The Effect of Structural Holes on Social Capital and Individual Performance Within Social Media Networks

The increasing use of social media has transformed the way that individuals interact with each other and has accelerated the exchange of information and knowledge. Social media has also created the phenomenon of social capital defined as the expected collective or economic benefit derived from the cooperative interaction between individuals and groups. Our research paper explores the effect on structural holes on social capital and participant performance. Structural holes have been defined as weak links to other social media groups outside the primary social network group. Research posits that weak links generate more alternate sources of new information and knowledge than strong links and thus, create more social capital and affect individual performance within a social network. Our results discuss the effect of frequency of user logins, posts counts and hierarchy (as a measure of structural hole) on experience and activeness as a measure of individual performance.

[1]  James C. Anderson,et al.  An approach for confirmatory measurement and structural equation modeling of organizational properties , 1987 .

[2]  J. S. Long,et al.  Testing Structural Equation Models , 1993 .

[3]  Yuan Long,et al.  A Longitudinal Study on Member Contributions in Open Source User Oriented Community , 2009, AMCIS.

[4]  Robert D. Putnam,et al.  Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community , 2000, CSCW '00.

[5]  A. Kaplan,et al.  Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media , 2010 .

[6]  R. Hanneman Introduction to Social Network Methods , 2001 .

[7]  David Lazer,et al.  Network Theory and Small Groups , 2004 .

[8]  David Godes,et al.  Introduction to the Special Issue - Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research , 2013, Inf. Syst. Res..

[9]  J. Hair Multivariate data analysis , 1972 .

[10]  Barbara M. Byrne,et al.  Structural equation modeling with EQS : basic concepts, applications, and programming , 2000 .

[11]  Yuan Long,et al.  Impacts of Social Network Structure on Knowledge Sharing in Open Source Software Development Teams , 2008, AMCIS.

[12]  M. Browne,et al.  Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit , 1992 .

[13]  Asta Bäck,et al.  Social Media Roadmaps: Exploring the futures triggered by social media , 2008 .

[14]  R. Burt The Network Structure Of Social Capital , 2000 .

[15]  Candace Jones,et al.  Organizational identification: Extending our understanding of social identities through social networks† , 2011 .