Structural Embeddedness and Community-Building through Collaborative Network Relationships

Abstract

This paper examines the role of structural embeddedness as an organising phenomenon within interdependent networks. While conceptual and philosophical in nature, data from a longitudinal ethnographic case study of an icon tourism destination is used to illustrate new framings of this concept. This method of research enables deeper insights to be attained that add both explanation and understanding to our current appreciation of the interdependent organizing phenomena. The case data illustrate how the network has structural attributes of heterogeneity, interconnection and reciprocity that contribute to its anti-hierarchical state. This enables an infinite number of structural possibilities to occur, some of which can be developed to form strategic capabilities that belong to the network. Assisting this process, is a symbiotic and mutual participation from the interdependent actors which critiques the notion of structural redundancy. The paper illustrates how the aggregated patterns have formed in the network and how reciprocal obligation has built long term exchange patterns that contribute to forming the embedded macroculture.