A Model of Robust Position in Social Networks

A Model of Robust Positions in Social Networks
Author(s): Matthew S. Bothner, Edward Bishop Smith, and Harrison C. White

Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 116, No. 3 (November 2010), pp. 943-92
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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A Model of Robust Positions in Social
Networks1
Matthew S. Bothner
Cornell University
Edward Bishop Smith

University of Michigan
Harrison C. White
Columbia University
This article introduces a network model that pictures occupants of

robust positions as recipients of diversified support from durably
located others and portrays occupants of fragile positions as de-
pendents on tenuously situated others. The model extends Herfin-
dahl’s index of concentration by bringing in the recursiveness of
Bonacich’s method. Using Newcomb’s study of a college fraternity,
we find empirical support for the contention that fragility reduces
future growth in status. Applications of the model to input-output
networks among industries in the U.S. economy and to hiring net-
works among academic departments are also presented. Implications
for future research are discussed.
What are features of robust rather than fragile social positions? Various
approaches have long equated robust positions with diversification and
fragile, vulnerable ones with concentration. For instance, the early treat-
1
We have benefited from the advice of Peter Bearman, Ron Breiger, Ron Burt, Tim
Conley, James Evans, Jon Kleinberg, John Levi Martin, Mark Mizruchi, and John
Padgett, as well as seminar participants at the University of Chicago, Columbia Uni-
versity, the Tuck School of Business, and the Yale School of Management. Financial
support from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and from the Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Val Burris for
generously making data available on the sociology PhD exchange network. Direct
correspondence to Matthew Bothner, Department of Sociology, 364 Uris Hall, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York 14853-7601. E-mail: mbothner@cornell.edu
䉷 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0002-9602/2011/11603-0006$10.00
AJS Volume 116 Number 3 (November 2010): 943–92 943

American Journal of Sociology
ments of Emerson (1962) and Blau (1964) pictured occupants of fragile

positions as those who depend primarily on just one other entity in a
social network. Since then, many investigations have discussed both the
hazards of relying on a single source and the advantages that result from
ties to a wide range of others. Examples of this theme appear in the core
tenets of resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978), ecolog-
ical conceptions of niche width as a shelter from environmental change
(Hannan and Freeman 1989; Péli 1997), and network-theoretic accounts
of the social structures that sustain malleability and preserve options in
complex games (Padgett and Ansell 1993). It is thus well understood that
the range of an actor’s ties in a network is an important determinant of
the robustness of his or her position.
We develop a conception of robustness and fragility that builds on these
earlier lines of research but also departs from them in an important re-
spect. While harnessing notions of diversification and concentration, we
also draw on the concepts of “decoupling” and “coupling” developed in
White’s (2008) theory of identity and control to allow for mutual influence
among social actors’ identities and networks. We use the term decoupling
to refer to clean breaks and sharp distinctions between social actors, as
when consumers’ perceptions of an industry are unaffected by the prac-
tices of its overseas suppliers. Conversely, by coupling we refer to close
connections that yield consequences beyond those of mere contact, as
when an executive’s style of leadership spills over and colors others’
opinions of her direct reports (White 2008; cf. White 2002, pp. 200–220).
In our view, to be coupled with another actor is not simply to have contact,
exchange, or a social tie with that actor. It is also to be intertwined with
that actor’s identity and network.
Goffman’s account of stigmatization and its diffusion offers acute ex-
amples of this intertwining. According to his view,
the loyal spouse of the mental patient, the daughter of the ex-con, the parent
of the cripple, the friend of the blind, the family of the hangman, are all
obliged to share some of the discredit of the stigmatized person to whom
they are related [and] persons who acquire a degree of stigma in this way
can themselves have connections who acquire a little of the disease twice-
removed. . . . The issue is that in certain circumstances the social identity
of those an individual is with can be used as a source of information con-
cerning his own social identity, the assumption being that he is what the
others are. (Goffman 1968, pp. 30, 47)
Thus, as long as social ties are detectable by third parties, in networks

of intangible flows—like the ones Goffman (1968) described or the more
familiar flows of recognition and esteem among scientists described by
Merton (1968)—coupling equates to the influence of another’s identity on
one’s own. And in networks of tangible flows, such as goods and services
944

Robust Positions in Social Networks
moving among production markets, coupling occurs when the position of

a given market is affected by the exchange patterns of contiguous markets.
We contend that a conceptualization of robustness—or fragility, its the-
oretical complement—must take into account concentration and coupling.
We define the occupant of a fragile position as one who is both highly
dependent on and closely coupled with others who are themselves ten-
uously located in social structure. An example of a fragilely positioned
nonprofit is one whose support comes exclusively from an unpopular
politician (Hannan 1998, pp. 149–50). An example of a fragilely positioned
company is one whose footing resides solely in a precariously undiversified
market (cf. White 2002, pp. 246–47). We view fragility as dependency on
dependents and robustness as diversification across the diversified.
Consistent with this view, in what follows, we develop a network model
of fragility and robustness that jointly takes concentration and coupling
into account. We then illustrate its applicability in three empirical settings:
our primary setting is Newcomb’s (1961) study of a college fraternity,
where we examine the effect of fragility on growth and decline in status;
next, in an extension that permits us to examine our model’s implications
in a network of flows unrelated to social status, we assess the effect of
fragility on the performance of industries tracked by the U.S. Department
of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA; Moyer et al. 2004);
we then return to status-related themes by investigating the effect of
fragility on academic departments’ prestige, using Burris’s (2004) data on
the sociology PhD exchange network.
Our aims, which are theoretical as well as methodological, integrate
several streams of earlier research. We move toward our primary theo-
retical aim—to bring into focus the status-eroding effects of fragility in
social systems—by drawing from Abbott’s (2001) etiology of status, We-
ber’s (1978) discussion of types of charisma, and Whyte’s ([1943] 1993)
ethnography of a North Boston street gang. We work toward our meth-
odological objective—to construct a general measure of fragility of po-
sitions in networks—by drawing on Herfindahl’s measure of concentra-
tion and melding it with the underlying mathematics of Bonacich’s (1987)
measure of status.
THEORETICAL ANTECEDENTS
Our starting point is Abbott’s (2001) observation that an individual’s
status may turn more significantly on the range of his or her current
options than on a history of affiliations with high-status institutions. Ac-
cording to this view, “It should not be assumed that the ultimate elite
career is one that hooks together all the perfect elite trajectories. . . . The
945

most elite individual may be that person who maintains the largest num-
ber of possible future trajectories that s/he could jump onto” (Abbott 2001,
p. 247).
This insight carries several interrelated implications. One is that, al-
though many sociologists have long viewed status largely as the product
of stable traits (Berger et al. 1977), status may instead rise and fall in
response to shifts in the durability of an actor’s location in social structure.
Another implication is that much of the growth and decline in status we
observe in social life may well have its most fundamental antecedents in
audience members’ taste for robustness and distaste for fragility. Abbott’s
claim points directly to the appealing theoretical possibility that possession
of durable social support invites prestige-conferring reactions, whereas
occupants of fragile social positions are seen as illegitimate and therefore
attract responses from others that attenuate their social standing. We
believe that deference accruing to durably situated actors, as well as
disdain for those in fragile roles (evident in diatribes like “he’s only hang-
ing on by a thread—cut him loose”) should figure centrally in our por-
trayals of status-based processes.
Cases of fragility’s corrosive effects also appear as far back as Weber’s
(1978) comparison of two distinct types of charismatic leaders. The first
(most familiar) type of charismatic leader is the extraordinary figure whose
military exploits, intellectual powers, or miraculous works elicit the def-
erence of a broad community of followers. This individual, standing on
a wide base of support, inhabits what for us is a robust position. Con-
versely, for Weber, the second type is the person whom the first type
eventually (with age) consecrates as his or her successor. The second type’s
social standing therefore rests perniciously on the sponsorship of the orig-
inal charismatic leader. Unlike the “pure” charisma of the predecessor,
mere “hereditary charisma” or “lineage charisma” (Weber 1978, pp. 248,
1135–41) marks the successor’s role—a role not nearly as legitimate as
that of the first type. This second type is fragilely situated, having been
chosen by the original, now-deceased leader, and frequently evokes sus-
picion and conflict among prospective followers—those whose allegiance
the first type garnered with relative ease. Weber’s distinction is important
because it brings into focus the unfavorable perceptions that encircle and
damage occupants of fragile social roles. With fragility often come re-
actions that erode legitimacy, such as Quakers’ epithetical descriptions of
successors as “hirelings” (Weber 1978, p. 249).
Whyte’s (1993) celebrated ethnography of Boston’s North End, espe-
cially his analysis of the Nortons street gang, offers further examples. In
particular, two components of Whyte’s qualitative account—his descrip-
tion of the Nortons’ bowling match and its competitive aftermath and
his portrayal of the realignment of the gang after its leader fell from
946

grace—neatly illustrate two main pieces of our argument: that fragility

invites status-reducing penalties and that an actor is increasingly fragile
when the sources of that actor’s social support are themselves vulnerable.
We draw on this case in detail because of its depth and relevance.
We begin by turning to Whyte’s (1993, p. 13; see fig. 1) original hand-
drawn sociogram of the Nortons. Of the 13 people depicted, three are
most relevant for our theory: Doc, the gang’s leader; Alec, at the bottom;
and, most significantly, Long John, who while enjoying a moderate level
of prestige nonetheless stood on fragile social ground. With weak ties to
most Nortons, Long John’s social support was strongly concentrated in
his relations with Doc, Danny, and Mike. According to Whyte (1993, p.
12), “Long John was in an anomalous position . . . his friendship with
the three top men gave him a superior standing. As Doc explained: ‘It’s
because we’ve always catered to Long John. When we go somewhere,
we ask Long John to go with us. We come up to him and slap him on
the back. We give him so much attention that the rest of the fellows have
to respect him.’ Nevertheless, he had little authority over the followers.”
The social consequences of Long John’s fragility within the structure
of the gang were most visible as Alec (positioned at the bottom of the
sociogram in fig. 1) singled out Long John for one-on-one competition
after a high-stakes intragang bowling match (Whyte 1993, pp. 20–24). In
the intragang match, individuals’ bowling scores ended up being virtually
identical to their locations in the status ordering. According to Whyte, it
was normative for high-status gang members to heckle their lower-status
rivals, but not vice versa, and so there was a tendency for each contestant
to bowl in accordance with his status.
Nevertheless, the apparent equilibration of status and athletic perfor-
mance was not left unchallenged, particularly by Alec. In an effort to
recover, Alec targeted Long John, daring him to one-on-one bowling con-
tests and beating him repeatedly. Additionally, “when bowling was re-
sumed in the fall, Long John became Alec’s favorite opponent, and for
some time Alec nearly always came out ahead. He gloated. Long John
explained: ‘He seems to have the Indian sign on me’” (Whyte 1993, p.
22). Summarizing Alec’s attack, Whyte drew the following conclusion,
which nicely illustrates the status-corrosive reactions occupants of fragile
roles tend to elicit: “It is significant that, in making his challenge, Alec
selected Long John instead of Doc, Danny, or Mike. It was not that Long
John’s bowling ability was uncertain. His average was about the same
as that of Doc or Danny and better than that of Mike. As a member of
the top group but not a leader in his own right, it was his social position
that was vulnerable” (p. 22). Alec persistently trounced Long John in the
bowling alleys, before Doc intervened and shored up Long John’s con-
fidence.
947

Fig. 1.—Social structure of the Nortons street gang, as hand illustrated by Whyte (1993,
p. 13).
In the future, Doc was not nearly as able to prop up Long John, how-
ever. And this fact takes us to our second point—namely, that an indi-
vidual’s position becomes more fragile if that individual’s source of social
support becomes less robust. Doc’s fall—and, due to their coupling in the
network, Long John’s heightened fragility—resulted from his failed foray
into the North End’s political ambit.2 The Nortons grew disillusioned
with Doc and underwent sharp social-structural changes after the summer
of 1938 (Whyte 1993, pp. 42–51). Although there were several exits, entries,
and shifts in stayers’ positions, the most jugular realignments, particularly
for Long John, followed Doc’s repositioning. When Doc’s position became
less robust—Doc had lost much of the support of the Nortons and had
grown dependent on Spongi, a new player, not included in figure 1—
Long John became nearly an isolate.
In his summary of Long John’s dilemma, Whyte (1993, p. 45) high-
lighted a central component of the model of fragility we develop, specif-
ically, that the fragility of an actor’s position is exacerbated when that
actor’s source of social support—in this case, Danny, Mike, and especially
Doc—grows more vulnerable:
2
Although this second point concerns our conceptualization, rather than the expected
consequences, of fragility, it does imply a corollary prediction—namely, that Alec would
have been even more likely to challenge Long John in the bowling alleys had the social
positions occupied by Long John’s supporters grown less robust.
948

