Information and structural holes: comment on Reagans and Zuckerman

Reagans and Zuckerman (hereafter RZ) go behind the performance link with network brokerage to speculate on how information flow is responsible. The intuition is a perceived tension between brokers and contacts: If nonredundant sources of information provide the broker's competitive advantage, as is assumed in empirical research on the returns to brokerage, then the broker's contacts have a countervailing advantage as monopoly sources. Advantage versus countervailing advantage is the tension to be resolved. The analysis is interesting in its own right, but it carries a broader significance in addressing a critical juncture for network models of advantage. Empirical success in predicting performance with network models has far outstripped our understanding of the way information flow in networks is responsible for network effects. A cluster of network concepts emerged in the 1970s on the idea that advantage results from connections with multiple, otherwise disconnected, groups and individuals. The hubs in a social network were argued to have advantaged access to information and control over its distribution. At the center of the concept cluster are Granovetter (1973, 1983) on weak ties as bridges between groups, Freeman (1977, 1979) on network centrality as a function of being the connection between otherwise disconnected people, Cook and Emerson (1978; Cook et al., 1983) on the advantage of having alternative