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188 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

Continued
Number of Proportion of Adoption
No. Research areas (abbr)
papers total (%) year
25 SOCIAL WORK (SW) 1 0.25 1998
26 RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE (RM) 1 0.25 2012
27 REHABILITATION (RE) 1 0.25 2013
28 PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH (PO) 1 0.25 2011
29 PHYSICS (PH) 1 0.25 2013
30 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (IR) 1 0.25 2013
31 HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (HP) 1 0.25 2010
32 HISTORY (HI) 1 0.25 2011
33 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES (HC) 1 0.25 2009
34 FAMILY STUDIES (FS) 1 0.25 2013
35 ENERGY & FUELS (EF) 1 0.25 2013
36 BIOTECHNOLOGY & APPLIED MICROBIOLOGY (BA) 1 0.25 2013
37 BIOMEDICAL SOCIAL SCIENCES (BS) 1 0.25 2011
38 AREA STUDIES (AS) 1 0.25 2011

Structural holes theory originated in Sociology, but got in-depth study and application in
Business and Economics. Cumulative adoption percentage in these two areas is more than 80%.
Other main diffusion areas include Public Administration, Psychology, and Information Science &
Library Science. In addition, some studies have not limited in the Social Science, but also involves
Science and Engineering, Agriculture and Medicine and the Humanities, such as Engineering,
Geography, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, Computer Science, Communication, Mathematics,
Agriculture, Transportation, Telecommunications, Physics, Energy & Fuels, Biotechnology &
Applied Microbiology, Geriatrics & Gerontology, Research & Experimental Medicine, Health Care
Sciences & Services, History & Philosophy of Science, History, etc.
Table 2 also shows the relationship between the adoption time and the amount of published
papers. For the subject areas that generated more than 5 relevant papers, the adoption time of
structural holes theory were basically in the start stage of diffusion curve, namely before 2007. For
the subject areas that produced less than 5 related papers, most of them adopted the structural holes
theory after the take-off stage, which means they introduced the theory in the rapid growth period
of diffusion. Among them, most of the disciplines with only one paper adopted structural holes
theory during the last three years.
The diffusion curves of structural holes theory in five major subject areas are shown in Figure 3.
The shapes of those curves which are similar to the curve in Figure 2. As we can see from Figure 3,
the start time and the diffusion stages of each curve are different. For the adoption time, structural
holes theory spread to Business & Economics, Public Administration and Psychology in 1997-1999