Long John divided his time between Spongi’s and the Norton Street corner.
The realignment left him in a vulnerable position. There were two groups
that hung around Spongi’s “joint”: the inner circle and the hangers-on. Spongi
included his brother, Danny, Doc, and two others in the inner circle. When
he went for “coffee-ands,” for a drive, or to the movies, he would invite them
to accompany him. He did not include Long John in his invitations, so Long
John was excluded from the inner circle. Without the support of Doc, Danny,
and Mike, he had no standing among the boys who remained on Norton
Street, and he did not know where to go. (Whyte 1993, p. 45)
MEASUREMENT
The distinctiveness of social positions resembling the one occupied by
Long John brings us to a more formal description of our measurement
of fragility and robustness. We start with the Herfindahl index to account
for concentration and then bring in the recursiveness of Bonacich’s (1987)
method to account for coupling.
The Herfindahl index has long been used to assess industry concen-
tration, where it is written as the sum of firms’ squared market shares
(Schmalensee 1989, pp. 966–67; McLean and Padgett 1997). It has also
been used to quantify religious homogeneity within a geographical area
(Ellison, Burr, and McCall 1997). We take it as our point of departure
for measuring fragility because it aptly captures the degree to which one
node in the network depends on a narrow base of alters rather than facing
diversification across others. More specifically, if we consider a hypo-
thetical relational matrix X , where X p [xij ] , xii p 0, and xij denotes the
flow of respect (endorsements, recognition, esteem, deference, liking, sup-
port, precedence, or honor) directed from individual j to i, then we can
express the Herfindahl index for members of the social network sum-
marized by X very simply as
冘
n⫺1
Hi p dij , (1)
jp1
where the important transformation is from X to D as follows:
[冘 ]
2
xij
dij p n⫺1 . (2)
jp1 xij
When applied to relational matrices like X , the Herfindahl index thus
involves these straightforward steps: divide each entry through by its row
sum, square the resulting proportions, and then collect the row sums for
the new matrix of squared proportions. If Hi equals one, i then receives
all of his or her respect or social support from just one other actor in the
network. Under this scenario, i is completely dependent. If, by contrast,
949

the index for a given actor equals 1/ (n ⫺ 1), that actor is then minimally
dependent, and his or her position is consequently far less fragile. The
Herfindahl index captures the concentration of sources of incoming flows
and therefore serves as a constructive baseline for measuring the fragility
of social positions.
Used by itself, however, the Herfindahl index has limitations. When
applied to a given social network, it considers only the distribution of an
actor’s immediate ties, making no allowance for the identities and net-
works of that actor’s contacts to exert influence. The use of Herfindahl’s
measure thus assumes complete decoupling by construction because it
contains no provision for network spillovers. Although full decoupling—
that is, the complete absence of network spillovers—may accurately de-
scribe some social structures, it likely mischaracterizes most networks of
interest to sociologists. Consequently, to build coupling into our measure
of fragility, we turn to a salient feature of Bonacich’s (1987) status mea-
sure, whose structure we now summarize as the backcloth of our ap-
proach.
Using again a hypothetical relational matrix X as a reference point,
Bonacich (1987, pp. 1172–75) recursively defines the status of i as
Si (a, b) p 冘(j
a ⫹ bSj) xij , (3)
where xij again denotes the respect j directs to i , Sj is the status of j, a is

a scaling constant, and b is a parameter allowing for the incorporation
of White’s (1992) notion of coupling in networks (cf. Bonacich 1987, p.
1174). The intuition underlying the measure hinges on b . When b equals
zero, i’s status is just the sum of the flows of respect directed to i from
the other actors in the network—i’s row sum in X adjusted by the scaling
constant a, in other words. As b rises, flows of respect carry greater force
when they emanate from higher-status actors. To the extent that b exceeds
zero, the status of j affects the status of i through j’s respect for i. Used
widely in empirical research, and increasingly in formal models (Hannan,
Pólos, and Carroll 2003; Ballester, Calvó-Armengol, and Zenou 2005;
Bothner et al. 2010), Bonacich’s (1987) measure thus has the particularly
appealing feature of permitting the researcher to operationalize status as
a state enjoyed by those who are highly regarded by highly regarded
others. That is, it folds into the computation of an actor’s status score an
added boost insofar as that actor receives respect (endorsements, recog-
nition, esteem, deference, liking, support, precedence, or honor) from those
who themselves receive respect (see also Abbott 1981). It is therefore
sensitive to the identity or source—not just the count or intensity—of the
endorsements an actor receives.
Using this feature of Bonacich’s (1987) approach in the context of mea-
950

suring fragility is straightforward. To do so, we shift attention from totals

(Bonacich’s row sums, collected from X) to dispersions (Herfindahl’s
summed squared proportions, taken from D), while allowing for coupling
in the network. More specifically, we express our measure of fragility as
冘(
follows, where Fi represents the fragility of actor i:
Fi (a, b) p a ⫹ bFj) dij . (4)
j
The core elements in equation (4) are dij and b. Recall that, in discussing
Herfindahl’s index, we set dij p [xij / 冘 jp1 xij ] 2 in equation (2), so that dij
n⫺1
was the squared proportion of j’s respect for i. Summarizing Bonacich’s

measure, we also stressed the salience of the b parameter, underscoring
its affinity with the notion of coupling. The parameter b in equation (4)
for fragility is the analog of b for status in (3), and a like a is a scaling
constant. Since Fj denotes the fragility of actor j, b determines the extent
to which the fragility of j shapes the fragility of i. A high value of b,
which corresponds to coupling in the social structure, is consistent with
connected actors’ identities and networks mattering discernibly. Accord-
ing to equation (4), an actor is fragile to the extent that a large proportion
of his or her respect comes from those who are themselves dependent.
To view coupling among fragility levels from another vantage point,
we rewrite equation (4) as an infinite sum, where dij is an entry in the
matrix D:
冘
⬁
F (a, b) p a b kD k⫹11. (5)

kp0
For equation (5) to converge, b ! l⫺1 must hold, where l equals the largest
normed eigenvalue of D.3 Given this constraint, we write the relationship
between b and l as follows, where c denotes a coupling coefficient:
b p cl⫺1. (6)
Thus, for c p 0, full decoupling is taken to characterize the relevant
network, and fragility therefore correlates perfectly with the Herfindahl
index. Under c p 0, in other words, fragility reduces to concentration.
Conversely, as c r 1, each actor’s fragility score Fi is increasingly affected
by the fragility score Fj of those on whom i depends.
The substantive interpretation of c will of course vary across different
kinds of networks. When analyzing a network through which intangible
resources circulate, such as the Nortons street gang, a researcher would
likely select a high value of c when the members of the network attach
significance to instances in which individuals are “propped up” by others
3
The solution (readily computed with standard packages) to eq. (5) in matrix form is
F (a, b) p a (I ⫺ bD)⫺1 D1, where I is an identity matrix (cf. Bonacich 1987, eq. [4]).
951

who are in turn weakly positioned. Stated more generally, c k 0 accom-

modates settings where actors’ identities seep out and affect one another.
A promotion tournament—for instance, one comprising junior executives
racing one another for a senior position—also fits this image. There, gossip
likely mars contestants whose strongest endorsements issue from the most
weakly positioned vice chairmen. Consequently, just as the parameter
b for status “can be thought of as a radius” inside of which the analyst
chooses to evaluate the status formation process (Bonacich 1987, p. 1174),
the coupling coefficient c from equation (6) could correspond to the weight
applied to contiguous actors’ identities when quantifying fragility.
Conversely, in a network through which tangible resources flow, such
as the network of loans and business opportunities tying together the
Florentine families trenchantly analyzed by Padgett and Ansell (1993),
one would choose a large value of c when measuring fragility insofar as
economic shocks reverberate over long distances through the chains of
the network. Under such conditions, assuming that the goal for families
is economic and political survival, it would be especially risky for a given
family to depend appreciably on a small set of counterparts whose own
alliances are sparse. Therefore, for networks of tangible flows, the coupling
coefficient c from (6) could correspond to the weight given to adjacent
actors’ economic networks.
With these descriptions in place, we can now express robustness as the
complement of fragility. That is, the occupant of a robust position is one
who is not dependent on dependents but is anchored solidly in multiple
nodes that are in turn durable constituents of the network. We define
robustness by linearly transforming (5) as follows:4
R (a, b) p 1 ⫺ a 冘 ⬁
kp0
b kD k⫹11. (7)
4
Although it may be more accurate to refer to our measure as “structural robustness”
or “relational robustness” to distinguish it from the separate ideational component of
robustness (see Moody and White’s [2003, esp. p. 104] discussion), we have opted for
the simplest label. In addition, we choose the scaling constant a so that the sum of
squared fragility scores equals the number of actors in the matrix (cf. Bonacich 1987,
p. 1173). We could also of course substitute in place of 1, as the minuend, a column
vector of constants equal to the largest fragility score plus the smallest fragility score,
in order to linearly convert fragility scores into robustness scores. Using the maximum
plus the minimum has the benefit of making the robustness distribution a mirror image
of the fragility distribution, with the same endpoints and variance.
952

POSITIONS AND DYNAMICS IN NEWCOMB’S FRATERNITY

We turn to data from Newcomb’s (1961) panel study of a college fraternity
to pursue two main objectives: our first aim is to depict simply and visually
the distinctive features of our measure of fragility introduced in equation
(4); our second aim is to empirically test our theoretical proposition that
fragility is status eroding. Newcomb’s study tracked 17 male college stu-
dents who were recruited to live expense free for a semester in a fraternity-
style house. Each week the students were required to rank one another
from 1 to 16 according to likability or “favorableness of feeling,” yielding
a total of 15 weekly matrices available for analysis (Borgatti, Everett, and
Freeman 1999). Newcomb and his colleagues used their data to draw
inferences about friendship formation in small groups. The data, which
can be represented as a series of interpersonal networks, have since been
used in several studies (White, Boorman, and Breiger 1976; Doreian et
al. 1996; Gould 2002; Moody, McFarland, and Bender-deMoll 2005) and
are useful for the present study for at least four reasons.
First, as a small-scale social structure, Newcomb’s fraternity serves as
a particularly transparent site for bringing relief to differences between
fragile and robust social positions in cross-section (consistent with our
first aim). Second, it allows us to compute time-varying levels of fragility
and status (keeping with our second aim). The regularly collected “fa-
vorableness of feeling” appraisals convert easily into asymmetric matrices
suitable for the construction of time-changing status and fragility scores.
With them, we can assess the impact of fragility on future adjustments
in status, net of the current level of status, allowing us to assess our
expectation that fragility induces status decline. Third, Newcomb’s data
allow us to disentangle the effects of fragility on status growth and decline
from those of individuals’ time-constant characteristics. Fourth, partici-
pants in the experiment did not know one another before its inception
because they were transfer students. This feature of the research design
permits us to focus exclusively on dynamics that occur within, rather than
starting before, the semester-long window. Before turning to dynamic
models, we begin by visualizing differences in the social positions of fra-
ternity members in the first week of the study.
Cross-Sectional Differences in Social Positions

