Clustering and networking among small independent hotels: developments over ten years

This paper reports on networking activities amongst a cluster of independent hotels with a view to analysing key variables in network development for SMEs. A comparative, longitudinal element is introduced by reference to an earlier study of the same phenomenon, ten years earlier. Of particular interest is the influence of various forms of social capital in the development of informal networks and the inter-play between co-operation and competition over time. Given the time gap between the two studies, the effect of sectoral changes on network development is also examined. The research revisits and extends a previous study of many of the same hotels which were investigated in 1995 over their formal and informal links that were found to be influenced by such factors across two classifications - the business as unit (proximity, perceptions of quality) and the individual respondent (personal social networks and ethnicity). Extending that analysis, social capital concepts and relevant references to embedded networks and kinship groups and co-operative game rules will be introduced in this paper. A highly concentrated population of small, independent hotels in Central London had been identified in the previous research project and it is from this sample that the current research drew and extended its own sample of hotels. With such a high number of hotels in the area a mixture of ‘snowball’ sampling and self-selection was successfully employed. Of the original 29 hotels, 22 have been re-interviewed and complemented by another 19. Of the remainder of the original sample, several had subsequently merged or failed to survive the intervening period. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with owner-managers in all cases using a structured questionnaire that replicated as much as possible of the original questionnaire, with both open and closed questions to allow some individual expression on relevant topics. The quantitative data obtained will be analysed using UCINET software to generate visual representations of networks alongside statistical and cluster analyses. Both academic and policy implications are likely to arise from this research, such as novel insights from such an unique periodic comparison of networks development, the influence of social capital on (formal and informal) network activities and the changing influence and consolidation of hotel groups through mergers and franchising

Social network analysis of rural medical school immersion in a rural clinical school

Background: The impact of new medical graduates on the social dimensions of the rural medical workforce is yet to be examined. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is able to visualize and measure these dimensions. We apply this method to examine the workforce characteristics of graduates from a representative Australian Rural Clinical School. Methods: Participants were medical graduates of the Rural Clinical School of Western Australia (RCSWA) from the 2001–2014 cohorts, identified as being in rural work in 2017 by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. SNA was used to examine the relationships between site of origin and of work destination. Data were entered into UCInet 6 as tied pairs, and visualized using Netdraw. UCINet statistics relating to node centrality were obtained from the node editor. Results: SNA measures showed that the 124 of 709 graduates in rural practice were distributed around Australia, and that their practice was strongly focused on the North, with a clear centre in the remote Western Australian town of Broome. Women were strongly recruited, and were widely distributed. Conclusions: RCSWA appears to be a “weak tie” according to SNA theory: the School attracts graduates to rural nodes where they had only passing prior contact. The multiple activities that comprise the social capital of the most attractive, remote, node demonstrate the clear workforce effects of being a “bridge, broker and boundary spanner” in SNA terms, and add new understanding about recruiting to the rural workforce

International Business Research: Understanding Past Paths to Design Future Research Directions

In this paper we examine the extant research in IB by conducting a bibliometric study of the articles published in three leading international business journals – International Business Review, Journal of International Business Studies and Management International Review, over their entire track record of publication available in the ISI – Institute for Scientific Information. In longitudinal analyses of citation data we ascertain the most relevant works to the international business field. We also identify intellectual interconnectedness in co-citation networks of the research published in each journal. A second-tier analysis delves into publication patterns of those articles that are not at the top citation listings. Our results permit us better understand and depict the extant international business research and, to some extent, its evolution thus far.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Spillovers and proximity in perspective: a network approach to improving the operationalisation of proximity

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The emergent properties of a dolphin social network

Many complex networks, including human societies, the Internet, the World Wide Web and power grids, have surprising properties that allow vertices (individuals, nodes, Web pages, etc.) to be in close contact and information to be transferred quickly between them. Nothing is known of the emerging properties of animal societies, but it would be expected that similar trends would emerge from the topology of animal social networks. Despite its small size (64 individuals), the Doubtful Sound community of bottlenose dolphins has the same characteristics. The connectivity of individuals follows a complex distribution that has a scale-free power-law distribution for large k. In addition, the ability for two individuals to be in contact is unaffected by the random removal of individuals. The removal of individuals with many links to others does affect the length of the information path between two individuals, but, unlike other scale-free networks, it does not fragment the cohesion of the social network. These self-organizing phenomena allow the network to remain united, even in the case of catastrophic death events.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Available online from the journal's web-site (See http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/biol_lett/biol_lett.html) as well. To be printed this yea

The French research system : which evolution and which borders ?

We analyse the French Research System with the study of the contracts between the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and the companies and test the hypothesis of small world in science. Our working material is the data base of the contracts of the units of the CNRS with economic partners, which has been collecting information since 1986 to 2006. This first application of Network methods and tools to the CNRS contracts allows us to obtain some results: at first, the major firms’s scientific network is not "scale-free" as if competition and strategy between the most large firms dominate the behaviour in R&D investments and management of contracts with public research units. However, in second part, we demonstrate that every discipline network is a "small world", i.e. , that it exists several scientific communities in which the diffusion of information is free and easy, even if its forwards through any actors (some labs or some firms). Probably, there are several "small worlds" in this database as in the scientific collaboration networks. Is seems that the industrial research does not disturb too much the properties of scientific network, as it’s well known in the literature of Sciences Studies

Presencia de los hombres en redes de Investigación de género en el ámbito de comunicación en España

El objetivo de este trabajo es conocer la productividad y colaboración científica de los autores que han publicado trabajos sobre género en las revistas españolas de comunicación, prestando especial atención al rol desempeñado por los hombres. Se ha analizado la red de citaciones con el fin de identificar la red de investigadores y la participación de los hombres en la misma. La hipótesis de la que se parte es que los hombres tienen un papel secundario en las comunidades científicas que investigan sobre género en el área de comunicación. Se aplican metodologías procedentes del análisis de redes sociales. La información extraída ha sido analizada con el programa Ucinet. Se comprueba que los hombres tienen un rol marginal en la red y que las mujeres tienden a citar a otras mujeres en sus publicaciones.The purpose of this paper is to learn about the scientific productivity and collaboration of authors who have published papers on gender in Spanish communication journals by paying special attention to the role played by men. The citation network was analysed in order to identify the researchers network and the participation of men therein. The hypotesis put forward is that men have a secondary role in scientific communities that research gender in the communication field. Methodologies from the analysis of social network were applied. The information extracted was analysed using Ucinet software. It was confirmed that men have a marginal role in the network and that women tend to cite other women in their publication