12 - Future Directions

Summary

In this book, we have emphasized the distinctiveness of the individual in the context of the structuring of organizational social networks. This relationship between the micro and macro has proved elusive for network research. Thus, we have renewed the call to “bring the individual back in” when conducting structural analysis (Kilduff and Krackhardt, 1994). Our objective includes helping the next generation of network researchers understand the benefits of simultaneously considering individuals and social structures.

In this last chapter, we anticipate future directions for the research program described in this book. In looking to the future, we try to adopt some of the advantages and overcome some of the limitations of existing approaches to social network research. The influential structural hole perspective and similar work focused on actor centrality have brought a welcome focus on the agency of central individuals, but have tended to deliberately neglect the cognitions and personalities of actors in favor of an assumption of rational pursuit of personal advantage (Burt, 1992). By contrast, the new surge of work focused on small worlds is welcome in bringing an emphasis on dynamics to the network field, but too often this work tends to treat actors as pawns subject to all-powerful system forces (e.g., Dorogovtsev and Mendes, 2003). In looking to the future, we first review possible extensions of cognitive social network research and then explore topics related to the dynamic interplay of distinctive individuals in complex social networks in organizations.