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Freight Forwarder's Intermediary Role in Multimodal Transport Chains pp 161–205Cite as

Models of Network Structure and the Network Perspective

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Part of the book series: Contributions to Management Science ((MANAGEMENT SC.))

Abstract

One of the first explicit definitions of networks in the social sciences can be found in Moreno (1934), summing up his results of a structural analysis of groups: “We have found that these [psychological] currents which break group lines, and even community lines, are not lawless. They are related to more or less permanent structures which bind individuals together into complex lines of transportation and communication, large networks.” (Moreno (1934), (1953, p. 441)). According to Casti (1995, 5), all kinds of networks “[...] have in common a set of objects [...] tied together in a connective structure by links [...]. What this adds up to is that we can abstractly regard a network as nothing more (or less) than a system: \(\mathrm{network} =\mathrm{ objects} +\mathrm{ connections} =\mathrm{ system}\).”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In addition to this, it was the only monograph dedicated to the subject of graph theory until Berge (1958), see Gallai (1990). Authors like Barnes (1969, p. 217), Deo (1974, p. 10) or Jungnickel (1994, 17–18) date the first graph theoretic treatment back to the mathematican Leonard Euler, who discussed the problem of crossing all seven bridges over the River Pregel at Königsberg in 1736 without crossing each bridge more than once. See e.g. König (1936, pp. 24–25), Deo (1974, PP. 23–30), Nollemeier (1975:12–13), Jungnickel (1994, pp. 31–33) or Casti (1995, pp. 8–10) for a more elaborated discussion of this bridge-crossing problem.

  2. 2.

    Cf. König (1936, pp. 1–18), Moreno (1953, pp. 719–720), Flament (1963), Harary et al. (1965), Freeman (1979), Knoke and Kuklinski (1982, pp. 37–42), Schenk (1984, pp. 42–46), Scott (1991, 67–71), Ahuja et al. (1993, pp. 23–31), Casti (1995), Johnson (1995), Domschke and Drexl (1995, pp. 1–16), Jansen (2003, pp. 94–97), Brandes and Erlebach (2005) or Knoke and Yang (2008, pp. 45–51).

  3. 3.

    See Simon (1993:20-31) discussing structural as well as procedural aspects of logistic networks and Jäggi (2000, pp. 88–92) for a detailed typology of network definitions in transport and logistics.

  4. 4.

    See Koopmans (1951) or Dantzig (1963, pp. 20–24, 2002) for further explanation about the origins of mathematical programming.

  5. 5.

    Cf. Dantzig (1963, pp. 18–20), Thomas and Biddle (1966a) or Fortuin and van Beek (1996).

  6. 6.

    Some of these early contributions to OR/MS relied on much former research findings subject to a strict military confidentiality. But later on, they were released after being declassified, like in the case of Morse and Kimball (1951), Flood (1954) or Harris and Ross (1955) with the last one downgraded recently upon request in 1999, see Schrijver (2002, p. 441).

  7. 7.

    See Avondo-Bodino (1962), Berge and Ghouila-Houri (1962) or Dantzig (1963) for a more detailed overview of these early contributions.

  8. 8.

    See Avondo-Bodino (1962), Ford and Fulkerson (1962, pp. 93–172), Dantzig (1963, pp. 299–351), Glover et al. (1992, pp. 6–7), Ahuja et al. (1993, pp. 19–20) or Schrijver (2002) for further discussion about early treatments of these transport problems.

  9. 9.

    Network plan techniques are methods for scheduling, risk assessment, control, capacity and cost planning in projects, see e.g. Noltemeier (1976, p. 219). Well known procedures are the Critical Path Method (CPM), the Programm Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), the Meta Potential Method (MPM) and the Graphical Evaluation and Review Technique (GERT).

  10. 10.

    Cf. Heinzl and Brandt (1999).

  11. 11.

    See Fortuin and van Beek (1996), Vertinsky (1998) or Domschke and Drexl (1995, pp. 7–9). Regarding these last mentioned rather unusual applications of OR/MS see short reviews by Ladany (1996), Hess and Wong-Martinez (1996) or Reisman and Xu (1996) with further references.

