ON SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS IN A SUPPLY CHAIN CONTEXT^*

TLDR

The network perspective is becoming a lingua franca across many sciences, and discussing mechanisms facilitates context‑specific translation of concepts rather than blind copying. This review offers supply‑chain researchers an overview of social network analysis, covering key concepts and mechanisms, and identifies fields such as sociology, ecology, input‑output research, and even romantic networks as sources for SCM to draw network ideas. The authors apply network concepts to both hard ties (materials and money flows) and soft ties (friendships and information sharing), illustrating how these mutually embedded relationships can be analyzed within supply‑chain contexts. The portability of network concepts may unify multiple disciplines and reduce the gap between supply‑chain management and other branches of management science.

Abstract

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 ties (e.g., friendships and sharing‐of‐information), as both are crucial (and mutually embedded) in the supply chain context. Another aim of the review is to point to areas in other fields that we think are particularly suitable for supply chain management (SCM) to draw network concepts from, such as sociology, ecology, input–output research and even the study of romantic networks. We believe the portability of many network concepts provides a potential for unifying many fields, and a consequence of this for SCM may be to decrease the distance between SCM and other branches of management science.