All in the family: reply to Burt, Podolny, and van de Rijt, Ban, and Sarkar

We are grateful for the thoughtful reactions to our work by Burt, Podolny, and van de Rijt, Ban, and Sarkar (VBS). It is heartening to see that each of the commentators acknowledges the basic insight of our article. And we also appreciate their urging us to clarify the motivation for the model we developed, the assumptions we adopted in building the model, and the model’s implications. We would like to express special thanks for the participation of Prof. Burt, who was and remains our teacher. We cannot think of a greater honor for students than for their teacher to engage with their work in such a serious fashion, especially when such work revises his original instruction. We begin by clarifying the motivation for our article, and then use this motivation to frame our reply to the comments on the assumptions and implications of our framework. Of the three commentators, Podolny seems particularly skeptical of the motivation for our article, which he accurately characterizes as an attempt “precis(ely to . . . identify) the assumptions that underlie the structural hole model” (Podolny 2008: 971) and draw out the implications of those assumptions. Our rationale for undertaking that task is indeed worth questioning, especially because we agree with Podolny that (i) it is hard to find a more precise and influential sociological theory (Podolny 2008: 971) and (ii) the literature had essentially moved on, with scholars (including Burt, as reflected in his comment) typically accepting the basic logic of structural holes theory and “layer”ing (Podolny 2008: 973) other processes and factors upon this foundation. Indeed, each of the commentators seems to prefer a different question for orienting the article than the one we chose. Burt characterizes our article as asking, “Why do brokers do better on a broad array of performance outcomes?” Podolny seems to prefer that we ask, “When can actors successfully assume valuable network positions?” And VBS asks, “How can actors pursue advantageous positions when they cannot see the structure?” These are good questions, and we address them below. But our orienting question was a different one. We asked whether the network positions that grant incumbents the most knowledge are the same or different from the network positions that grant