  12. 12.

    Cf. Magnanti and Wong (1984), Magnanti (1996), Diruf (1999, pp. 378–380) or Crainic (2000).

  13. 13.

    Strictly speaking, assignment (as well as matching problems) generally belong to the group of combinatorial (or discrete) optimization techniques, but there is a close relationship between them and the other network flow models mentioned above, see e.g. Iri (1969, pp. 212–238) or Ahuja et al. (1993, pp. 461–501). Further, authors like Iri (1969, pp. 3–5) or Deo (1974, pp. 400–408) considered network plan techniques as network flow models in activity networks, too. But their basic objective is project planning and scheduling of activities, so that they are excluded in this context.

  14. 14.

    See Tansel et al. (1983b), Magnanti and Wong (1984), Dejax and Crainic (1987), Teodorović (1988), Glover et al. (1992), Eiselt and Sandblom (2000), Crainic (2000) or Minoux (2003) for extensive overviews of OR/MS network modelling approaches. Further Noltemeier (1976, pp. 133–199) or Ahuja et al. (1993, pp. 510-536) focusing on minimum spanning tree and Steiner tree problems and Tansel et al. (1983a), ReVelle (1996), Domschke and Drexl (1996, pp. 41–161) for network location problems, including the warehouse-location or hub-location problem.

  15. 15.

    Of course, OR/MS modeling is not restricted to these two fields solemnly, as e.g. Bramel and Simchi-Levi (1997), Schmidt and Wilhelm (2000) or Daganzo (2005) showed in their mathematical programming approach to various logistics problems, including the formulation of production planning, inventory and distribution modeling. But they are not of special interest in this context and so excluded in the following.

  16. 16.

    See Kuby and Gray (1993), Jäggi (2000, pp. 105–110), Button and Stough (2000, pp. 50–58), Lohatepanont and Barnhart (2004) and Hanlon (2007, pp. 123–129).

  17. 17.

    See Graham (1995, pp. 12–13), Wells (1999, pp. 37–40), Button and Stough (2000, pp. 46–47), Jäggi (2000, pp. 109–110) or Mayer (2001, pp. 6–11). In Europe, hub-and-spoke networks outdated linear networks much earlier because of geographical, political and historical factors, see Mayer (2001, pp. 31–34) with further references.

  18. 18.

    See Etschmaier and Mathaisel (1985), Teodorović (1988), Rushmeier et al. (1995), Ryan (1996), Mathaisel (1997), Rushmeier and Kontogiorgis (1997), Yu (1998), Lohatepanont and Barnhart (2004), Barnhart and Cohn (2004) or Snowdon and Paleologo (2008) for this and in the following. Relying on Suhl (1995), Mayer (2001, pp. 48–57) mapped the hierarchical planning process for scheduled airline services in four subsequent phases, starting with product planning at the strategic level, followed by production planning at the tactical level and resource planning as well as operations management at the operational level.

  19. 19.

    See reviews by Lederer and Nambimadom (1998), Bryan and O’Kelly (1999), Mayer (2001, pp. 107–257) and Barnhart et al. (2002) focusing on OR/MS network design models in the airline industry. Further Jäggi (2000) with a resource-based approach to airline network design.

  20. 20.

    Cf. Kuby and Gray (1993), Hall (1989), Mayer (2001, pp. 107–257) or Barnhart et al. (2002).

  21. 21.

    Cf. Mathaisel (1996) or Ball et al. (2007).

  22. 22.

    See. e.g. Richter (1989), Amiouny et al. (1992), Smith et al. (1992), Klampferer (1996), Ryan (1996), Thomas et al. (1998) or Snowdon and Paleologo (2008).

  23. 23.