Our starting point is an examination of the first of 15 17#17 weekly
relational matrices X t that summarize the social structure of the fraternity.
Cell xijt of X t equals 16 if, in week t, individual j gave i a ranking of 1
in terms of likebility, and it equals 1 if j gave i a ranking of 16. Reverse
coding thus transforms the initial rankings into positive flows from the
953

columns to the rows of X t. For example, according to the first weekly

relational matrix X 1 depicted in table 1, individual 2 gave individual 3
the least favorable possible ranking, while individual 4 dispensed to in-
dividual 2 the most favorable ranking attainable. To each of the 15 weekly
matrices, we applied Bonacich’s (1987) status measure, setting b equal to
three-fourths of the inverse of the largest normed eigenvalue of X t (Po-
dolny 2005). Using this approach, a high-status individual is the target
of favorable sentiments from others who are themselves favorably ap-
praised. We also used F (a, b) from equation (5) to compute individuals’
time-varying fragility scores. Because peer monitoring in close living quar-
ters likely made fraternity members intensely aware of the nature of one
another’s social ties, we chose to assign to the coupling coefficient c its
maximum possible value of .99.5
Using the relational matrix X 1 in table 1, the plot of status against
fragility in figure 2 offers a portrayal of individuals’ social positions in
week 1 of the study. The most apparent feature of figure 2 is, of course,
that more fragilely positioned individuals filled subordinate status posi-
tions in the network. In figure 2, individual 17 inhabits an especially high-
status and robust position, unlike individual 8, who is low in status and
highly fragile.6 More interesting is the fact that some fraternity members,
such as 13 and 16, are near status equivalents but differ considerably in
the fragility of their positions. That is, individuals 13 and 16 offer an
example of how actors may enjoy equivalent amounts of recognition from
esteemed others, while one depends disproportionately on just a few spon-
sors (as did Long John; see fig. 1), while another stands on a much wider
5
However, in panel models that supplement those we subsequently discuss, we also
explored results using five distinct levels of c —in particular, c 苸 {0, .25, .5, .75, .99}. We
took this approach to evaluate our assertion that coupling is a central component of
fragility, while also assessing our anticipation of a negative effect of fraternity members’
fragility levels.
6
Although our panel models predict the growth (rather than level) of future status as
a function of current fragility net of current status, we also simulated versions of
Newcomb’s week 1 matrix to ensure that far weaker cross-sectional correlations be-
tween status and fragility are plausible. Using these alternative matrices (again with
17 nodes, each ranking one another from 1 to 16 followed by reverse coding), we not
only observed correlations that were virtually at zero, but we also viewed individuals
who were much more sharply positioned on the off diagonal than 13 and 16 in fig. 2
(and who offer leads for future research on fragility and status). More specifically, our
simulations (not reported but available on request) brought relief to “drones” (i.e.,
individuals receiving lukewarm support from many, while lighting up no one) as in-
habitants of low-status, low-fragility roles, while also highlighting “polarizers” as oc-
cupants of high-status, high-fragility roles. We believe that a promising line of future
research would involve investigating contextual conditions that give rise to particularly
low correlations between fragility and status. One such context may be deeply contested
settings where factions emerge and where polarizers deploy drones as their trusted
between-group emissaries.
954

TABLE 1
A Relational Matrix X1 Recording Likability Levels in Week 1
of Newcomb’s Study
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17)
(1) 0 9 4 4 3 10 2 8 11 15 5 2 16 3 1 9 8
(2) 10 0 7 16 7 4 13 9 1 1 10 6 2 12 8 6 2
(3) 5 1 0 2 6 6 6 1 9 8 13 15 1 9 13 2 7
(4) 6 16 10 0 10 14 14 10 3 3 9 11 10 11 9 14 15
(5) 7 6 9 3 0 2 1 7 4 6 11 12 13 4 16 4 13
(6) 13 5 6 13 1 0 9 16 6 13 3 3 15 8 4 1 6
(7) 4 15 8 14 5 7 0 3 13 14 8 10 5 15 6 3 12
(8) 3 3 2 1 13 15 11 0 2 7 1 4 3 1 5 5 5
(9) 2 7 11 5 12 13 8 6 0 10 14 7 4 16 11 16 14
(10) 1 4 12 10 11 1 7 14 10 0 4 13 9 14 15 8 10
(11) 14 2 15 11 15 3 12 15 16 2 0 14 11 5 14 15 9
(12) 8 11 16 8 14 12 15 12 15 9 15 0 6 10 12 11 16
(13) 16 10 1 9 4 16 3 13 8 5 7 1 0 2 7 7 11
(14) 12 8 5 6 2 5 5 2 12 4 2 9 7 0 2 10 1
(15) 9 12 13 7 9 8 4 5 5 16 6 8 14 13 0 12 3
(16) 11 14 3 12 8 9 10 4 7 11 12 5 8 6 3 0 4
(17) 15 13 14 15 16 11 16 11 14 12 16 16 12 7 10 13 0
base of support (as did Nutsy—Long John’s close counterpart in fig. 1).
More generally, differences in fragility among status equals is not unlike
a case of two towers of equal height that nevertheless stand on markedly
dissimilar foundations. We further explore differences in social founda-
tions in figures 3 and 4—where we depict the positions of individuals 13
and 16, respectively—to highlight distinctive features of our approach.7
The raw data in X 1 offer a valuable initial vantage point. An inspection

of rows 13 and 16 of table 1 gets quickly to the main analytical difference
between status and fragility. Very simply, the measurement of status begins
with computing row sums, whereas the measurement of fragility starts
with calculating dispersions. It is for this reason that status and fragility
are analytically distinct summary statistics conveying unique information
about actors’ social positions. Corresponding to the comparable heights
of individuals 13 and 16 on the vertical axis in figure 2, 13’s row sum
equals 120 and 16’s row sum is nearly identical—equaling 127. In contrast,
we see a discernible difference in the extent to which 13 and 16 face
concentrated social support: individual 13’s incoming flows are noticeably
7
An alternative, although broadly related, theoretical approach is brought forward in
Mizruchi et al.’s (1986) disaggregation of status scores into derived (generated by alters)
and reflected (generated by ego) components. Although their concept of derived status
bears some resemblance to our concept of fragility, our approach differs from theirs
in that we construct a separate measure rather than present a decomposition of status.
955

Fig. 2.—Status versus fragility in week 1 of Newcomb’s study. Status and fragility scores
were computed from the relational matrix X1 shown in table 1, the first of 15 weekly matrices
Xt used to compute network measures in our panel models. Numbers of individuals’ rows
in Newcomb’s matrices label each observation. Lines correspond to the status and fragility
scores of individuals 13 and 16.
lumpy—given 13’s relatively high dependence on individuals 1 and 6—

whereas flows directed at individual 16 are more “even.”
The greater fragility of individual 13’s position relative to that of in-
dividual 16 is also apparent in a comparison of pictures of ego networks
we present in figures 3 and 4. Summarized very briefly, figures 3 and 4
jointly convey that individual 13 is heavily dependent on particularly
fragile alters—specifically, individuals 8, 1, and 6—while individual 16
faces comparatively distributed social support and is far less dependent
on the most fragilely positioned alters in the network. We chose line widths
to reflect relative levels of dependence and selected smaller (larger) circles
for the fragilely (robustly) situated alters in the focal individual’s ego
network.
956

Fig. 3.—Ego network of individual 13 in week 1 of Newcomb’s study. Individual 13’s

contacts are arrayed clockwise in increasing order of 13’s relative dependence on them.
Levels of relative dependence on each alter are proportional to line thickness. Radii of circles
surrounding alters decrease (increase) with alters’ levels of fragility (robustness) depicted
along the horizontal axis of figure 2.
Summarized in greater detail, figures 3 and 4 result from applying the

two-step transformation introduced in equation (2) to the relational matrix
X 1 in table 1. That is, we made X 1 row stochastic and then squared the
resulting proportions, thereby converting X 1 to D1. We collected fragility
scores by applying F (a, b) from equation (5) to D1 for all members of the
fraternity in week 1—precisely the scores arrayed along the horizontal
axis in figure 2. Placing individual 13 at the center of figure 3, we then
arranged all other fraternity members clockwise along its outer edge—in
increasing order of 13’s level of dependence on each alter. More specifi-
cally, we extracted and sorted individual 13’s row in D1, arrayed 13’s
alters accordingly, and made the thickness of the connecting lines pro-
portional to entries in row 13 in D1. We then embedded individual 13’s
alters in circles whose radii are a decreasing function of fragility.8 Con-
8
Code for generating figs. 3 and 4 is available on request. We made line thickness a
957

Fig. 4.—Ego network of individual 16 in week 1 of Newcomb’s study. Individual 16’s

contacts are arrayed clockwise in increasing order of 16’s relative dependence on them.
Levels of relative dependence on each alter are proportional to line thickness. Radii of circles
surrounding alters decrease (increase) with alters’ levels of fragility (robustness) depicted
along the horizontal axis of figure 2.
sistent with figure 2, individual 17 resides in the largest circle, while

individual 8’s circle is the smallest. We took exactly the same steps when
constructing figure 4. Viewed together, figures 3 and 4 are important
because they highlight salient structural differences in the positions of
individuals occupying nearly the same level of status computed by Bon-
acich’s (1987) method. In addition, figures 3 and 4 reflect our conception
of fragility as a function of dependency (captured by line thickness) on
dependents (summarized by alters’ circle sizes).
Status Growth and Decline

Consistent with the observations of Whyte (1993), Weber (1978), and
Abbott (2001), we expect an individual to face status decline as that
linear function of entries in D1 and for added emphasis nonlinearly transformed alters’
fragility levels when selecting the radii of their surrounding circles.
958

individual’s social position becomes increasingly fragile. In particular, the

mechanism we envision is one in which fraternity members develop neg-
ative impressions about—and thus rank less favorably—those whose so-
cial footings are narrow and slippery. Although the precise mechanisms
linking fragility to outcomes will of course vary across empirical sites, we
believe the one just proposed is accurate for a network of young college
students who are groping for a place in their world and likely to esteem
those who have secured durable standing.
We began our investigation of status dynamics by taking a sequence-
analytic approach (Abbott 1995; Abbott and Tsay 2000), which allows us
to examine typical paths through the status distribution. We proceeded
by collecting the time series of status scores, across weeks 1–15, for all
17 individuals in the study and created a 17#17 matrix of pairwise dis-
tances in these time series. In this matrix, cell (i, j) was large to the extent
that i’s 15-week movement through the status distribution differed sub-
stantially from j’s. We then grouped individual trajectories into clusters
using standard model-based clustering techniques (Banfield and Raftery
1993). Three clusters emerged with roughly equal numbers of individuals
allocated to each. By averaging the fragility and status scores of all in-
dividuals in a cluster, we were able to generate a characteristic trajectory
for each cluster through the status and fragility state spaces over time.
Figure 5 highlights these movements. The left-hand plot illustrates how
a typical individual’s level of fragility might vary across time for each
cluster. The right-hand plot, by contrast, shows week-to-week movements
in status. Clusters are represented in each plot by a marker: filled squares
(individuals 4, 5, 9, 14, 17), open squares (3, 10, 15, 16), and circles (1, 2,
6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13). Viewed together, the plots indicate an association
between fragility and status decline. For example, the cluster showing the
lowest fragility ( filled squares) maintains the highest average level of
status across the 15-week semester. Conversely, the cluster marked by the
highest fragility in the left-hand plot (open squares) also drops most pre-
cipitously in status in the right-hand plot.
We also estimated panel models predicting growth in status that take
the form
Si,t⫹1 ⫺ Sit p rSit ⫹ fFit ⫹ m i ⫹ tt⫹1 ⫹ ␧i,t⫹1, (8)
where Sit and Fit denote the status and fragility scores, i p 1, … , 17, and
t p 1, … , 14. With lagged status included on the right-hand side, equa-
tion (8) models dynamics of adjustment as a function of time-changing
levels of fragility.
We enter fixed effects represented by m i to absorb invariant, subject-
specific propensities to fill fragile positions. These sweep out fraternity
members’ levels of prior educational attainment, charisma, intrinsic lik-
959

