Page 194 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

Ge SONG / The diffusion process of academic innovation 193

traversal weight it has. Black vertexes belong to the main path with a total of 11, and the remaining
44 are gray. Vertexes are labeled by “NO.: author-publication year-area”.

398:Burt-92-SO

396:Burt-95-SO
395:Walker-97-BE 394:Burt-97-BE
393:Burt-98-AN/SO 390:Burt-98-SO

384:Steier-00-BE 385:Burt-00-SOT 382:Burt-00-BE 379:Ahuja-00-BE 381:Finlay-00-BE/SO
377:Podolny-01-SO
374:Burt-02-AN/SO
367:Baum-03-BE
361:Pollock-04-BE 354:Burt-04-SO
346:Rowley-05-BE 347:Nerkar-05-BE/OM 349:Obstfeld-05-BE 344:Zaheer-05-BE 342:McEvity-05-BE
333:Shipilov-06-BE 330:Oh-06-BE
310:Kijkuit-07-BE 306:Fieming-07-BE 319:Balkundi-07-BE/PS 323:Willer-07-MA/MM/SO 305:Goyal-07-BE
273:Jensen-08-BE 282:Shipilov-08-BE 301:Soda-08-BE 287:Tiwana-08-BE 271:Buskens-08-SO
263:Shipilov-09-BE 255:Zaheer-09-BE 252:McFadyen-09-BE 248:Gargiulo-09-BE
220:Zaheer-10-BE 223:Kilduff-10-BE 188:Sasovova-10-BE 203:Lee-10-BE 219:Tortoriello-10-BE 194:Bidwell-10-BE
172:Gulati-11-PS/BE 136:Chauvet-11-BE 137:Soda-11-BE 144:Borgatti-11-BE
71:Burt-12-SO 106:McEvily-12-BE 105:Baurn-12-BE 117:Stovel-12-SO 103:Ahuja-12-BE
42:Latora-13-PH 17:Forti-13-BE/PA 3:Peng-13-CS/LIS
Figure 5. The diffusion main path component of structural holes theory.

From the perspective of the subject areas, the main path component constitutes Sociology,
Business & Economics. Besides, Anthropology and Psychology each have 2 literatures, while
Operations Research & Management Science, Public Administration, Mathematics, Physics,
Computer Science and LIS each have one literature. The key documents and spreading relations
are briefly described as below to reveal the procedure of re-innovation and re-diffusion in the
diffusion process of structural holes theory.
1) The book named Structural holes: The social structure of competition was published by Burt
in 1992 and becomes the source vertex of the main path component. This vertex has the highest
traversal weight value which is 1, and it belongs to the research in the area of Sociology.
2) Walker introduced the structural holes theory into Business & Economics in 1997 (Document
395). In the same year, Burt also involved in this field and published literature 394, which traversal
weight value is 0.284 2 and ranked fourth. These two documents closely linked the structural holes
theory to Business & Economics in the initial stage of diffusion, and provide a broad space for
development to structural holes theory.
3) Literature 393 published by Burt in 1998 integrated the research of structural holes theory