    All in all, they found in industrial shipping most evidence for OR/MS applications with 24 treatments, followed by liner shipping (19), shipping in multimodal transport operations (16) and tramp shipping (11) with the remaining contributions covering various specialized shipping operations including e.g. fishing, cost guard and naval shipping. Furthermore, an update to this can found in Christiansen et al. (2007). In addition to this, Ernst (1982) and Ordemann (1996) are dissertations in German focusing on ship routing and scheduling in the container shipping industry, too.

  24. 24.

    Cf. Ronen (1983, 1984).

  25. 25.

    See Christiansen et al. (2004) or Sect. 2.2.4.1 and 2.2.4.2.

  26. 26.

    Cf. Pesenti (1995) or Christiansen et al. (2007).

  27. 27.

    See early treatments by Ramcke (1973), Huch (1973), Jarke (1981) or Ernst (1982) as well as overviews by Dejax and Crainic (1987), Macharis and Bontekoning (2004), Christiansen et al. (2004), Maloni and Jackson (2005) or Olivo et al. (2005).

  28. 28.

    Vis and de Koster (2003) reviewed about 55 contributions and the comprehensive literature overview by Steenken et al. (2004) contains about 200 citations, most of them being published within the last decade. Further with Jehle (1981), Kunzmann (1988), Schott (1989), Kasprzak (1997) and Pumpe (2000) there are some dissertations in German about this topic not explicitly mentioned in Vis and de Koster (2003) or Steenken et al. (2004).

  29. 29.

    See Meersmans and Dekker (2001), Meersmans (2002, pp. 7–27), Vis and de Koster (2003), Steenken et al. (2004), Günther and Kim (2005) or Maloni and Jackson (2005) for a more thoroughly overview with further references. Further, Macharis and Bontekoning (2004) reviewed OR/MS modelling issues in intermodal freight transport operations with a focus on road, rail and inland navigation, where they distinguished between drayage, terminal, network and intermodal operator decision problems on a strategic, tactical or operational level.

  30. 30.

    In addition to this, container loading problems are adressed e.g. by Dyckhoff and Finke (1992), Bischoff and Ratcliff (1995), Ratcliff and Bischoff (1998), Bortfeldt and Gehrig (1998) or Bortfeldt (2000).

  31. 31.

    Cf. Snow et al. (1992, pp. 6–11) or Hinterhuber and Levin (1994).

  32. 32.

    Cf. Thorelli (1986), Powell (1990, pp. 314–322) or Snow et al. (1992, pp. 11–14).

  33. 33.

    Cf. Jarillo and Ricart (1987) or Jarillo (1988).

  34. 34.

    Cf. Sydow et al. (1998) or Sydow (1998).

  35. 35.

    See e.g. Faller (1999), Jung (1999) and Kaspar (1999).

  36. 36.

    More specifically, Reve (1990) considered a firm to be a nexus of internal and external contracts offering organizational and inter-organizational incentives in order to bind core and complementary skills to it. The strategic core of a firm can then be defined as a bundle of skills which are of high asset specificity and therefore governed with in the boundary of the firm. Further, complementary skills are of medium asset specificity and can therefore be acquired by vertical, horizontal or diversification alliances forming a strategic network whereas other assets of low specificity are obtained in the market.

  37. 37.

    Cf. Miles and Snow (1984, pp. 26–27, 1986, pp. 64–65) or Rennings (1992, pp. 40–41). Further Siebert (1991, pp. 294–298) with a quite similar approach to characterize corporate networks along functional specialization, market mechanism efficiency, trust, cooperative conduct and information integration.

  38. 38.

    Later on, Snow et al. (1992, pp. 14–19) discussed fundamental different functional roles of such an broker in establishing (the “architect”), operating (the “lead operator”) and maintaining (the “caretaker”) such dynamic networks.

  39. 39.

    See also Sydow (1993, pp. 185–188) with a critical review.

  40. 40.

    Cf. Voss (1996), Christie and Levary (1998) or Corsten and Gössinger (2000, pp. 24–51) with further references.

  41. 41.

    See e.g. Casson (1993; 1997a, pp. 6-9 and 124–139, 1997c, pp. 157–162) or Casson and Cox (1997, pp. 183–189) for a general introduction.