Fig. 5.—Times series plots of average fragility scores (left) and status scores (right) for three groups of individuals in Newcomb’s fraternity. Groups

were identified from a sequence analysis of status trajectories: filled squares, individuals 4, 5, 9, 14, and 17; open squares, 3, 10, 15, and 16; and circles,
1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 13. Time is measured in weeks of the study. These series suggest that increases (decreases) in fragility over time were associated
with declines (growth) in status.
ability, social skill (Leifer 1988), and all other stable traits that plausibly
channel sorting into fragile social positions (cf. Gould 2002, pp. 1143–44).
Using a fixed-effects specification thus eliminates all between-person var-
iation, so that the coefficients reflect within-person effects of fragility on
growth in status. Additionally, as denoted by the indicators tt⫹1 , we adjust
for all types of overall temporal heterogeneity, such as aggregate levels
of reciprocity and transitivity, the eigenvalue from which fragility is com-
puted, and all other global properties of the network (Doreian et al. 1996;
Moody et al. 2005). Since tt⫹1 enter jointly with m i, the effect of age is
also fully accounted for. Correlations and descriptive statistics for vari-
ables in our analyses are included in table 2.9
Table 3 presents six models predicting future status growth in New-
comb’s fraternity. We present one-tailed tests for all continuous covariates,
given the clarity of our expectations about the directions of the effects.
We also present standardized regression coefficients because of their use-
fulness in conveying effect magnitudes in models containing network-
related covariates. Model 1 contains only lagged status and fixed effects
for individuals and periods as a baseline. Inspection of the individual
fixed effects (not reported to conserve space) confirms that variation in
fraternity members’ average levels of status growth is clearly pronounced,
reinforcing the merits of the within-person estimator. Consistent with our
expectations about the importance of coupling, we find in model 2 that
the effect of fragility (as Herfindahl’s measure, where complete decoupling
is assumed) is not discernibly different from zero.
In model 3, we enter FitFcp0 and FitFcp.99 jointly. Whereas FitFcp0 reduces
to the Herfindahl index, FitFcp.99 assumes coupling, with adjacent individ-
uals’ positions influencing the fragility of a given individual’s position in
social structure. In model 3, the coefficient on FitFcp0 stays insignificant,
whereas FitFcp.99 exerts a discernibly negative effect. Through regressing
status growth on FitFcp0 and FitFcp.99 jointly, the estimate on FitFcp.99 reflects
the variation that is orthogonal to FitFcp0. Thus, the persistence of the effect
of FitFcp.99, where coupling is taken into account, offers preliminary evi-
dence to suggest that, at least in the present empirical setting, network
spillovers may matter more than immediate dependencies. When esti-
mating other models (available upon request), with c equal to .25, .5, and
.75, we also found that fragility is significant only at the highest possible
level of coupling, c p .99. This set of outcomes is important because it
suggests that taking coupling into account is a necessary part of under-
standing the link between positional fragility and dynamics of prestige.
Model 4 confirms that the negative effect of fragility measured with cou-
9
We report within-person correlations because our estimator focuses only on within-
person variance.
961

TABLE 2
Correlations and Descriptive Statistics for Variables in the Analysis of
Newcomb’s Fraternity
(1) (2) (3) (4)

(1) Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
(2) Fragility (c p 0) . . . . . ⫺.6131 1
(3) Fragility (c p .99) . . . ⫺.5671 .9558 1
(4) Sycophant . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.9013 .5389 .4618 1
Mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9511 .9813 .9706 0
SD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3095 .1929 .2411 12.4961
Min . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1794 .7822 .7380 ⫺27.2813
Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4963 1.9028 2.1450 34.1563
Note.—Data are within-person correlations.
pling stays significant when its counterpart is excluded from the set of
covariates.
In models 5 and 6, we take two additional steps to assess further our
main finding that fragility negatively affects status growth, before turning
to an application of our fragility measure in a network of economic flows
unrelated to status. First, we guard against the possibility that behavioral
correlates of fragility drive the effect we observe. It is easy to imagine
that (at least some) occupants of fragile roles tend to act sycophantically,
whereas occupants of robust positions are more prone to feather displays
and, in general, carry themselves with considerable aplomb—much to
their advantage, especially in a fraternity-style setting. We have argued,
building on prior sociological theory, that fragility undermines legitimacy
and is therefore status eroding, whereas robustness solidifies legitimacy
and is consequently status enhancing. We nonetheless address the coun-
terpossibility that locations on an axis marked by fragility and robustness
are in fact undetectable by others in a network, making them by definition
inconsequential, in a direct sense, for processes of growth and decline in
status. If this alternative view is descriptive, then an easily tracked be-
havioral correlate of fragility, such as sycophantic conduct (cf. Burt 1976,
pp. 104–9) may well fuel the effect we observe. Although the fixed effects
m i absorb time-constant intrinsic propensities to behave subserviently,
conduct of this type may have a time-changing component as well.
We constructed a weighted asymmetry measure to proxy individuals’
shifting propensities to act obsequiously by working from the premise that
a focal actor is sycophantic to the degree that he sends out more positive
affect in a given exchange than he receives. Our measure thus captures
imbalances in the flows that mark a chosen actor’s set of implicit trades,
so that the individual meting out lots of favorable rankings to those who
send back unfavorable rankings gets a large value. Using our reverse-
962

TABLE 3
Standardized Regression Coefficients for Fixed-Effects Models of Status
Growth in Newcomb’s Fraternity
1 2 3 4 5 6
Status . . . . . . . . . ⫺1.7583 ⫺1.8841 ⫺1.8630 ⫺1.9317 ⫺2.6064 ⫺2.7008
(.1406)** (.1798)** (.1790)** (.1722)** (.3641)** (.3941)**
Fragility
(c p 0) . . . . . ⫺.1286 .4359
(.1147) (.3186)
Fragility
(c p .99) . . . ⫺.5417 ⫺.1770 ⫺.2167 ⫺.3190
(.2855)* (.1023)* (.1033)* (.1312)**
Sycophant . . . . ⫺.6984 ⫺.6112
(.3329)* (.3518)*
N ............. 238 238 238 238 238 224
R2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4321 .4355 .4453 .4402 .4520 .4018
Note.—Standard errors are in parentheses. Individual and time fixed effects are included
in each model. R2 values reflect within-person variations.
* Significant at 5%.
** Significant at 1% (one-tailed tests).
coded weekly relational matrices X t, a fraternity member’s time-varying

propensity for sycophantic behavior is measured as follows:
Ait p 冘16
jp1
(xijt ⫺ xjit)2
2
# jijt , (9)
where the indicator jijt equals 1 if j gave i a less favorable ranking than
i gave j, ⫺1 otherwise. We expect Ait to diminish future growth in status.
Correspondingly, when we enter Ait in model 5, we observe a strong
negative effect and also find that fragility remains discernibly negative.
Having accounted for fraternity members’ time-varying levels of asym-
metric exchange, we can conclude with greater confidence that fragilely
situated individuals face status-related penalties because of the unique
features of the positions they occupy.
Second, we evaluate our primary result further by ensuring that the
pattern of results does not hinge on any particular subject’s series. We
do so both because of the relatively small size of Newcomb’s panel and
due to the fact that one member of the fraternity persistently garnered
poor ratings. White et al. (1976, p. 759) drew attention to “a scapegoat
. . . (man 10), who received one of the bottom three choices of each of
the other 16 persons.” Correspondingly, the intercept for the tenth indi-
vidual is strongly and conspicuously negative across models 1–5 in table
3. We therefore estimated a version of model 5 omitting the tenth indi-
963

vidual.10 Results of this approach appear in model 6. Our effect of interest

stays strongly negative (⫺2.43 t-test for fragility), leading us to conclude
that the scapegoat does not disproportionately configure the effects we
observe. To assess the findings more generally, we also estimated 16 other
versions of model 5 in which we omitted each of the other subjects of the
study in turn. Without exception, across these 16 alternative specifications,
we found evidence of a negative effect of fragility, whose impact was
always significant at the .05 level of confidence.11
FRAGILITY AND ROBUSTNESS OF INDUSTRIES IN THE U.S.

ECONOMY
We have thus far primarily discussed the fragility and robustness of po-
sitions in networks of intangible flows, such as flows of esteem, recognition,
and respect among individuals. Although we have framed our measure-
ment strategy as one that is valuable mainly for the analysis of purely
social systems, particularly status-based systems, we believe it to be rea-
sonably context invariant (cf. White 1992, pp. 207–9) in the sense that it
also applies (in connection with different substantive mechanisms) to sys-
tems of tangible flows, such as biological, electronic, and economic net-
works. For example, in a predator-prey network, a fragile population of
animals is one that preys on a vulnerable input (see Clark [1987], for the
classic case of black-footed ferrets’ near extinction because of their de-
pendence on at-risk prairie dogs), whereas a robust population’s food web
is diversified at several layers. Or, a fragilely situated Web site sits at the
end of a chain, getting the majority of its traffic from a site that itself
depends on one or just a few other sites for traffic. Similarly, organizations
and industries are fragile or robust as a function of their transaction
patterns (cf. Hirschman [1962], pp. 98–119, on satellite vs. master indus-
tries and on linkage effects). A robustly situated industry is one whose
incumbents sell to (or buy from) a range of industries that have a diver-
sified mix of transaction partners.
We turn to standard input-output data for industries defined by the
10
We also estimated a version of our final model with status scores computed with
b p 0, rather than the standard three-fourths multiplier, to ensure that our results did
not hinge on a particular choice of b. Although this is in our view a theoretically less
attractive way to proceed (here, status is measured just as counts of reverse-coded
rankings rather than weighting by evaluators’ status), the effect of fragility measured
at c p .99 was still discernible with a coefficient of ⫺.209 and a ⫺2.03 t-test.
11
These supplementary models are available upon request. Significance tests for fra-
gility all exceed in absolute value the critical value of 1.645 for a one-tailed test, ranging
from ⫺1.71 when the eighth individual is deleted to ⫺2.43 when the tenth individual
is omitted, as discussed above.
964

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to illustrate the

applicability of our approach in a network of economic flows. Like its
predecessor, the U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system, the
NAICS classifies establishments by the kind of economic activity in which
they engage, but unlike the SIC, the NAICS offers more accurate cate-
gorizations of emerging and service industries (Yuskavage 2007). Trans-
actions among 67 industrial categories tracked in the input-output ac-
counts of the BEA allowed us to compute annual levels of fragility for
industries from 2000 through 2005 and to assess their effects on industries’
total value added, where total value added is defined as total industry
output minus total industry input (Smith et al. 2005). These industry
categories, together with their average levels of total input, total output,
and total value added, are shown in table 4. The industry ID refers to a
row number in the BEA’s annual Use of Commodities by Industries
matrices (Moyer et al. 2004).
To explore the association of total value added with measures of fragility
in input-output networks, we began by assembling six yearly 67-by-67
matrices I t, where I t p [Iijt ] and Iii p 0 for all i.12 Cell Iijt records for year
t the sales of industry i to industry j—or, stated differently, j’s input from
i. We then used F (a, b) from equation (5) to calculate industries’ time-
changing fragility scores.
We did so in two ways in order to exploit the opportunity our data
provide to detect fragility levels in terms of both selling and buying. First,
we used the matrices I t to calculate sell fragility, FSELL,it . When FSELL,it for
a chosen industry is high, it is revenue dependent on other industries that
are dependent in their selling patterns. To compute FSELL,it, we proceeded
as before, normalizing each entry in I t by its row sum and then squaring
each proportion in the resulting row-stochastic matrix. That is, consistent
with equation (2), we let Vijt p [Iijt / 冘 jp1 Iijt ] 2, where Vt p [Vijt ], and then
66
applied equation (5) to Vt to calculate FSELL,it. Second, to compute buy

fragility, FBUY,it, we worked with the transpose of I t. We again used the
same two-step conversion process—make the matrix row stochastic and
then square proportions—on I tT and applied our measure F (a, b) to the
twice-transformed matrix. If FBUY,it for a given industry is high, that in-
dustry is dependent, in the procurement of its goods or services, on other
industries that are dependent in their buying patterns.
To convey a sense of the chainlike underpinnings of fragile positions
in the input-output network, in figures 6 and 7 we depict patterns for
12
We address the possible effects of large diagonals (the amount of intracategory sales,
as when automakers sell to automakers) with a separate adjustment. Whereas our
measure of fragility deals with dependency on other nodes in the network, the ad-
justment we introduce captures dependency on oneself at an aggregate level.
965

