Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Volume 117, Issue 1, Pages 90-171Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/661238
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Categories
Funding
- Div Of Information & Intelligent Systems
- Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr [0953832] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The authors propose that a trade-off between network diversity and communications bandwidth regulates access to novel information because a more diverse network structure increases novelty at a cost of reducing information flow. Received novelty then depends on whether (a) the information overlap is small enough, (b) alters' topical knowledge is shallow enough, and (c) alters' knowledge stocks refresh slowly enough to justify bridging structural holes. Social network and e-mail content from an executive recruiting firm show that bridging ties can actually offer less novelty for these reasons, suggesting that the strength of weak ties and structural holes depend on brokers' information environments.
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