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This article employs a network approach to analyze two competing perspectives on success and failure patterns in organizational development: Michels's oligarchy thesis, which predicts that successful organizations are characterized by an elite that dominates marginal members, and Olson's free rider thesis, which posits that success depends on the extent to which marginal participants can benefit from public goods provided by a small group of highly active members. Using blockmodel analysis, we explore both perspectives in the context of interorganizational networks among private development organizations in Africa and examine underlying motivations of participation. In an effort to understand contextual effects, we add qualitative observations of both networks. Although overall our results support Michels's oligarchy thesis, we find that contextual factors and path dependencies can override interorganizational dynamics that would otherwise lead to either success or failure. Thus our results support key aspects of neoinstitutionalism in organizational studies.
Forms of Capital and Social Structure in Cultural Fields: Examining Bourdieu's Social Topography
(1995)
This article tests one key assumption of Bourdieu's theory of culture fields: that actors are positioned in a "topography" of social relations according to their endowments of economic, social, and cultural capital. Blockmodeling procedures are used to analyze data on German writers and to indentify a social structure in which positions vary according to the types and amounts of capital accumulated. A strong split between elite and marginal writers dominates the social structure, and even the fundamental distinction between high and low culture is embedded in this bipartition. Significant differences in both cultural and social capital distinguish elite from nonelite positions; within this bipartition, pronounced differences in cultural capital separate high and low culture. Relative to cultural and social capital, economic capital plays a lesser role in understanding the social structure of cultural fields.