TABLE 4
Industry Value Added
Industry Industry Value

Industry ID Input Output Added
Farms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 140,653.30 226,356.90 85,703.56
Forestry, fishing, and related activities . . . . . . . . 2 26,545.78 52,722.33 26,176.55
Oil and gas extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 65,476.18 163,180.70 97,704.47
Mining, except oil and gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 24,639.00 52,866.15 28,227.15
Support activities for mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 27,785.12 50,811.48 23,026.37
Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 133,361.30 335,695.80 202,334.40
Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 543,079.20 1,085,010.00 541,930.80
Food and beverage and tobacco products . . . . . 8 441,142.70 609,195.10 168,052.40
Textile mills and textile product mills . . . . . . . . . 9 50,982.08 74,036.68 23,054.60
Apparel and leather and allied products . . . . . . 10 26,584.37 45,694.48 19,110.12
Wood products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 60,706.13 93,724.62 33,018.50
Paper products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 101,460.00 152,891.80 51,431.83
Printing and related support activities . . . . . . . . 13 48,617.33 94,093.69 45,476.37
Petroleum and coal products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 227,630.40 268,945.50 41,315.13
Chemical products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 293,146.30 464,042.70 170,896.30
Plastics and rubber products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 110,445.40 175,049.10 64,603.68
Nonmetallic mineral products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 51,249.98 98,002.30 46,752.32
Primary metals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 108,063.60 155,912.00 47,848.32
Fabricated metal products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 137,038.30 251,089.20 114,050.90
Machinery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 158,110.90 257,307.40 99,196.48
Computer and electronic products . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 253,429.70 384,404.20 130,974.50
Electrical equipment, appliances, and compo-
nents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 58,029.42 105,076.70 47,047.34
Motor vehicles, bodies and trailers, and
parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 356,501.60 466,462.00 109,960.40
Other transportation equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 102,267.90 168,526.90 66,259.02
Furniture and related products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 42,478.95 74,952.20 32,473.23
Miscellaneous manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 68,293.34 128,761.80 60,468.45
Wholesale trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 253,107.90 912,496.80 659,388.90
Retail trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 326,095.50 1,030,896.00 704,800.90
Air transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 69,189.37 117,946.70 48,757.37
Rail transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 17,717.27 43,247.35 25,530.08
Water transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 23,009.57 30,959.83 7,950.28
Truck transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 117,959.80 218,202.50 100,242.70
Transit and ground passenger transporta-
tion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 10,787.68 26,521.35 15,733.67
Pipeline transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 20,509.60 32,113.18 11,603.58
Other transportation and support activities . . . 35 30,587.42 107,669.30 77,081.88
Warehousing and storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 10,725.12 40,223.25 29,498.13
Publishing industries (includes software) . . . . . . 37 117,607.90 234,023.60 116,415.70
Motion picture and sound recording indus-
tries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 45,352.96 82,347.10 36,994.13
Broadcasting and telecommunications . . . . . . . . . 39 315,438.50 588,061.90 272,623.30
Information and data processing services . . . . . 40 53,465.05 101,594.70 48,129.63
Federal Reserve banks, credit intermediation,
and related activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 187,492.00 580,050.10 392,557.90

TABLE 4 (Continued)
Industry Industry Value

Industry ID Input Output Added
Securities, commodity contracts, and invest-
ments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 123,229.80 281,169.80 157,940.00
Insurance carriers and related activities . . . . . . . 43 235,777.30 490,853.30 255,075.90
Funds, trusts, and other financial vehicles . . . . 44 63,316.13 81,845.45 18,529.28
Real estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 416,120.80 1,679,320.00 1,263,199.00
Rental and leasing services and lessors of in-
tangible assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 119,552.40 257,450.60 137,898.20
Legal services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 58,146.05 213,350.30 155,204.30
Miscellaneous professional, scientific, and
technical services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 334,861.70 790,237.80 455,376.10
Computer systems design and related
services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 70,193.47 240,492.40 170,298.90
Management of companies and enterprises . . . 50 118,088.00 309,771.70 191,683.70
Administrative and support services . . . . . . . . . . . 51 172,480.50 457,265.90 284,785.30
Waste management and remediation
services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 27,604.10 55,652.32 28,048.23
Educational services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 60,413.46 150,490.00 90,076.53
Ambulatory health care services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 174,752.50 545,440.70 370,688.20
Hospitals and nursing and residential care fa-
cilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 226,020.40 511,579.50 285,559.10
Social assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 41,515.53 105,436.40 63,920.84
Performing arts, spectator sports, museums,
and related activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 27,695.32 72,705.16 45,009.85
Amusements, gambling, and recreation indus-
tries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 37,699.79 101,712.40 64,012.57
Accommodation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 36,536.68 100,576.60 64,039.87
Food services and drinking places . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 237,611.20 462,741.80 225,130.60
Other services, except government . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 274,611.50 600,479.10 325,867.50
Federal government enterprises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 22,250.10 85,822.66 63,572.57
State and local government enterprises . . . . . . . . 64 101,491.50 175,110.70 73,619.20
Note.—In millions of dollars, averaged over 2000–2005. Omitted categories include federal
general government (63), state and local general government (65), noncomparable imports (66),
and scrap, used, and secondhand goods (67).
two industries that, on average, have high fragility scores. In figure 6, we

map out selling patterns contributing to a high sell fragility score for
chemical products, and in figure 7 we trace buying patterns leading to a
high buy fragility score for truck transportation.
To identify the sell chain for chemical products in figure 6, we con-
structed the matrix I as the average of six annual matrices I t 2000–2005
and then computed sell fragility scores for industries, with the coupling
parameter c equal to .99.13 Chemical products neared the top of the dis-
13
Two of the 67 categories—federal general government and state and local general
government—necessarily have undefined sell fragility scores because their row sums
967

Fig. 6.—Chain of sales-based ties leading to a high sell fragility score for chemical prod-
ucts. Chemical products sells primarily to plastics and rubber products, which sells mainly
to construction, which in turn sells mainly to real estate. Number of industries’ rows in the
Bureau of Economic Analysis’s use matrices label each node in the chain.
tribution, with just 10 industries ahead of it—for example, farms as well

as support activities for mining both had higher scores. Chemical products
was therefore ranked considerably ahead of robustly positioned sectors—
for instance, computer and electronic products and food services and
drinking places—that offer inputs to a wide array of other industries.
Then, with chemical products as our point of departure and using entries
in the row-stochastic version of I, we moved from first- to third-order
connections in the network, at each remove identifying the adjacent in-
dustry on which the focal industry was most relatively dependent for its
sales. As shown by the pattern of sell dependencies in figure 6, chemical
products sells primarily to plastics and rubber products, which sells mainly
to construction, which in turn sells mainly to real estate.
Turning to the buy chain for truck transportation in figure 7, we fol-
lowed the same steps just outlined, except that we worked from the trans-
pose of I. Using I T to calculate buy fragility scores for industries, we found
that truck transportation ranked near the top of the distribution, close to
other input-dependent industries, such as food services and drinking
places, the lion’s share of whose inputs come from food and beverage
and tobacco products.14 Using a column-stochastic version of I , we then
tracked the buy dependencies evident in the chain in figure 7. Truck
in It are zero. These sectors are, of course, important buyers in the columns of It,
however, and so are included in the computation of fragility scores. After making the
original matrix It row stochastic and squaring each entry, the undefined entries in their
rows of the resulting matrix were reset to zero. We exclude both governmental cate-
gories from our panel models because we are interested primarily in within effects of
fragility. When between or overall effects of fragility are of interest, we suggest as-
signing a fragility score of zero to actors with zero row sums in the relational matrix
and capturing the consequence of their isolate position with a separate dummy variable.
14
Two additional categories of the original 67—noncomparable imports as well as
scrap, used, and secondhand goods—did not receive inputs from any of the other
categories and therefore had row sums equal to zero in ITt . We also exclude them from
our panel models, given that they allow no within-category variation. We include them,
however, in the columns of ITt when calculating fragility scores because of the inputs
they provide.
968

Fig. 7.—Chain of procurement-based ties leading to a high buy fragility score for truck
transportation. Truck transportation buys mainly from petroleum and coal products, which
buys disproportionately from oil and gas extraction, which then relies mainly on rental and
leasing services and lessors of intangible assets. Number of industries’ rows in the Bureau
of Economic Analysis’s use matrices label each node in the chain.
transportation buys mainly from petroleum and coal products, which buys
disproportionately from oil and gas extraction, which then relies princi-
pally on rental and leasing services and lessors of intangible assets.
To investigate associations between industries’ time-varying levels of
fragility and total value added, we turn to panel models of the form
ln (TVAi,t⫹1) p r ln (TIIi,t⫹1) ⫹ Fit b ⫹ C it v ⫹ X itg ⫹ m i ⫹ tt⫹1 ⫹ ␧i,t⫹1, (10)
where TVAi,t⫹1 denotes the total value added by industry i in year t ⫹ 1

and equals gross industry output in the focal year minus total industry
input in that year, which we represent by TIIi,t⫹1 . We focus on TVAi,t⫹1 as
an outcome because it is a transparent measure of industry performance,
capturing the extent of a given industry’s contributions to overall U.S.
economic growth (Smith et al. 2005, p. 10). We enter TIIi,t⫹1 as an ad-
justment for industry size, given the possibility of scale-based efficiencies.
We enter logs of both measures because of the skewness of their original
distributions.
The matrix Fit whose coefficients are in b contains four versions of our
fragility measure from equation (5). Two of the four covariates in Fit are
the fragility scores just discussed—FSELL,it and FBUY,it —each of which was
computed with the coupling parameter c set to its maximum value of .99.
The other two are versions of sell fragility and buy fragility, with c p
0, and are therefore perfectly correlated with Herfindahl indexes of
concentration in selling and buying relations, respectively. Thus, using
more precise notation, the full set of measures in Fit are FSELL,itFcp.99,
FBUY,itFcp.99, FSELL,itFcp0, and FBUY,itFcp0. Unlike our analysis of Newcomb’s
fraternity, where we had strong, theoretically informed expectations about
both the appropriate level of c in measuring fragility and the direction
of its effect on status, there is less guidance available in the existing
literature for anticipating effects of these fragility scores on industries’
annual levels of value creation.
969

Yet, it is possible informally to sketch reasons why we might observe

a negative effect of fragility on total value added, especially for FSELL,it
when coupling in chains of sales is accounted for. As an industry is in-
creasingly fragile with respect to its customer base—that is, as its customer
base grows more specialized—that industry will be more susceptible to
the vagaries of its buyers. Additionally, if we consider demand for an
industry’s outputs to be at least partly random, quantity demanded will
certainly at times fall beneath the threshold at which the focal industry’s
establishments can sell at a profit. As an industry grows more fragile, the
value it adds may shrink because its establishments are dying, laying off
workers, or making other costly adjustments. Just as important, it is also
not hard to imagine that a long chain of output-related dependencies
(from chemical products to real estate in fig. 6) is worse than a short chain
(from chemical products just to plastic and rubber products). In a chain
of considerable length, there are multiple sites, not just a single site, at
which problems (perhaps related to being held up by powerful suppliers
or other events) can surface. We believe that a measure sensitive to such
contingencies is better suited to characterizing fragility than is one that
ignores them. Consequently, we anticipate that FSELL,itFcp.99 will negatively
affect future total value added.
Moving to the matrix C it in equation (10), we also enter as adjustments
two realizations of Bonacich’s measure from equation (3). As with our
measurement of fragility in this empirical setting, we again consider in-
dustries’ positions in terms of both sales and procurement. Although for
Newcomb’s fraternity we drew on equation (3) to measure status, in the
context of inputs and outputs tying together industries, we view it as a
measure of centrality. Although there is much evidence pointing to the
positive effects of organizational status on economic performance (Podolny
2005), the industry categories on which we rely are defined at a sufficiently
high level of aggregation that we suspect any meaningful prestige-related
distinctions among establishments are primarily within, rather than be-
tween, categories.
Consequently, we used equation (3) to compute sell centrality, CSELL,it,
from I t and to compute buy centrality, CBUY,it, from I tT. Variable CSELL,it
is large for industries, such as broadcasting and telecommunications, that
send substantial outputs into several other sell-central industries. Cor-
respondingly, CBUY,it is large for industries, such as construction, that take
in substantial inputs from a host of other buy-central industries. Thus,
although we can view high sell centrality as being analogous to the ep-
icenter of a ripple effect, high buy centrality is not unlike a vortex suc-
tioning in other industries’ goods and services. We view CSELL,it and
CBUY,it as proxies for an industry’s importance in the economy—having
to do with the scale of transaction partners—and we therefore expect
970

them to affect total value added positively, adjusting for total industry
input.
Shifting to X it in equation (10), we include additional covariates that
address two particular features of input-output tables. First, we devised
the dummy variable negativeflowit in light of the small number of cases
in which negative flows of dollars appeared in an industry’s row or column
of the input-output matrices. For example, in 2000, the dollar value of
the input from insurance to farms was ⫺$181.7 million. This is because
the insurance industry weathered losses as the farming industry’s claims
exceeded benefits. Since we recoded negative entries to zeros in I t in order
to calculate fragility and centrality scores, we include the indicator
negativeflowit as a cautionary adjustment.
Second, because our measure of fragility concerns the nature of an
actor’s ties to others in a network, as noted previously we set the diagonal
equal to zero in the matrices I t . Zeros along the diagonal is the rule rather
than the exception in most analyses of social networks. Conversely, given
the broad level of aggregation at which industries are defined for input-
output tables, diagonals measuring intraindustry sales (as when computer
manufacturers sell components to one another) are frequently nonzero.
We therefore enter two further adjustments: intrarowit , the ratio of in-
dustry i’s diagonal to its row sum in I t, and intracolumn it, its diagonal
over its column sum in I t. We use these measures to capture a focal
industry’s time-varying levels of internal exchange.
Finally, as denoted by m i and tt⫹1, we enter fixed effects for industries
and for years, respectively. Using industry-specific fixed effects m i accounts
for a number of factors, including cross-industry heterogeneity in demand,
average distance from the end consumer, and other time-constant traits.
With year indicators tt⫹1, we adjust for various aggregate macroeconomic
fluctuations likely to influence industry performance. Correlations and
descriptive statistics for variables in our analyses are shown in table 5.
Table 6 presents results of five models predicting total value added. We
begin with very simple specifications and then proceed to models that
more stringently adjust for consequential sources of variation. Model 1
contains only total industry input and sell fragility measured with max-
imal coupling. We find, keeping with our expectations, that industries that
are less robustly positioned in their selling patterns add less value. Model
1 thus offers preliminary evidence in support of the supposition that
positional robustness in an economic network elevates performance. Turn-
ing to model 2, we observe a negative effect as well for our measure of
buy fragility.
In model 3, we move to a two-way fixed-effects specification that con-
servatively absorbs between-industry, as well as temporal, heterogeneity.
Given this approach, the available variation is within industry and un-
971

