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Research summary: In this paper we adopt a core-periphery approach to specify the direct and indirect effects of social capital on organizational performance. We suggest that social capital deriving from stable task relationships between organizational members has a direct positive effect on organizational performance. Said effect depends, in both strength and functional form, on whether actors involved in stable dyads are located at the core or at the periphery of the organization. We also argue that core and peripheral social capital affect performance indirectly by moderating the organization's ability to leverage its human capital to improve performance. Results from a 48-year study of the National Basketball Association support our arguments and bear important implications for strategic human resource practices and organizational performance in competitive settings. Managerial summary: Stable work relationships among employees generate trust, more efficient work routines, common understanding and thus higher organizational performance. These benefits depend on the location of such stable relationships in the organization. Relational stability among core organizational members has an immediate, strong impact on performance, an effect that plateaus as stability grows. Stable relationships between core and peripheral members have instead a weaker, yet linear effect on performance. The location of stable relationships is also critical to leverage the talent of core employees, whose contribution to performance is stronger when relational stability is high in the organizational core, yet hindered by stable relations between core and periphery. Such findings provide relevant implications for strategic human resource management, in particular for choices regarding team composition and managing stars.

Intermediate-scale (or \"mesoscale\") structures in networks have received considerable attention, as the algorithmic detection of such structures makes it possible to discover network features that are not apparent either at the local scale of nodes and edges or at the global scale of summary statistics. Numerous types of meso-scale structures can occur in networks, but investigations of such features have focused predominantly on the identification and study of community structure. In this paper, we develop a new method to investigate the meso-scale feature known as core-periphery structure, which entails identifying densely connected core nodes and sparsely connected peripheral nodes. In contrast to communities, the nodes in a core are also reasonably well-connected to those in a network's periphery. Our new method of computing core-periphery structure can identify multiple cores in a network and takes into account different possible core structures. We illustrate the differences between our method and several existing methods for identifying which nodes belong to a core, and we use our technique to examine core-periphery structure in examples of friendship, collaboration, transportation, and voting networks. For this new SIGEST version of our paper, we also discuss our work's relevance in the context of recent developments in the study of core-periphery structure.

Large-scale transport infrastructure investments connect both large metropolitan centres of production as well as small peripheral regions. Are the resulting trade cost reductions a force for the diffusion of industrial and total economic activity to peripheral regions, or do they reinforce the concentration of production in space? This article exploits China's National Trunk Highway System as a large-scale natural experiment to contribute to our understanding of this question. The network was designed to connect provincial capitals and cities with an urban population above 500,000. As a side effect, a large number of small peripheral counties were connected to large metropolitan agglomerations. To address non-random route placements on the way between targeted city nodes, I propose an instrumental variable strategy based on the construction of least cost path spanning tree networks. The estimation results suggest that network connections have led to a reduction in GDP growth among non-targeted peripheral counties. This effect appears to be driven by a significant reduction in industrial output growth. Additional results present evidence in support of a trade-based channel in the light of falling trade costs between peripheral and metropolitan regions.

Building on recent research emphasizing how legitimacy depends on consensus among audiences about candidates' characteristics and activities, we examine the relationship between cultural producers' (candidates) position in the social structure and the consecration of their creative work by relevant audiences. We argue that the outcome of this process of evaluation in any cultural field, whether in art or science, is a function of (1) candidates' embeddedness within the field, and (2) the type of audience—that is, peers versus critics—evaluating candidates' work. Specifically, we hypothesize that peers are more likely to favor candidates who are highly embedded in the field, whereas critics will not show such favoritism. We find support for these hypotheses in the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry.

International publications in social sciences by scholars based in mainland China have been increasing in volume, but little is known about the characteristics of China’s contribution. This study examines the characteristics and patterns of international publications by Chinese scholars in higher education research. Data from three internationalized higher education journals were analyzed from 2000 to 2022. The results show a consistent pattern of continuous growth in the annual number of published articles with Chinese affiliations, with a marked increase since 2016. International collaborations are the most common type of publication, a pattern that contrasts with other articles in the same journal. In addition, returnee scholars have made significant contributions to international publications. Finally, the research of Chinese scholars is as influential as that of their international peers in terms of citation counts. These findings highlight the constrained agency of Chinese actors in the center-periphery structure of the global knowledge production networks.

