Modeling social processes with network analysis

1. Modeling social processes with network analysis Emmanuel Lazega Institute of sociology University of Lille 1 European Science Foundation QMSS Workshop Ljubljana, July 2005

2. Basic neo-structural sociology I • The main concept: resource interdependencies between actors (individual or collective). • Relationships as resources and commitments. Resources can be economic and social. Structures as regularities in flows of resources and stable commitments. • Relational structures as one determinant, out of many, of individual behaviour and of collective behaviour. • Managing interdependencies in power relationships (for example to escape situation of open competition for resources, to put others in situations of open competition, etc.). • Actors who manage their interdependencies are also capable of observing them. They can endogenize the structure and politicize their exchanges, i.e. invest in relationships with particularistic interests in mind (social niches, status competition, etc.), but also general interests and derived satisfactions. Hence endogenous change.

3. Basic neo-structural sociology II • This management of interdependencies leads to a complex social discipline (that is recognized as legitimate by the members). • Social discipline can be approached as a set of social processes or social mechanisms traditionnally studied by sociologists: solidarity, social control, regulation, learning, etc. [See Hedström and Swedberg (1988) for a review]. • Social processes have a relational dimension and can thus be examined by network analysis. • Network analysis is a method that helps in modeling these processes and in looking at this complex social discipline. [There is no « network theory » per se]. It can be used by institutional, structuralist, or RC theorists alike. • We are at the beginning of a period of our discipline which will mainly improve modeling and analyses of such processes. And perhaps derive new theory from this work.

4. A case study • Deconstructing and modeling social processes at Sue, Grabbit & Run, a corporate law partnership. Dataset available for reanalyses or further analyses. • The Collegial phenomenon, OUP, 2001. • Background: • What do corporate lawyers do? Litigation and corporate work. • Division of work and resource interdependencies. • Three offices, no departments, built-in pressures to grow, intake and assignment rules. • Partners and associates: hierarchy, up or out rule, billing targets. • Partnership agreement (sharing benefits equally, 90% exclusion rule, governance structure, elusive committee system) and incompleteness of the contract. • Informal, unwritten rules (ex: no moonlighting, no investment in buildings, no nepotism, no borrowing to pay partners, etc.). • Huge incentives to behave opportunistically and social processes that make cooperation among rival partners possible.

5. 71 attorneys

6. Three social processes at SG&R • Social processes have a relational dimension that can be used to characterize, model and compare them • -Solidarity • -Control • -Regulation

7. Sociometric name generators used to elicit coworkers, advice, and ‘friendship’ ties at SG&R "Here is the list of all the members of your Firm. Strong coworkers network: "Because most firms like yours are also organized very informally, it is difficult to get a clear idea of how the members really work together. Think back over the past year, consider all the lawyers in your Firm. Would you go through this list and check the names of those with whom you have worked with. [By "worked with" I mean that you have spent time together on at least one case, that you have been assigned to the same case, that they read or used your work product or that you have read or used their work product; this includes professional work done within the Firm like Bar association work, administration, etc.]" Basic advice network: "Think back over the past year, consider all the lawyers in your Firm. To whom did you go for basic professional advice? For instance, you want to make sure that you are handling a case right, making a proper decision, and you want to consult someone whose professional opinions are in general of great value to you. By advice I do not mean simply technical advice." ‘Friendship’ network: "Would you go through this list, and check the names of those you socialize with outside work. You know their family, they know yours, for instance. I do not mean all the people you are simply on a friendly level with, or people you happen to meet at Firm functions."

8. Day 1. Solidarity • Measuring the relational dimension of solidarity: - Cohesion - Direct and indirect reciprocity

9. Cohesion in general

10. Cohesion in the firm: relational stitches

11. Solidarity via structural equivalence • Burt’s solution for structural equivalence in Structure (4.2) • Detector: Euclidean distance • Social distance, Katz’s (1954) transformation: N is the number of individuals that i can reach regardless of the number of steps. F is the number of individuals that i can reach by doing the minimum number of steps that are necessary to reach j.

12. Intake and assignment rule. Analysis of strong coworkers network. RED sets. Access to pools of associate manpower. Schedulers vs. rainmakers. Competing forms of solidarity (‘welfare’ and clientelism) and firm integration. Solidarity via structural equivalence : welfare and patronage in access to clients and work

13. Another example: Structure 4.2. blocks in advice network at SG&R

14. Multiplex, multi-functional blocks Dense blocks are called social niches (see diagonal values in density tables) Social Niches

15. Density tables

16. Assigning people to blocks via Pajek

20. Pajek solution (Ward clustering, hierarchical indirect approach) and Structure solution are identical (modulo Katz’s transformation, use of Euclidean distance, and assignments in the residual category in Structure). Structural equivalence in advice network at SG&R

21. Comparing Pajek-Structure solutions • Anuska’s comment: The fact that the hierarchical indirect approach of blockmodeling that is run on Pajek is so similar to the Structure approach is due to the fact that both approaches have the same 'greedy' effect. When two units are merged together they stay together in the later stage regardless of the fact that it could be better if they could be assigned to another cluster. See about this effect the chapter on cluster analysis in the Blockmodeling book or on the indirect aproach to blockmodeling.