TABLE 5
Correlations and Descriptive Statistics for Variables in the Analysis of Industry Performance
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. ln (total value added) . . . . . . . .
2. ln (total industry input) . . . .6875
3. Sell fragility (c p .99) . . . . ⫺.2625 ⫺.115
4. Buy fragility (c p .99) . . . . .1774 .1063 .0466
5. Sell centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1644 .0961 ⫺.0028 ⫺.0661
6. Buy centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.0268 .1121 .1276 .0147 .389
7. Sell fragility (c p 0) . . . . . . .0512 .0806 ⫺.0891 ⫺.2732 .0148 ⫺.0268
8. Buy fragility (c p 0) . . . . . . .2092 .081 .0678 .729 ⫺.0174 .0061 ⫺.2988
972
9. Intrarow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.0349 .1066 .0948 .0776 .149 .4178 ⫺.1032 .0113
10. Intracolumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1003 .0085 ⫺.024 ⫺.0032 .4356 .0971 ⫺.1175 ⫺.0351 .5209
11. Negative flow . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.0768 ⫺.0107 .027 .047 ⫺.1613 ⫺.0482 .09 ⫺.0082 .0187 .0386 . . .
Mean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3431 11.3445 .31242 .77544 .66943 .66276 .68663 .7888 .1486 .16088 .04444
SD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11939 .12078 .07849 .12639 .04804 .05283 .04811 .09485 .01328 .011 .11838

Min . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.83203 9.08469 .0068 .26115 .00704 .04558 .13135 .33719 0 0 0
Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.199 13.3905 5.86601 4.23476 4.39572 3.29411 3.57717 4.52637 .70106 .82611 1
Note.—Data are within-industry correlations and standard deviations.

TABLE 6
Estimates for Panel Models of ln (Total Value Added) for Industries
1 2 3 4 5
ln (total industry input) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .903 (.035)** .888 (.033)** .381 (.057)** .398 (.062)** .316 (.064)**
Sell fragility (c p .99) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.089 (.035)* ⫺.230 (.057)** ⫺.241 (.055)**
Buy fragility (c p .99) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.374 (.047)** ⫺.011 (.053) .007 (.049)
Sell centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .394 (.094)** .298 (.115)*
Buy centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .045 (.095) ⫺.010 (.102)
Sell fragility (c p .00) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.031 (.092) .181 (.094)
Buy fragility (c p .00) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218 (.072)** .261 (.068)**
2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .023 (.014) .024 (.014) .016 (.013)
2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .057 (.014)** .047 (.015)** .043 (.014)**
2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 (.015)** .100 (.016)** .104 (.016)**
973
2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 (.018)** .120 (.020)** .130 (.020)**
Intrarow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .084 (.481)
Intracolumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.048 (.544)
Negative flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.045 (.036)
Constant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.134 (.405)** 1.571 (.377)** 6.804 (.631)** 6.592 (.674)** 7.081 (.676)**

Industry fixed effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No No Yes Yes Yes
N ............................................. 315 315 315 315 315
R2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6836 .7312 .6139 .5903 .6648
Note.—Standard errors are equationin parentheses. All continuous covariates are lagged one year, with the exception of industry input. Models

3–5 report within-industry correlations.
** Significant at 1% (two-tailed tests).
related to aggregate-level macroeconomic factors. We observe first that

the effect of sell centrality, CSELL,it , is strongly positive, indicating that as
a chosen industry sells increasingly to other important industries, its
future performance rises. Also, although the effect of sell fragility with-
out coupling (the equivalent of the Herfindahl index) is not discernibly
distinct from zero, the estimate of sell fragility measured with coupling,
FSELL,itFcp.99, retains its significance in the presence of various adjustments.
Using the estimates of model 3 together with the descriptive statistics
presented in table 5, we find that a within-industry 1-SD increase in sell
fragility with coupling lowers future total value added by about 2%
(exp[⫺.230 # .078] p .98). This result is important because it suggests
that occupancy of a position implicated in chains of dependencies has
performance-eroding consequences. Although we do not at this juncture
take this effect as definitive evidence of a causal relationship because we
do not exogenously vary fragility, given the conservative nature of our
panel model, we do believe it is an important association for consideration
in future research.
We arrive at a different pattern of effects in model 4, where we turn
from measures keyed to downstream ties to those that build from ties a
chosen industry has to others situated upstream in the supply chain. Un-
like model 2, which omitted industry-specific fixed effects, model 4 pres-
ents a pattern in which buy fragility is no longer consequential. Similarly,
whereas sell centrality mattered appreciably in model 3, its counterpart
in model 4 is insignificant, given its strong association with unobserved
stable traits.
We also see in model 4 that the effect of FBUY,itFcp0 is both strongly
significant and positive (3.03 t-test). Although this effect lacks the attrac-
tive stability of sell fragility measured with coupling—which holds up
across models, with and without industry-specific indicators—it is still a
suggestive result. In particular, it points to the importance of a discussion
of the scope conditions bracketing the generality of our approach—a dis-
cussion we pursue in our concluding section. We underscore for now the
fact that, although we have portrayed our fragility measure as a factor
conducive to declines in coveted outcomes, it is not difficult to envision
settings where just the opposite is true.
Given the distinctive features of our current empirical domain, it is not
entirely surprising that FBUY,itFcp0 is positively associated with future value
added. One plausible account follows from the high level of aggregation
in input-output data and from the fact that input markets differ, in terms
of availability of substitutes, from output markets. More precisely, there
are no substitutes in terms of suppliers, at least in the short run, at this
level of aggregation: although it is reasonable to anticipate relatively fast
changes in the mix of industries to which a focal industry can sell—for
974

example, telecommunications can shift from selling mainly to one market

to another quickly—it is unlikely that any given industry can significantly
and speedily alter its mix of suppliers. As an example, an instantaneous
transition from rail transportation to truck transportation as an input is
implausible. Consequently, at this level of aggregation, it may be desirable
to draw from just one supplier industry, within which substitutes may be
found, rather than a wide range of supplier industries—all of whom, in
turn, could increase their input prices.
We examine finally model 5, where all previously discussed covariates
enter jointly, together with negativeflowit, intrarowit, and intracolumnit.
When these three covariates enter in model 5, they fall just shy of sig-
nificance at a standard level, and our coefficient of interest—on sell fra-
gility with coupling—retains its significance. Thus, in a setting that is
substantively very distant from the status-based systems of Whyte (1993)
and Newcomb (1961), we find evidence to suggest that taking chains of
dependency into account is important for understanding outcomes in net-
works.
PRESTIGE AND FRAGILITY IN THE PHD EXCHANGE NETWORK

Our third empirical application is a reanalysis of the data used in Burris’s
(2004) investigation of the determinants of sociology departments’ prestige
and thus brings us back to status-related themes. An advantage of re-
visiting Burris’s data is the opportunity they offer to assess the effect of
fragility on an important outcome now known to vary discernibly with
network centrality. Using a sample of 94 departments listed in the Amer-
ican Sociological Association’s (ASA) 1995 Guide to Graduate Depart-
ments of Sociology, Burris (2004) documented that, net of established
measures of research productivity, centrality in the PhD exchange network
explains a disproportionate share of the variation in departmental prestige
scores.15
These prestige scores were drawn from a National Research Council
(NRC) survey (Goldberger, Maher, and Flattau 1995) and were “based
on ratings by disciplinary peers of the ‘scholarly quality of program fac-
ulty’ on a five-point scale ranging from ‘distinguished’ to ‘marginal’”
(Burris 2004, p. 254). The key independent variable—social capital—was
measured as logged network centrality using Bonacich’s (1972) eigenvec-
tor measure on a symmetric matrix recording the trading of scholars
15
We are grateful to an AJS reviewer for suggesting that we apply our measure to
Burris’s (2004) data.
975

between departments.16 Cell (i, j) of the relational matrix used to compute

social capital (and from which we calculate fragility) tallies the number
of full-time faculty members who had been hired from department i to
j and from department j to i during the chosen observation window. The
data for this matrix came from the ASA’s 1995 Guide. Burris’s (2004)
results are interesting and important because they counter conventional,
purely productivity-based etiologies of departmental prestige by under-
scoring the salience of the status-related consequences of departments’
positions in the hiring network. Centrally located departments appear to
enjoy a number of interrelated advantages, such as recognition from other
well-situated departments and a large base of well-placed researchers
poised to preserve the status of their intellectual roots (pp. 243–45).
Adjusting for the predictors entered in Burris (2004), we anticipate a
negative effect of fragility in the PhD exchange network on departmental
prestige. A fragilely located department is one that trades scholars with
a limited set of departments that are similarly restricted in their sets of
exchange partners. We think that occupancy of a fragile position will
negatively affect departmental prestige for at least two reasons: one plau-
sible mechanism is that fragility operates as a market signal of intellectual
myopia; another is that occupancy of a fragile position unwittingly elicits
indifference or antagonism among those departments falling outside the
exchange set and thus (perhaps unconsciously) negatively affects peers’
appraisals.
Consequently, we begin with model 1 in table 7, which replicates model
4 in table 4 of Burris (2004). Detailed summaries of measures of scholarly
productivity entered in model 1 appear on pages 254–55 of the original
article. Very briefly, both article publications and citations are averages
of counts across a focal department’s full-time faculty over a prior five-
year window, and research grants is the percentage of faculty members
garnering external research grants in the seven years before the NRC
survey. In addition, consistent with Keith and Babchuk (1994), weighted
article publications is a measure that takes into account the heightened
impact that results from publishing in the most influential journals, and
book publications is the mean count of books per faculty member earning
reviews in Contemporary Sociology from 1980 through 1989. Model 1
thus re-presents results showing that, on top of influential article and book
16
The correlation between Burris’s logged measure of social capital based on Bonacich
(1972) and the measure of centrality based on Bonacich (1987), which we use through-
out the current article, is .90. In addition, results are virtually identical if we replace
the former measure with the latter in our subsequent regression models. We use the
former measure in our reanalysis, for sake of consistency with Burris’s original study.
976

