Brief Note On Race And Homographic Factors And Roles In The Social Network

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Besides the strength of relationships, individual and socio-demographic factors, and roles in the social network (brokerage, stranger, status etc.) also have implications on the social network and performance. People with different characteristics such as genders, races, ages etc. appear to have very different qualities (McPherson et al, 2001). However, due to the homophily phenomenon, people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many socio-demographic behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics (McPherson et al, 2001). Today in diverse societies, race and ethnicity are the strongest divide in social networks. Race and ethnic homophily are dominated by the strong structural effects of sub-network size and by sub-network differences …show more content…

In general there are 5 different roles in a social network with each different opportunities and constraints: insider (close-knit), broker (building the bridge), stranger (new person in the network), outsider (stranger with status/short-term interaction) and specialist (expert). It is necessary to give special attention to the case of a broker. Brokerage is defined as building the bridges between two separate networks – as known as filling the structural holes (the separation between not interconnected contacts) (Lup, 2015). In his research, Burt (2005) analyzes brokerage in social networks and identifies various individual and organizational opportunities by bridging the holes between small and dense groups. Brokers have greater potential of having creative ideas and more likely to see a way to implement ideas. Furthermore, they leverage both informational (wider breadth of information and earlier access to information) and control benefits (controlling, negotiating and transmitting information). Both the organization and the broker can maximize their benefit from brokerage opportunities by identifying and recognizing brokerage positions, aligning goals with the big picture, building win-win relationships with and among contacts and communicating with sub-networks effectively. Therefore, brokers would be a key complementary actor to closed networks (Burt,