Research on Structural Holes: An Assessment on Measurement Issues

Laurence Saglietto (), Cécile Cézanne () and Delphine David
Additional contact information
Laurence Saglietto: UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur, GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur
Cécile Cézanne: UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur, GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Social capital theory generally analyzes network structures by focusing on the connections between players. Yet, several authors suggest that the absence of relations in a network, known as "structural holes", is meaningful. The aim of this paper is to provide an exhaustive survey of the academic research dedicated to the study of structural holes and to develop a precise undertsanding of its main measurements. Based on a bibliometric approach, we identify a typology of practices, developments, and issues related to structural holes. We highlight a set of articles on the operationalization of structural holes and discuss the various measures they propose. We provide numerical examples emphasizing the respective advantages and limitations of the studied measures. Based on these results, we suggest a guide on how to use existing measures of structural holes according to the type of network, i.e. in simple and complex networks.

Keywords: Structural holes; bibliometric analysis; social capital theory; social network; decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Economic Surveys, 2020, 34 (3), pp.572-593

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: RESEARCH ON STRUCTURAL HOLES: AN ASSESSMENT ON MEASUREMENT ISSUES (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02550088

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().