TABLE 7
Models Predicting Departmental Prestige in Burris’s
PhD Exchange Network
1 2 3 4
Social capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.118 1.105 .747 1.068
(.069)** (.067)** (.045)** (.078)**
Fragility (c p 0) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.085
(.093)
Fragility (c p .99) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.101 ⫺.093 ⫺.096
(.039)* (.036)* (.039)*
Article publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .072 .067 .070 .064
(.051) (.049) (.052) (.049)
Citations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .005 .005 .026 .005
(.010) (.010) (.053) (.010)
Research grants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.000 ⫺.001 ⫺.008 ⫺.000
(.003) (.003) (.045) (.003)
Weighted article publications . . . .180 .176 .112 .165
(.082)* (.079)* (.051)* (.080)*
Book publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245 .217 .114 .232
(.090)** (.088)* (.046)* (.089)*
Constant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ⫺.401 ⫺.294 ⫺.000 ⫺.138
(.150)** (.151) (.034) (.227)
N .................................. 94 94 94 94
R2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89 .90 .90 .90
Note.—Standard errors are in parentheses. Model 3 reports standardized regression co-
efficients and corresponding standard errors.
** Significant at 1%.
production, centrality in the hiring network is strongly associated with

favorable peer appraisals.
Model 2 adds to model 1 our measure of fragility with the coupling
coefficient c p .99. Consistent with our expectation, net of the strong
positive effect of social capital, fragility in the PhD exchange network is
discernibly associated with lower ratings on the NRC scale. Furthermore,
the effect magnitude of fragility is comparable in absolute value to those
of the two consequential productivity-based predictors in the model—
weighted articles and book publications. This is most apparent in model
3, where we present standardized regression coefficients.
According to model 3, a 1-SD increase in a department’s fragility coun-
terbalances an equivalent increase in either (weighted) journal or book
publishing. This result is important substantively because it indicates that
a standard shift in fragility within the doctoral hiring network matters
virtually as much as a standard shift in production. It also suggests that,
net of centrality, robustness in the network may convey openness and
generate goodwill among peers. More broadly, the effect of interest in
model 3 is suggestive of a social (rather than merit-based) process by
977

which changes in departmental status occur over time. Although these

data are not dynamic, it is not hard to imagine departments shifting in
the extent to which they exchange provincially and consequently altering
views held by their peers.
Finally, whereas in models 2 and 3 we entered only fragility with cou-
pling set to its maximum value, we conclude in model 4 by adding fragility
with coupling set to zero. This allows us to assess the value of our measure
against that of Herfindahl’s concentration index. Similar to the pattern
of results from our analyses of Newcomb’s fraternity and of input-output
networks, the significance of FiFcp.99 taken together with the insignificance
of FiFcp0 reinforces the importance, on a methodological level, of incor-
porating coupling in the measurement of fragility. Finally, on a substantive
level, the results in model 4 are important because they point directly to
the relevance of exchange partners’ positions in the network for a given
department’s level of prestige.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Our aims in this article have been both to advance our understanding of
status dynamics by bringing into focus the negative consequences of fra-
gility and to develop a method for arraying network positions along a
continuum defined by fragility and robustness. To summarize briefly, we
framed our approach on the backdrop of prior analyses that harnessed
concentration versus diversification of social ties as salient constructs. We
then brought forward the importance of taking into account coupling
among the nodes that comprise a social system. Melding disparate ap-
proaches, we developed a measure of fragility that is attentive to the
extent to which a focal actor is propped up by those who are themselves
precariously situated. Using Whyte’s (1993) ethnography of the Nortons
as an initial illustrative case, we turned to an application of our measure
in three distinct empirical settings and found similar results. In New-
comb’s panel, we found that more fragilely situated fraternity members
faced declines in status over the course of a semester. In our panel of
industries, adjusting for centrality, we found in pooled cross-sectional and
within models that our measure of fragility in selling patterns lowered
industry value added. Our reanalysis of Burris’s (2004) data demonstrated
that fragility in the PhD exchange network is negatively associated with
departmental prestige.
Thus, in addition to the empirical results we have presented, one of
our primary contributions has been to demonstrate that an actor’s location
in a status ordering (or in an ordering of centrality scores, in the case of
industrial sectors) may be insufficient for accurately characterizing its
978

network position. Using the first week of Newcomb’s panel as an example,

we illustrated that, although metrics like Bonacich’s (1987) approach serve
as powerful methods for detecting prestige orderings from relational data,
our measure of fragility illuminates important, and otherwise occluded,
distinctions between actors that appear status equivalent and yet rely on
very different social footings. We believe that future analyses of the an-
tecedents and consequences of status will profit from looking beyond the
aggregation of prestige-conferring flows to the paths by which those flows
converge on positions in social structure. When virtually all respect, es-
teem, or social support emanates from a single vulnerable source, the
receiver’s position is considerably less robust.
We have also drawn attention to the importance of constructing net-
work models that account for extralocal processes. We found, in particular,
that taking coupling into account in the measurement of fragility was
important for explaining variance in the outcomes we examined. Our
results indicated that attention to ego-network composition through Her-
findahl’s measure alone was insufficient. In this sense, our approach is
consonant with other portrayals of processes traveling through chains of
considerable length. Examples of work in this vein include Rapoport’s
(1963) models of interaction, White’s (1970) analyses of vacancy chains,
Tilly’s (1990) discussion of immigration patterns, Abbott and Hrycak’s
(1990) analyses of careers, and Burt’s (2007) models of reputational sta-
bility as a function of closure among indirect contacts. As Burt (2007)
argues, whether extralocal processes matter deserves careful scrutiny and
carries central implications for research design. If causality resides entirely
in the immediate network—that is, if decoupling is a characteristic feature
of the population—then it is unnecessary to capture the network as a
whole. Data on ego networks alone are sufficient. Conversely, attention
to the full pattern of ties within a population becomes increasingly nec-
essary insofar as identity-related spillovers occur. Our approach indicates
that collecting complete network data is important, at least in some em-
pirical contexts, for moving toward richer portrayals of status-related
processes.
Limits on Generality
Before sketching implications for other lines of sociological theory, we
emphasize three conditions that restrict the generality of the perspective
we have presented. First, there are clearly institutional settings in which
extralocal processes do not matter and where decoupling therefore defines
the network. In these settings, fragility is best represented just as a Her-
findahl measure of concentration, without attention to contiguous actors’
identities and networks. Consider in this connection the two-by-two table
979

in figure 8, whose vertical axis extends from fragile to robust and whose
horizontal axis goes from decoupling to coupling. If in fact decoupling
marks the network, then fragility should be measured in a way that is
consistent with the bottom-left cell in figure 8, where A relies completely
on D but where D’s identity and network are inconsequential for A. This
quadrant is therefore quite different from its counterpart on the bottom
right, where A is fragile because of its position at the end of a chain, and
from the upper-right cell, where A is robust by virtue of its wide range
of connections to others who are diversified in their sources of social
support.
The extent to which a social structure is “readable” (White 1992, pp.
106–11) contributes significantly to the degree of coupling depicted on the
horizontal axis and thus is a factor determining the best measurement
strategy. Although many social systems allow incumbents (as well as ob-
servers) to map out who is connected to whom and in what way—consider,
as extremes, a rank-order tournament or, less commonly, a matrix orga-
nization whose publicly displayed organizational chart accurately reflects
its informal structure—other systems are far more opaque, even for in-
siders. There, the concrete patterning of social ties is fuzzy and uncertain
for all involved—incumbents and observers have difficulty discerning, or
even inchoately sensing, nonlocal patterns—and network spillovers are
therefore rare. Consequently, an important condition for our approach is
a reasonable level of perception within the network. Coupled identities,
where spillovers occur, necessarily require opportunities for detecting or
discerning social ties.
We therefore expect extralocal ties to matter appreciably in the esti-
mation of fragility effects within transparent settings like investment
banking, where firms’ locations in public pecking orders are widely mon-
itored (Podolny 1993). In such settings, we recommend computing fragility
with a large b weight. Conversely, for less penetrable settings that would
tend toward the left column in figure 8—such as semiconductors (Podolny,
Stuart, and Hannan 1996), where consumers likely have difficulty dis-
cerning the circuitous patterns of interfirm patenting ties—we anticipate
little in the way of network spillovers and thus suspect that firms’ levels
of fragility will be best calculated more restrictively (i.e., with a smaller
b weight or even with b set equal to zero).
Second, our depiction of A’s position as fragile due to chaining in the
bottom right of figure 8 leads us to reinforce the importance of examining
global-network structure when deciding whether to implement our mea-
sure. As we discuss in more technical detail in our appendix, a central
consideration in determining if our measure will yield information over
and above Herfindahl’s index is whether the structure of the global net-
work permits chains of reasonable length among its nodes or is instead
980

Fig. 8.—Fragility and robustness for decoupled and coupled networks. Solid lines denote
first-order ties of social support. Dashed lines represent second-order ties of social support.
Diameters of circles around nodes reflect levels of robustness. Nodes are circled if their
identity and network affect the robustness of the focal actor A.
a tightly connected clique. Simulations presented in our appendix show

that social structures marked by longer mean path lengths allow for
greater expression of differences between our measure of fragility and one
agnostic with respect to context. We believe these simulations are im-
portant because they shed additional light on the conditions in which the
b weight is large in the practical sense. Although in a closely knit cult
our measure differs little from Herfindahl’s, it offers much additional
information in more differentiated networks that are typically the subject
of sociological investigation.
Third, in empirical settings different from the status systems of Whyte
(1993) and Newcomb (1961), it is entirely plausible to expect that what
we have measured as fragility in equation (4) will exert positive effects
on coveted outcomes. Consequently, in such settings, although its algebraic
form will remain unchanged, our measure will require substantive re-
casting. Consistent with this possibility, Zuckerman’s (1999, 2000) work
clearly demonstrates the benefits of constructing a narrow, concentrated
identity. When individuals or organizations winnow their focus to an
existing node in a way that renders their performance easier to appraise,
corresponding advantages result. There are also the possibilities that sharp
focus on another node in a network enhances trust and reduces learning
costs (Uzzi 1996) and that specialized firms both more readily respond to
distinctive customer preferences (Carroll and Hannan 2000; Bothner 2003)
and more effectively convey future work experiences to prospective em-
981

ployees (Baron 2004). More generally, there are certainly settings in which
fragility is ideologically construed as positive.
To adjudicate among ways of discussing the likely effects of our mea-
sure, we believe it is essential as a starting point to consider differences
in where concentration comes from—from ego or from alter. Consider a
case from the computer industry as an example. Dell’s choice historically
to focus exclusively on the direct sales channel is markedly different from
a fraternity brother who gets a disproportionate share of his social support
from one other member of the house—although Herfindahl’s index will
be high for both. Dell’s strategy has largely proven to be status enhancing,
but in Newcomb’s fraternity we found that concentration is status erod-
ing. Where these cases differ importantly is not in levels of analysis but
in the provenance of concentration and therefore in terms of control.
Whereas a computer maker can deliberately decide to specialize within
a specific segment, the fraternity brother has far less discretion over
whether he receives the lion’s share of his social support from a particular
peer. When this does occur, those other than the focal individual are
consequently the ones imputing (unfavorable) meaning to his concentrated
position.17
Thus, in keeping with lines of research differing from our own, the
measure of fragility we have introduced might be recast as a measure of
focus in other contexts. In such contexts, actors receive rewards for es-
tablishing exclusive ties to those with narrow allegiances, and the fragile–
robust axis labels for the ordinate in figure 8 could therefore be replaced
respectively with focused–disordered. When the cost of forging such ties
varies inversely with actors’ quality levels—as at times they do in ap-
prenticeship programs, for instance—equation (4) will measure focus,
rather than unwanted complexity or disorder, as a viable market signal
in Spence’s (1974) sense.18
To mitigate concerns about generality, in addition to describing how to
substantively reframe our measure to accommodate different settings, we
stress the pervasiveness of the social structural conditions that are con-
sistent with the viewpoint we have advanced: our approach posits that
17
Although we believe that attention to the origins of fragility—with ego or with alter—
serves as a useful starting point, it is insufficient. Like a laser steadily aimed at the
wrong target, ego can of course deliberately narrow its focus on the wrong audience.
18
This point also raises the issue of lineages, if actors in a system span cohorts or
generations. Under this scenario, eq. (4) could measure purity of lineage, as when an
artist or academic comes from the right (and narrow) line of teachers. Purity is then
a by-product of having collaborated exclusively with a master who was him- or herself
sharply discriminating as a disciple. For instance, this is almost certainly the legiti-
mating process the Apostle Paul had in mind when, in his defense, he cited Gamaliel
as his teacher (Acts 22).
982

actors sort into positions in a status ordering as a function of the recog-

nition they receive and that the network is sufficiently transparent so that
they are aware of the means by which positions in this ordering are
determined—whether these positions are durably built through diversi-
fication or exist vulnerably because of concentration. Although the con-
ditions necessary for our perspective do not mark all social settings, they
certainly characterize many. We believe our approach is generally appli-
cable for theoretical and methodological reasons: both because of the
frequency with which peer monitoring and gossip make the underpinnings
of social positions transparent and because of the frequency with which
network-analytic study designs collect data on ties for whole populations.
Future Directions
In addition to replicating our results in other settings, especially in those
in which status in known to precede coveted outcomes, we see three
particularly promising ways to proceed further. First, although our mea-
sure of fragility operates at the level of individual nodes, it is easy to
imagine opportunities to link up with important group-level themes high-
lighted by Moody, White, Harary, and colleagues in their work on struc-
tural cohesion (see, e.g., White and Harary 2001; Moody and White 2003).
Moody and White (2003) discuss robustness at the group level in terms
of a focal group’s capacity to persist in spite of node removal and thus
picture cohesive groups as those that have “a status beyond any individual
group member” (p. 122). They also suggest that future research may benefit
from focusing on the hazards of removal faced by particular nodes. Along
this line, we believe that our measure of fragility may be particularly
valuable.
Consider, as a potential empirical site, work in biology on metabolic
and other cellular networks (Jeong et al. 2000) that focus on individual
substrates, connected by biochemical pathways, constituting a metabolic
network. In this domain, a highly fragile substrate is one that is connected
to one or a few narrowly focused alternate substrates. In addition, not
unlike many social networks, biological networks are often characterized
by long-tailed distributions where a few substrates account for much of
the network connectivity. Although this can result in stability for the
network as a whole—in the sense that networks stay largely intact in the
face of random error—researchers are now interested in examining cross-
organism differences in the identities and durability of individual sub-
strates (Jeong et al. 2000). Arraying nodes in these and similar kinds of
networks according to their fragility may be useful for locating otherwise
hidden fault lines in global structures and thus for further understanding
group-level robustness as envisioned by Moody and White (2003).
983

