Relational History: Correcting temporal myopia in social network research

Abstract

Scholars have used network concepts and methods to explain a wide range of organizational phenomena. Despite this broad interest, prevalent approaches tend to neglect a critical constitutive dimension of network ties: their history. We invoke the concept of relational history to signify the temporal path and biography of a network tie. We argue that a network tie’s history shapes what the relationship means to the parties involved, what can be accomplished in and through the relationship, and how the relationship might further evolve. In directing the attention of organizational network researchers to the relational history of network ties, we aim to complement and expand the field’s predominant focus on structuralist, ahistorical and reductionist views of relationships and networks. We highlight how a relational history perspective has the potential to reorient core debates in organizational network research, such as those around network cognition, agency, brokerage and multiplexity. We also illustrate the implications of adopting the proposed relational history perspective for the data and methods used by network researchers. Overall, we argue that accounting for relational history can stimulate new research across a broad spectrum of organizational phenomena.