ON SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS IN A SUPPLY CHAIN CONTEXT *

The network perspective is rapidly becoming a lingua franca across virtually all of the sciences from anthropology to physics. In this paper, we provide supply chain researchers with an overview of social network analysis, covering both specific concepts (such as structural holes or betweenness centrality) and the generic explanatory mechanisms that network theorists often invoke to relate network variables to outcomes of interest. One reason for discussing mechanisms is to facilitate appropriate translation and context‐specific modification of concepts rather than blind copying. We have also taken care to apply network concepts to both “hard” types of ties (e.g., materials and money flows) and “soft” types of…