Social networks as contexts, for engagement and initiative : An empirical investigation

The enabling and constraining properties of networks, their effects on participants, and their subsequent social consequences have all been extensively explored in a large and growing literature. A feature of social network analysis lies in its tendency to deploy structural perspectives in explaining social outcomes. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews, this article highlights the ways in which social networks operate as a context in which individual initiative and engagement lead to the making and remaking of network attributes. An empirical examination of business networks in Chinese cities reveals the way in which the formation and maintenance of networks require the conscious contributions of members, how network norms are produced by the expressed preferences of individual members, and finally how network membership involves management of network participants.