, gatekeepers not only can search for and collect relevant information outside the professional and social contexts in which they are embedded, but they are also able to transcode this information and diffuse it within their organizations and geographical areas. Several distinctive attributes enable gatekeepers to perform this fundamental activity: high productivity and performance (Burt, 1992); creativity; novel points of view that allow new solutions (Burt, 2004; Fleming, Mingo, & Chen, 2007; Hargadon & Sutton, 1997; Obstfeld, 2005); and maintaining influential positions in their respective social structures (Fernandez & Gould, 1994; Padgett & Ansell, 1993). These characteristics can give gatekeepers comparative advantages with respect to other network members, leading to higher (private) economic and innova- tive outcomes, as well as to greater control power over (and relative accruable rents from) the bridging ties and knowledge exchanges they enable between internal and external actors (Burt, 2008; Gould & Fernandez, 1989). This bright side, however, may also entail a dark side. In particular, a gatekeeper can strategically choose whether to grant access or block information flows from outside. Albeit an individual gatekeeper’s impact may be slight, this possibility can have different and sizeable effects at the aggregate level of analysis, such as the regional one. In support of this line of argumentation, recent research has docu- mented that gatekeepers can purposefully restrict the diffusion and circulation of valuable knowledge, as in the case of certain leading firms in industrial clusters (Giuliani & Bell, 2005; Hervas-Oliver & Albors-Garrigos, 2014; Morrison, 2008; Morrison et al., 2013). In addition, gatekeepers can experience coordination costs and difficulties in managing and matching multiple external and internal connections, with a negative impact on the amount and efficiency of information flows (Whittington, Owen- Smith, & Powell, 2009). The increasing complexity of processing, coding, inter- preting, and absorbing large amount of information from multiple sources (Dahlander & Frederiksen, 2012) can also hamper the efficiency of knowledge exchanges. In general, social structures in which gatekeepers dominate external linkages (and the related knowledge flows) are more exposed to disruptions of such links than social structures whose external ties are mostly direct, and possibly redundant. Finally, and more generally, direct linkages avoid leakages and noise in knowledge transmission, whereas longer chains of intermediaries imply slower knowledge transfer and a higher risk of distortion of the message content (Tushman & Scanlan, 1981). S. Breschi and C. Lenzi