Catching Up With Big Fish in the Big Pond? Multi-Level Network Analysis Through Linked Design
Social Networks, 30:157-176
Posted: 6 May 2020
Date Written: 2008
Abstract
This article contributes to the study of “duality” (Breiger, 1974) in social life. Our study explores multi-level networks of superposed forms of collective agency, the first being inter-organizational, the second inter-individua. First, we examine separately the complete networks at each level. Second, we combine the two networks in relation to one another using systematic information about the membership of each individual in the first network (inter-individual) to one of the organizations in the second network (inter-organizational), as in bipartite networks. This dual positioning, or the linked design approach, is analyzed in an empirical study examining performance variations within the “elite” of French cancer researchers in 1999. By looking at measures of centrality, we identify the actors that these top researchers consider as central or peripheral at the inter-individual level (the big and the little fish among the elite), and the laboratories that the research directors consider as central or peripheral at the inter-organizational level (the big and the small ponds among all the laboratories conducting cancer research in France at that time). In addition to the rather trivial report of the competitive advantage of big fish in big ponds (particularly because of the advantage of size for laboratories in this field), we use measurements of scientific performance to identify “catching up” strategies that the other fish use in this system. The little fish in the big ponds are shown to be in a better position to catch up with the big fish in the big ponds when they use specific relational strategies measured with overlaps between individual and organizational networks. We suggest that this method offers new insights into the duality and multi-level dimension of complex systems of interdependencies, and also into the ways in which actors manage these interdependencies in the organizational society. We believe that it adds a new dimension to the sociological exploration of the determinants of performance, of meso-level phenomena such as opportunity structures and institutional change, or of macro-level phenomena such as social inequalities.
Keywords: Multi-level networks, Meso-sociology, Linked design, Duality, Fish/pond, Overlapping networks, Relational strategies
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