22. Pajek pictures of the decomposition of the three networks into social niches ?

23. Structure 4.2. blocks in advice network at SG&R

24. Solidarity at the local level • p2 models for statistical analyses at the dyadic level (Van Duijn and Snijders) • p* models higher order (especially triadic level) statistical analysis (Pattison, Robbins, Wasserman, et al.)

25. p2 models and solidarity

26. Dyadic decomposition of a network can be useful for all sorts of purposes. Blau’s exchange of advice for recognition of status Reciprocity and economic performance:Example of Blau ties

27. Confirmation: variables explaining performance

28. j j j j j b b b a i k i k i k i k i k a a a a b j j j j j b a b a b a a a c c d i k j k i k i k i k c c c b b j j j j j a a d c a b a b a b b b c e c c c d i k i k i k i k i k e d f d d Symbols a, b, c, d, e and f refer to any uniplex or multiplex tie. Symbols i, j and k represent any three actors, with i j  k. Using p* models and their nomenclature for detection of solidarity (especially indirect reciprocity)

29. Example: the coworkers’ network at SG&R

30. Some substructures from the univariate model for the cowork relation (extracted from Table 3.4) (Restricted exchange in Levi-Strauss’ terms) 4.45 (.47) -3.49 (.25) (Generalized exchange in Levi-Strauss’ terms) .30 (.06)

31. More complex forms of reciprocity: Configurations corresponding to multivariate p* parameters W (cowork), A (advice), F (friendship), WA (cowork and advice), WF (cowork and friendship), AF (advice and friendship), WAF (cowork, advice and friendship) Cowork and Advice: Advice and Friendship: Cowork and Friendship: Strong interdependence Strong interdependence Weak interdependence 2.44 (.13) 2.42 (.22) .56 (.17) .61 (.21) -1.13 (.23) .13 (.02)

32. Summary of p* results on solidarity • Solidarity is partly based on the possibility of multiplex exchanges (which take different forms in different contexts). • The interplay of relationships among members helps in cultivating and mitigating status competition among peers.

33. Back to the specific example of advice network at SG&R Blockmodels, p2 and p* models show that solidarity exists in transfers of advice and that it takes several forms. Advice relationships have special characteristics: • Flows are very centralized (status games) and one rarely seeks advice from people « below » in the pecking order. • There are ‘lateral’ exchanges of advice and reciprocity (but no generalized exchange). • Advice, collaboration, and friendship : complex interdependencies showing role and embeddedness of advice ties in other kinds of ties.

34. p* decomposititon in Pajek?

35. Triads counts for pattern search

36. Vlado’s solutions for direct and indirect reciprocity Representing the number of cycles each relation belongs to and the people who are most active in generalized exchange.

37. Day 2. Social control • Social control as a generic process: dealing with opportunistic behaviour, a decisive dimension of collective action. • Partners locked themselves in a cooperative situation. This creates enormous incentives for opportunistic behaviour, and a need for self-policing. • Opportunistic behaviour at SG&R: shirking, grabbing, leaving (anything that is perceived by members as betraying the definiton of relationships as commitments). • Control in a bureaucracy (Bentham’s panopticon) vs. among control among peers among whom direct command is considered inappropriate.

38. Recall general principles • Actors who manage their interdependencies are also capable of observing them. They can endogenize the structure and politicize their exchanges, i.e. invest in relationships with particularistic interests in mind (social niches, status competition, etc.), but also general interests and derived satisfactions. • This management of interdependencies leads to a complex social discipline (that is recognized as legitimate by the members). • The social mechanism observed here is an illustration of this complexity.

39. Second-order free rider problem • Main insight: control among peers is based on this management and use of interdependencies. • But then, who will bear the costs of control (see the literature on the second order free-rider issue (Coleman, Ostrom, Wittek)) ? • My hypothesis: there is a « lateral control regime »(a form of indirect control) at SG&R that spreads and shifts the costs of control among partners. It helps them pressure each other back to good order. • My goal : describe this lateral control regime as a social mechanism. • Theoretical hypothesis: driving the process are individual actors spending their own relational capital for the protection of the common good.

40. A structural approach to social control among collectively responsible partners at SG&R (or what happens when we are at the same time the victim, the deviant, the police agent, and the judge?) Triplets representing lateral pressure : At each step we know what the relationship is: between respondent and lever, respondent and target, and lever and target

41. Methodology: Name generator for eliciting choices of levers for each target [20% of corporate lawyers in the U.S. have an alcohol and/or drugs problem]

42. Individual conceptions of how social control operates among partners (partner 32’s view)

43. Individual conceptions of how social control operates among partners (partner 35’s view)

44. Individual conceptions of how social control operates among partners (partner 18’s view)

45. Individual conceptions of how social control operates among partners (partner 20’s view)

46. Combining sociometric data and leverage dataTypology of pathways of lateral control

47. Analysis of the typology of paths • The vast majority of paths are partly personalized paths, a sort of privatization of social control. • There are nevertheless many completely impersonal paths (13.5 %). • There are some completely personalized and saturated paths (3.3 %). • Question: Do partners spend their own relational capital or do they borrow others’ connections? • To answer this question: an analysis of the ways in which partners manage their ties and interdependencies for the collective good.

48. This is where the identification of social niches (dense, multiplex, multi-functional blocks) becomes very useful.

49. Combining sociometric data and leverage data

50. Lateral control occurs in social niches: Their existence reduces the costs of control