Seite - (000137) - in Knowledge and Networks

130 the pecking order) and to build consensus among the epistemic leaders (when too many of them occupy the top of the pecking order). Further analyses (Lazega & Mounier, 2009) have shown that this relationship between networks, rotation across places, and learning leads to collective learning when judges make decisions requiring their discretion. Such circumstances include the choice of whether or not to award damages (punitive or otherwise), to intervene in boards (by supporting minority shareholders against the management of a com- pany), or to intervene in markets (by preventing a given party from terminating a contract that was meant to support a weaker party). What is learned in the process of collective learning, through a status game leading to upward and outward spirals of temporary epistemic status, is the solution that the court considers to be appropri- ate for problems for which the law does not always provide clear answers. For example, in controversies pitting bankers against colleagues mainly from the build- ing industry, collective learning leads most judges to align their deliberations and decisions with the solutions proposed by bankers who hold a law degree. Collective learning thereby becomes equated with a form of normative alignment (if not insti- tutional capture; see Lazega, 2011; Lazega & Mounier, 2012) by which most judges are receptive to the solutions outlined by the dominant players in this institution (Lazega et al., 2012). Dynamic Invariant: Stability from Movement and Emergence of Epistemic Status in OMRT Structuration These processes are not simple. The spinning-top heuristic suggests that centraliza- tion of advice networks can remain stable or eventually expand or contract to find a balance between elite overload and conflicts between interpretations that these het- erogeneous elites offer. This metaphor leads to the following claim about the struc- ture and dynamics of advice networks and intraorganizational learning. Intraorganizational learning, as an informal process, depends on at least three fac- tors: (a) the way that members manage their advice ties in the context of this formal organization; (b) the ways that central advisors handle overload and conflicts between definitions of the situation; and (c) the ways that formal structure can help actors deal with the advice network’s oscillation between centralization and decen- tralization. In effect, variations in centralization over time suggest that this oscilla- tion serves as a pump in the spinning top. If OMRT can be represented by a spinning top, it is because this image accounts for one of the main processes taking place in OMRT: the emergence of status in organized social settings. The extent to which the emergent relational infrastructure in an organization remains the same over time—despite the combined turnover of its members and turnover in their respective relational profile—is one of the most interesting ques- tions raised by structural analyses applied in organized social settings. In this case the emergent structure of this organization remains the same overall. The finding is E. Lazega