Two additional next steps are to link notions of fragility and robustness
more tightly to etiologies of status and also to harness the approach we
have developed to further pinpoint the structural foundations of robust
action—or action that preserves options (Leifer 1988; Padgett and Ansell
1993). We conclude with very preliminary sketches of how theories of
status and of robust action might be extended in light of our approach.
We found in our analysis of Newcomb’s data that fraternity members
enjoyed increments in status as their positions within the social structure
became more robust. This finding is consistent with Abbott’s (2001) ob-
servation that status is a by-product of possessing a wide range of future
options. We interpreted this finding on a purely structural level as evidence
consistent with the premise that audience members esteem those in robust
positions. In arguing that structure directly affects perceptions, we sought
to adjust as stringently as possible for fixed and time-changing behavioral
differences in our empirical models. Nevertheless, we believe that future
work on the determinants of status may benefit from examining some of
the possible behavioral concomitants of robustness. These are actions that
emerge from the durability of actors’ positions and in turn contour their
levels of prestige. We refer here in particular to actions that are permissible
and sustainable exclusively for inhabitants of robust positions. Examples
include the “attractive arrogance” Merton (1968, p. 61) ascribed to elite
scientists or excessive acts of generosity directed toward others who lack
the resources to reciprocate. Through tracing out the links among ro-
bustness, modes of conduct, and harvests of future deference, we antic-
ipate that our conceptions of where status comes from are likely to
sharpen.
Turning in conclusion to further implications for theory, we suspect that
robust positions, as we have defined them, render robust action more
sustainable. Work on robust action has immediate precedents in Leifer’s
(1991) research on chess masters. This study found that the very best chess
players are not those endowed with uncommon forecasting abilities but
rather those who can sustain flexibility with respect to (or remain robust
with respect to) opponents’ moves. More generally, robust action refers
to strategic conduct that is difficult for a competitor to interpret and that
therefore keeps its practitioner from getting absorbed in an undesirable
role. For example, by acting robustly in a romantic relation, a suitor veils
actual intentions and therefore circumvents appearing overly committed
and becoming the less powerful, or by acting robustly in international
relations, one nation wishing to conquer another nation adroitly provokes
its target to start a war and then successfully brands it as the instigator
(Leifer 1988, pp. 867–69). Correspondingly, for a political figure, this strat-
egy equates to maneuvering in ways that are indecipherable to opponents
and therefore congenial to continued flexibility (Padgett and Ansell 1993).
984

We believe that attention to positional robustness may shed new light

on the incidence of robust action. Although we fully agree that social skills
(Leifer 1988) and protean identities (Padgett and Ansell 1993, pp. 1263–
64) greatly facilitate robust action, we contend as well that this strategy
may be aided by durability of social position. This is because of the costs
involved. Notwithstanding its many advantages, robust action has a dark
side and can be dangerous. The cagey suitor invites accusations of insin-
cerity and indecisiveness. Robust actors, although they may be exquisitely
patient and shrewd, open themselves to the accusation that they are slow
ciphers. Given these risks, we conclude with a disconfirmable prediction.
We expect robust action to be more likely among robustly positioned actors
because of the capacity of their social positions to absorb, much like an
insurance policy, the costs of accidents as they behave strategically.
APPENDIX
Linking Local Measurement to Global Network Structure

We work toward the construction of a bridge between our egocentric
measurement of fragility and the global network structure on which the
fragility of a focal node depends. Since our model reaches beyond the ego
network through our weighting parameter b to reflect larger structure,
we believe it is important to examine, at least preliminarily, how this
broader context conditions our measure. One way to bring into focus and
better understand this local-global link is to identify the global-level cir-
cumstances in which a large b weight induces a vector of fragility scores
that differs most significantly from a corresponding set of Herfindahl
indexes. Consequently, returning to equation (5), our question is as follows:
Under what global-network conditions is fragility computed with c p
.99 least correlated with fragility computed with c p 0 (i.e., with Herfin-
dahl’s index)? Through identifying the extralocal circumstances in which
Fcp.99 differs most from Fcp0, we can better appreciate when a chosen
coupling coefficient is indeed “large” in the practical sense that its appli-
cation yields information beyond a metric that is insensitive to alters’
positions in the network.
We examine the measurement-related consequences of varying global
structure through the lens of mean path length—a long-studied network-
level metric. The path distance between two nodes is the shortest number
of steps between them: two directly connected individuals have a path
distance of one; individuals capable of reaching one another by a single
go-between have a path distance of two; a pair linked most directly
through five intermediaries has a path distance of six; and so forth (see
Burt [1982], pp. 25–29, for measurement; Burt [2005], pp. 32–34, for
985

empirical illustration). Moving from the dyadic to the global level, the
mean path length—the average shortest distance between all connected
pairs—for a given social structure is an index of its overall reachability
or efficiency (Wasserman and Faust 1994). To the extent that mean path
length is low, members of the social structure can get to one another
quickly. In contrast, a high mean path length reflects the presence of long
winding strands of social ties.
We investigate how mean path length conditions fragility scores in order
to assess a direct implication of our approach—namely, that fragility mea-
sured with a high coupling coefficient is most likely to offer unique in-
formation in networks marked by extended chains of dependence. We
believe that pursuing this implication is important on theoretical and
empirical grounds. On a theoretical level, it begins to illuminate the con-
textual underpinnings of fragility by bringing relief to global-level dy-
namics likely to increase variation along a fragility-robustness axis. On
an empirical level, it has the potential to alert researchers to the types of
observable social structures in which attending to context (over and above
the immediate composition of the ego network) in the computation of
fragility yields the greatest payoffs.
We proceeded by generating 1,000 simulated networks of various sizes
and levels of connectivity. Using these networks, we could then assess the
effect of mean path length on our correlation-based outcome of interest,
cor (Fcp.99 , Fcp0 ), which we refer to as cormeasures. The square matrices
from which we constructed these networks ranged in size n from 50 to
150 rows. To induce variation in the total number of nonzero entries across
our various matrices, we worked with an array of “cutpoints” in each
matrix size category.
More precisely, after generating a square matrix of a given size n from
n2 random draws from the standard normal distribution, we set all entries
above the chosen cutpoint equal to one, brought other entries to zero,
and constrained the main diagonal to equal zero regardless of the value
of the initial random draw. We used six cutpoints in total: 0, .5, 1, 1.5, 2,
and 2.25. With equal frequency, we applied the first four of these cutpoints
to 160 matrices of size 50; we applied all but the largest to a total of 600
matrices of sizes 75, 100, and 125; and we used all six cutpoints on 240
matrices of size 150. Thus, for each size-cutpoint pair, we simulated 40
random matrices, yielding a total of 1,000 directed nonvalued networks.
We then computed cormeasures as the correlation between fragility for
c p .99 and fragility for c p 0, as well as mean path length, for each of
these networks. Although our results are virtually identical if we set iso-
lates’ fragility scores equal to zero, we eliminated isolates from our anal-
ysis, both because fragility is undefined for completely disconnected nodes
986

and because the average path length of a network is undefined when no

path exists between two nodes.
The plot shown in figure A1 reveals a strong negative association be-
tween mean path length and cormeasures. Thus, the greater the average
shortest distance between connected pairs in a network, the more signif-
icant the consequences of applying a large coupling coefficient. As the
nonparametric smoothing function (Friedman 1984) we have added sug-
gests, this association appears to stay strong until a mean path length of
roughly six.
We also took steps to guard against the possibility that the association
we observe is an artifact of the number of nodes. In a simple model
regressing cormeasures on mean path length and network size, the co-
efficient on mean path length was ⫺.155 (⫺94.56 t-test), and the coefficient
on network size was .000492 (7.19 t-test). In addition, in a second model
in which our predictor of interest enters reciprocally due to the nonlinear
pattern evident in figure A1, the coefficient on 1/(mean path length) was
1.25 (63.37 t-test), and the estimate on network size was .000421 (4.37 t-
test).
We conclude by depicting specific networks created in the course of
our simulations that differ by mean path length and cormeasures. We
focus on the extremes and a midpoint for sake of illustration. In the
successive sociograms shown in figure A2, we move from simulated net-
works in which our measure of fragility overlaps with standard concen-
tration to those in which it differs appreciably. Each network was gen-
erated from a matrix of size 100, with the full 100 included in the left
panel, 92 nodes (due to the removal of eight isolates) in the center panel,
and 82 nodes in the right panel. We report for each graph its mean path
length and the correlation between fragility scores with minimal and max-
imal coupling. The left panel shows a highly connected network where
nodes can reach others almost immediately on average. For such networks,
whose basic structure is perhaps found most often in small cults, mea-
suring fragility with a large b weight has little impact. Conversely, the
networks depicted in the center and the right panels correspond to higher
mean path length and are ones in which incorporating broader context
in the measurement of fragility has discernible consequences. These are
also more similar in typology to the kinds of networks frequently of interest
to sociologists. It is also in such networks that nodes can depend highly
on other nodes that are themselves caught in chains of dependence and
thus occupy positions that differ significantly from their more robustly
positioned counterparts.
987

Fig. A1.—Negative association between cormeasures—the correlation between fragility
measured with c p .99 and fragility measured with c p 0 —and mean path length. Outcomes
for 1,000 simulated networks are depicted. A curve provided by a bivariate smoother is
included.
988

989

Fig. A2.—Three networks differing in mean path length and in the correlation between fragility measured with c p .99 and fragility measured with
c p 0.
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A Model of Robust Position in Social Networks

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A Model of Robust Positions in Social Networks

Author(s): Matthew S. Bothner, Edward Bishop Smith, and Harrison C. White

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Edward Bishop Smith

This article introduces a network model that pictures occupants of

䉷 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

AJS Volume 116 Number 3 (November 2010): 943–92 943

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ments of Emerson (1962) and Blau (1964) pictured occupants of fragile

Thus, as long as social ties are detectable by third parties, in networks

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moving among production markets, coupling occurs when the position of

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grace—neatly illustrate two main pieces of our argument: that fragility

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where the important transformation is from X to D as follows:

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where xij again denotes the respect j directs to i , Sj is the status of j, a is

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suring fragility is straightforward. To do so, we shift attention from totals

was the squared proportion of j’s respect for i. Summarizing Bonacich’s

F (a, b) p a b kD k⫹11. (5)

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who are in turn weakly positioned. Stated more generally, c k 0 accom-

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POSITIONS AND DYNAMICS IN NEWCOMB’S FRATERNITY

Cross-Sectional Differences in Social Positions

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columns to the rows of X t. For example, according to the first weekly

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The raw data in X 1 offer a valuable initial vantage point. An inspection

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lumpy—given 13’s relatively high dependence on individuals 1 and 6—

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Fig. 3.—Ego network of individual 13 in week 1 of Newcomb’s study. Individual 13’s

Summarized in greater detail, figures 3 and 4 result from applying the

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Fig. 4.—Ego network of individual 16 in week 1 of Newcomb’s study. Individual 16’s

sistent with figure 2, individual 17 resides in the largest circle, while

Status Growth and Decline

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individual’s social position becomes increasingly fragile. In particular, the

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(1) (2) (3) (4)

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coded weekly relational matrices X t, a fraternity member’s time-varying

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vidual.10 Results of this approach appear in model 6. Our effect of interest

FRAGILITY AND ROBUSTNESS OF INDUSTRIES IN THE U.S.

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North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to illustrate the

applied equation (5) to Vt to calculate FSELL,it. Second, to compute buy

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Industry Industry Value

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Industry Industry Value

two industries that, on average, have high fragility scores. In figure 6, we

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tribution, with just 10 industries ahead of it—for example, farms as well