  42. 42.

    Initially, he talked about “business networks”, “inter-firm networks” or “intermediated networks”, see Casson (1997a, pp. 117–145) or Casson and Cox (1997). Later on, Casson (1997b,c) sticked on the term “entrepreneurial networks”, which should indicate that “[i]n the aggregate, entrepreneurs may work better as a cooperative network than as a collection of competitive individualists” (Casson 1997b, p. 811).

  43. 43.

    Following Casson (1996, p. 60, 1997a, p. 81), “[...] a firm may be defined as a specialized decision-making unit, whose function is to improve coordination by structuring infromation flow, and which is normally endowed with privileges [...].” Further, he considered (1) limited liability, (2) indefinite life and (3) favourable taxation rules as the main privileges of a firm, see Casson (1996, pp. 59–60, 1997a, pp. 80–81).

  44. 44.

    According to Casson (1997a, pp. 5–6), 1999, pp. 79–80), NIE as well as the international business literature mainly emphasizes that the intermediary’s role is just to organize production as the core function of a firm with raising mainly three issues: (1) The provision of technology, (2) the coordination of intermediate product flows and (3) the direction and supervision of labour involved in the underlying production process.

  45. 45.

    Cf. Casson (1997c, p. 151).

  46. 46.

    Cf. Casson (1997a; 1997c, pp. 151–152, 1999, p. 80).

  47. 47.

    Actually, Casson (1997a, 1999, pp. 85–86) mainly stressed on the difference between information costs and transaction costs, but the same arguments hold in connection with agency costs, too.

  48. 48.

    See Casson (1997a, pp. 15–16, 1999, pp. 80–84). However, despite it is explicitly mentioned, this is again valid for the intermediation in services, too, as already shown in Sect. 3.3.

  49. 49.

    Notably, he used the terms “intermediation” and “market-making” with a slightly different meaning in contradiction to the strict definitions in Sect. 3.2. But all in all, he came to the same conclusions.

  50. 50.

    According to Casson (1997a, p. 16), another reason of goods ownership in this context is that by taking title on goods, “the possessor of information insures potential users of the information against the consequences of its being false.” This in turn forces the possessors of the information to ensure their quality for beneficial decision-making.

  51. 51.

    Cf. Casson (1997a, pp. 87–89, 1997c, pp. 155–157).

  52. 52.

    See Casson (1997b, pp. 815–816, 1999, p. 81, 2000c, p. 265) referring to Schumpeter (1934) and Casson (2000b, pp. 228–235) for a more detailed discussion about contributions by Joseph Alois Schumpeter and the Austrian School to the theory of entrepreneurship in the context of international business. Notably, there seems to be a deviation between Schumpeter (1931) and Schumpeter (1934) in connection with “new markets” and “new sources” in question, because Mark Casson implied them to be found only abroad, whereas Schumpeter (1931) believed them just being other markets or sources. Further, Langen and Welters (1999) researched innovation issues in the freight transport industry and came to the conclusion, that radical innovations in transport technology (they called it “hardware”) seem to be of diminishing importance. But innovation in the organization of business practice (denoted as “orgware”) are needed to cope with the dynamic environment.

  53. 53.

    In both instance, adequate investments have to be undergone to perceive warranted trust: either establishing a quite impersonal system of monitoring and sanction enforcement or building up and maintaining social ties with other network partners based on a system of common moral beliefs, see Casson (1997a, pp. 119–120, 1997b, pp. 814–815, 2000c, pp. 258–259) or Casson and Cox (1997, pp. 177–180).

  54. 54.

    Cf. Casson and Cox (1997, pp. 180–182) or Casson (2000c, pp. 262–264).

  55. 55.

    Another aspect of this sort of uniformity among the participants of an entrepreneurial network is a standardized language and culture, which actually reduces communication costs, see Casson (1997c, p. 814, 2000c, p. 258) referring to Casson (1997a, pp. 26–27).

  56. 56.

    Cf. Casson (1997a, pp. 123–124, 1997b, p. 815, 2000c, p. 259).