Journalism’s once-neglected periphery has been a focus of academic research in recent years and the urge to make sense of interlopers from the periphery has brought about many approaches to understanding these changes. In this essay I reflect on an ongoing research agenda examining one particular category of interlopers: provocative media actors who have openly challenged the boundaries of the journalistic field. These actors raise questions as to how to account for interlopers at the edges of the journalistic field, including whether we should extend the field to include them. In this essay I argue we should continue to see the field as complex, and maybe now a bit more so. Reflecting on field and practice theories and understandings of boundaries, I reengage the complexity that is a core demand of conceptualizing the journalistic field, while offering ways to consider interlopers’ journalistic identities within its boundaries. Emphasizing similarities over differences, I argue we can move beyond binary distinctions between a field’s core members and interlopers on the periphery by focusing on the nature of interloper work.

The paper advances a relational perspective to studying creativity at the individual level. Building on social network theory and techniques, we examine the role of social networks in shaping individuals' ability to generate a creative outcome. More specifically, we argue that individuals who occupy an intermediate position between the core and the periphery of their social system are in a favorable position to achieve creative results. In addition, the benefits accrued through an individual's intermediate core/periphery position can also be observed at the team level, when the same individual works in a team whose members come from both ends of the core/periphery continuum. We situate the analysis and test our hypotheses within the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry, which we trace over the period 1992–2003. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

The current expansion of English language publishing by scholars from China is supported by national and university policies, including monetary and career incentives to publish in English. These incentives, which extend to work in the humanities and social sciences (HSS, the focus of this paper) as well as the sciences and technologies, are situated in evolving strategies of internationalization. China has moved from an internationalization strategy simply based on learning from the West, to a ‘going out’ strategy designed to both lift domestic research capacity and advance China’s influence in the world. However, the ‘going out’ strategy nonetheless embodies ambiguities and dilemmas. The world of academic knowledge is not a level playing field but more closely approximates the centre–periphery dynamic described in world systems theory. This study explores the influence of publication incentives in the context of a centre–periphery world. It draws on analysis of 172 institutional incentive documents and interviews with 75 HSS academics, university senior administrators, and journal editors. The study identifies practices within China’s HSS that reproduce centre–periphery relationships. By focusing on international publications, Chinese universities run the risk of downplaying Chinese-language publications and adopting standards and norms from global centres to assess domestic knowledge production. These could result in creating knowledge from and about China primarily in Western terms without adding a distinctive Chinese strand to the global conversation. Nonetheless, the study also identifies alternative dynamics that challenge the existing power hierarchies in global HSS, highlighting indigenous knowledge and the need to pluralize global knowledge production.

When we grasp and manipulate an object, populations of tactile nerve fibers become activated and convey information about the shape, size, and texture of the object and its motion across the skin. The response properties of tactile fibers have been extensively characterized in single-unit recordings, yielding important insights into how individual fibers encode tactile information. A recurring finding in this extensive body of work is that stimulus information is distributed over many fibers. However, our understanding of population-level representations remains primitive. To fill this gap, we have developed a model to simulate the responses of all tactile fibers innervating the glabrous skin of the hand to any spatiotemporal stimulus applied to the skin. The model first reconstructs the stresses experienced by mechanoreceptors when the skin is deformed and then simulates the spiking response that would be produced in the nerve fiber innervating that receptor. By simulating skin deformations across the palmar surface of the hand and tiling it with receptors at their known densities, we reconstruct the responses of entire populations of nerve fibers. We show that the simulated responses closely match their measured counterparts, down to the precise timing of the evoked spikes, across a wide variety of experimental conditions sampled from the literature. We then conduct three virtual experiments to illustrate how the simulation can provide powerful insights into population coding in touch. Finally, we discuss how the model provides a means to establish naturalistic artificial touch in bionic hands.

A recent debate has emerged in the literature about a need for more global International Relations (IR), one which is truly international, to be worthy of its name. This paper outlines the multi-dimensional fragmentation in IR, which has prevented the emergence of a genuinely integrated and global discipline, and created a context in which the periphery cannot make original contributions to the core. The main purpose of this paper is to point out the major obstacles for such original contributions that emanate from the periphery itself. Aside from the general core-periphery fragmentation in the discipline, the periphery is collapsing within itself. From that perspective, the core and the periphery look more integrated, while the real division is between the periphery and the outer periphery. The outer periphery, while mostly invisible to the core, has real effects in IR practice, yet its nature and problems are not looked upon or handled by the current literature. Based on this observation, and using the Turkish example, four major problems of the outer periphery that affect the periphery and curtail its potential for original contributions are identified. (1) apathy towards western IR; (2) conspiracy theorizing, (3) chronological historicism; and (4) the outer peripherys influence on the mainstream periphery. After discussing these problems, it is concluded that the periphery can make contributions to the core only after it has helped the outer periphery solve its problems, and integration within the periphery is achieved. Only then can original contributions of the periphery to a truly international IR be possible.