Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
1 The Social Structure of Competition 8
Opportunity and Capital 8
Information 13
Structural Holes 18
Control and the Tertius Gaudens 30
Entrepreneurs 34
Secondary Holes 38
Structural Autonomy 44
Summary 45
2 Formalizing the Argument 50
Network Data 50
Redundancy 51
Constraint 54
Hole Signature 65
Structural Autonomy 71
Summary 81
3 Turning a Profit 82
Product Networks and Market Profit 82
The Study Population 85
Hole Effects 91
Market Hole Signatures 100
Summary 110
Appendix: Weighing Alternatives 111
4 Getting Ahead 115
Contact Networks and Manager Achievement 115
The Study Population 118
Hole Effects 131
vi Contents
Hierarchy 140
Institutional Holes 148
Selecting a Network 157
Summary 163
Appendix A: Weighing Alternatives 166
Appendix B: Causal Order 173
5 Player-Structure Duality 181
Structural Unit of Analysis un
Players and Structures 185
Escape from Attributes 1~
No Escape 190
Summary 192
6 Commit and Survive 195
Holes and Heterogeneity 195
Interface and the Commit Hypothesis 197
Population Ecology and the Survival Hypothesis 200
Summary 225
7 Strategic Embedding and Institutional Residue 228
The Other Tertius 229
Strategy Hypothesis 236
Formal Organization as Social Residue 238
Personality as Emotional Residue 251
Summary 264
Notes 271
Refe:'ences 299
Index 311