  57. 57.

    Following Casson (1997a, pp. 123–124), “[t]he difference between the markets and the networks lies in the degree of trust involved, while the difference between the market and the firm lies principally in the distribution of competence instead.” Further, he distinguished between high-trust firms (or clans) relying on internal networking as well as emotional incentives mechanisms and low-trust firms (or hierarchies) with material incentive mechanisms.

  58. 58.

    See Casson (1997a, pp. 129–130) or Casson and Cox (1997, pp. 186–189) for this and the following.

  59. 59.

    Moreover, such higher-level subnetworks can play an important role in synthesizing information, too, because “it is often cheaper to get information and advice from other people [...]. “Who you know” is often more important than “what you know” because the people that you know can plug the gaps in what you know. This, of course, depends on knowing the right people. Sometimes the right people are those who know a lot of facts, but more often they are people simply know a lot of other people who in turn know useful facts. These people can act as brokers, linking the decision-maker who demands the information to the person who ultimately knows the facts” (Casson 2000c, p. 257).

  60. 60.

    In this contribution, Casson (1998, pp. 24–29) used the word “reseller” instead of “market maker” in order to stress on the fact that these sort of intermediaries take title on goods in order to resell them later.

  61. 61.

    Notably, these performing carriers are either third-parties specialized in physical goods movement or belong to primary sector firms, industrial sector firms, distributors, retailers or customers who move their physical goods on own account.

  62. 62.

    Notably, all information flows at both ends of each transport operation performed by one of the many transport service provider as shown in Fig. 2.4 are omitted in Fig. 4.3. in order not to overload the diagram.

  63. 63.

    See e.g. Hertz (1993, pp. 33–63) for a thoroughly discussion.

  64. 64.

    See e.g. Johanson and Mattsson (1988, pp. 288–290) or Ford and Håkansson (2006) for a brief overview, the findings of this IMP research project are well documented in Håkansson (1982) or Turnbull and Valla (1986).

  65. 65.

    Cf. Håkansson and Snehota (1995, pp. 7–8).

  66. 66.

    See Hägg and Johanson (1982) or Hammarkvist et al. (1982) for early treatments, followed by Axelsson and Easton (1992) or Håkansson and Snehota (1995) presenting the findings of this second IMP project.

  67. 67.

    Cf. Johanson and Mattson (1992, p. 209) or Axelsson (1992, p. 239) or Håkansson and Johanson (1993, p. 32). Notably, in this work Emerson and Cook (1978) is associated with network exchange theory (NET) as an extension of social exchange theory (SET) to a network level, see Sect. 4.6.1.3.

  68. 68.

    Cf. Håkansson and Snehota (1995, pp. 25–26). According to Håkansson and Snehota (1995, pp. 9–18), four interaction process characteristics (adaption, cooperation and conflict, social interaction and routinization) and at least five contexts of relationship interdependencies (available technologies, accumulated knowledge, social relations, administrative and systems as well as legal ties) were prevalent. Further, see Easton and Araujo (1994) for a similar description along the social and temporal context of market exchanges.

  69. 69.

    See Håkansson and Snehota (1995, pp. 24–49) for this and the following. Other, much shorter overviews of this “markets-as-networks” approach can be found e.g. in Johanson and Mattsson (1987, pp. 34–41, 1988, pp. 448–453), Easton (1992, pp. 8–16), Håkansson and Johanson (1992, 1993) or Mattsson (1995, pp. 206–209).

  70. 70.

    Notably, Håkansson and Snehota (1995) defined “company”, “relationship” and “network” to be the levels of analysis. But for sake of internal consistency of this work, these levels of analysis were renamed in “organizations or single actors”, “business relationships” and “network structure” without alternating their theoretical content.

  71. 71.

    See Johanson and Mattsson (1988, pp. 294–294) or Easton (1992, pp. 16–19) referring to an earlier work by Mattsson (1986).

  72. 72.

