Harnessing the Power of Social Network Analysis to Explain Organizational Phenomena

The past decade has witnessed an increased call for incorporating context into the study of organizations in an attempt to fill the micro–macro gap in organizational scholarship. For example, Kilduff and Tsai (2003, p. 3) argue that the field of organizational behavior, and specifically, organizational decision-making, portrays individual actors making decisions “in splendid isolation of the force-field of influences that surround them.” Rousseau and Fried (2001, p. 1; italics added) argue that, to make our models more accurate, scholars of organizational phenomena should link their observations “to a set of relevant facts, events or point of view.”