    Cf. Johansson and Mattsson (1988, pp. 292–295, 1992, pp. 211–214) or Easton (1992, pp. 19–21).

  73. 73.

    More specifically, Johansson and Mattsson (1988, p. 293) distinguished two types of positions: “A micro-position is characterised by: (1) the role the firm has for the other firm; (2) its importance to the other firm; and (3) the strength of the relationship with the other firm. A macro-position is characterised by: (1) the identity of the other firm with which the firm has direct relationships and indirect relations in the network; (2) the role of the firm in the network; (3) the importance of the firm in the network; and (4) the strength of the relationships with other firms.”

  74. 74.

    Cf. Easton (1992, pp. 21–25), Axelsson (1992, pp. 239–242), Håkansson and Johanson (1993, pp. 44–49) or Håkansson and Snehota (1995, pp. 19–21).

  75. 75.

    See especially Johanson and Mattsson (1987, pp. 43–46), Easton and Araujo (1994), Håkansson and Snehota (1995, pp. 379–381) or Skjøtt-Larsen (1999a, 1999b, 2000) for this and the following.

  76. 76.

    Cf. Schenk (1984, pp. 12–17) or Freeman (2004, pp. 10–30) for a more elaborate discussion.

  77. 77.

    See Sect. 5.1 for more details.

  78. 78.

    Cf. Wrong (1961), Coleman (1988), Swedberg (1991), Smelser and Swedberg (1994).

  79. 79.

    More specifically, Granovetter (1985, p. 485) considered that “both have in common a conception of action and decision carried out by atomized actors; in the undersocialized account, atomization results from narrow utilitarian pursuit of self-interest; in the oversocialized one, from the fact that behavioral patterns have been internalized and ongoing social relations thus have only peripherial effects on behavior.”

  80. 80.

    Cf. Swedberg (1991, 1997) or Borgatti and Foster (2003).

  81. 81.

    Zukin and DiMaggio (1990, p. 17) went into more detail when explaining how economic behavior is culturally embedded: “Culture sets limits to economic rationality: it proscribes or limits market exchange in sacred objects and relations [...] or between ritually classified groups. Moreover, [...] culture may shape terms of trade. [...] Culture, in the form of beliefs and ideologies, taken for granted assumptions, or formal rule systems, also prescribes strategies of self-interested action [...] and defines the actors who may legitimately engage in them. [...] Culture provides scripts for applying different strategies to different classes of exchange. Finally, norms and constitutive understandings regulate market exchange”. Further see Dequech (2003) for a closer look at cognitive and cultural embeddedness considering them to be intertwined.

  82. 82.

    Cf. Uzzi (1996, 1997).

  83. 83.

    See e.g. Woolcock (1998, p. 155) or Anderson and Jack (2002, pp. 194–195).

  84. 84.

    The initial treatment by Bourdieu (1980) was in French, the second (Bourdieu, 1983) in German and the third (Bourdieu, 1985) in English, which was concealed in the pages of a text on the sociology of education, as Portes (1998, p. 3) noted.

  85. 85.

    Cf. Walker et al. (1997, p. 109–112) or Burt (2000, pp. 348–349).

  86. 86.

    See e.g. Lin (1999), Paldam (2000), Adler and Kwon (2002), Li (2007) or Lee (2009) for this and other facets of social capital not addressed in this work.

  87. 87.

    Examples are Granovetter (1973) analyzing the role that information networks play when people get jobs, Baker (1984) analyzing buyers and sellers in a national securities market or Mintz and Schwartz (1985) as well as Palmer (1983) conducting studies on interlocking directorates.

  88. 88.

    Or more precisely described in the words of Granovetter (1982, p. 105):“[T]he set of people made up of any individual and his or her aquaintances will constitute a low-density network (one in which many of the possible relational lines are absent), whereas the set consisting of the same individual and his or her close friends will be densely knit (many of the same possible lines present).”

  89. 89.

    Cf. Burt (1997, 1998) or Ebers (2001).

  90. 90.

    Therefore, the benefits of such a brokerage role are – apart from simply exploiting its power of control – having access to information beyond one can process alone, getting information early and obtaining referrals to get own interests in a positive light at right time and place, see Burt (1998).

  91. 91.

    Cf. Coleman (1990) or Ebers (2001).

  92. 92.

    Following Täube (2004, p. 34), “[s]upport capital is typically generated in informal groups with dense relations that are the result of a high frequency of interaction between socially similar persons. [...] Leverage capital comes into existence when an increasing differentiation of a group (as a result of its size) leads to growing distances with less frequent interactions between some of the group members. With widening gaps between smaller groups of high internal density, structural holes [...] come into existence allowing actors that bridge such gaps to exploit weaker relations for their own sake.”

  93. 93.

    Cf. Adler and Kwon (2002, p. 35).

  94. 94.

    See Anderson and Jack (2002) referring to Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998).

  95. 95.

    Cf. Cook (1982), Cook and Whitmeyer (1992) or Hirsch-Kreinsen (2002, p. 107).

  96. 96.

    See Sect. 5.1 or merely methodological contributions like Mitchell (1974), Kähler (1975), Shulman (1976), Burt (1980a, 1982), Lincoln (1982), Knoke and Kuklinski (1982), Schenk (1984), Weiman (1989), Marsden (1990), Scott (1991), Wasserman and Faust (1994), Diaz-Bone (1997) or Jansen (2003).

  97. 97.

    See overviews by Cook (1982), Cook and Whitmeyer (1992), Willer (1992), Sydow (1993, pp. 193–199), Yamaguchi (1996, pp. 308–322) or Jansen (2003, pp. 163–181) for further details. Following them, there are at least three schools of thought to distinguish: (1) the power-dependence theory stream originated in the works of Emerson (1962, 1972a,b) with a series of insightful laboratory experiments like Stolte and Emerson (1977), Cook and Emerson (1978), Cook et al. (1983), Yamagishi et al. (1988), Cook and Yamagishi (1992), (2) the exchange theory of purposive action as first formulated by Coleman (1972, 1973) and further extended by Marsden (1981, 1982, 1983) in order to observe brokerage behavior in networks with restricted access, and (3) a merely graph-analytic approach with contributions like Markovsky et al. (1988, 1993), Patton and Willer (1990), Lovaglia et al. (1995) or Willer (1999, 2003).

  98. 98.

    Cf. Easton (1992, pp. 5–6), Axelsson (1992, pp. 239–240), Håkansson and Johanson (1993, pp. 35–36), Araujo and Easton (1996, pp. 99–102) and Batt (2008, pp. 488–489).

  99. 99.

    Cf. Cook (1982), Cook et al. (1983, pp. 275–279), Cook and Whitmeyer (1992) or Weyer (2000, pp. 14–18).

  100. 100.

    Notably, this has a decisive impact on the identification of the most powerful or prominent actor in a social network structure, see e.g. Cook et al. (1983), Bonacich (1987), Yamagishi et al. (1988), Yamaguchi (1996) or Mizruchi and Potts (1998).

  101. 101.

    Especially Williamson (2000) drew an extensive four level hierarchical structure of NIE with a social embeddedness level at the top (represented by NES), followed by an institutional environment level (represented by PRT), governance level (represented by governance approach of TCT) and the lowest level coping with resource allocation and employment (represented by PAT as well as some contributions from NCE).

  102. 102.

    Reviewing this stream of literature, Holmen and Pedersen (2000) even proposed the concept of “serial tetrads” in order to avoid “triadic reductionism”.

  103. 103.

    Balance theory itself, as developed by Heider (1946, 1958), is part of the sociometric stream of social network analysis, see Sect. 5.1.1.

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  1. Department of Global Business and Trade, Institute for Transport and Logistics Management, Nordbergstr. 15, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Dr. Hans-Joachim Schramm

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Schramm, HJ. (2012). Models of Network Structure and the Network Perspective. In: Freight Forwarder's Intermediary Role in Multimodal Transport Chains. Contributions to Management Science. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2775-0_4

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