Raffaele Corrado

Between Supply and Demand: Intermediaries, Social Networks and the Construction of Quality in the Italian Wine Industry

The working of markets implies decisions basedon incomplete and costly information; as aconsequence, the mechanisms through which thisinformation is produced and made available toactors are very important. Most prominent amongsuch mechanisms is the role of intermediaryactors that do not make production orconsumption choices, but influence thesechoices by sorting products into categories. Wefocus on intermediary actors that expressevaluations of products, as a mechanism thatfosters the convergence of supply and demand inexchanges. Personal social networks thatconnect supply and demand perform this rolewhen exchanges are bound to narrow contexts.Intermediaries replace these ties in massmarkets; in such broader context socialnetworks are found here to play an importantrole in the relationships between intermediaryactors and the supply side of the market.The empirical context of our work is theItalian wine industry, characterized by theimportance of wine guides that influence thebehaviors of producers and consumers byevaluating the quality of wines. Theambiguities intrinsic to this evaluationdescribe the grey area within which differentdefinitions of quality are equally legitimate.We analyze the quality ratings of 967 Italianwines reported by the two most prominentItalian wine guides in the period 1996–2000.Our goal is to show that, given the intrinsicambiguity involved in wine evaluation, thereare systematic differences in the scoresassigned to products, and that the pattern ofthese differences reflects variations in thesocial networks that connect the two guides tothe supply side of the market.

The social and economic bases of network multiplexity: Exploring the emergence of multiplex ties

The goal of this article is to shed light on the role of tie content in the evolution of multiplex ties – i.e., ties featuring both an economic and a social component – in interorganizational networks. The authors clarify and extend the theoretical framework on network multiplexity by testing the extent to which two distinct tie content-related logics – social interaction and economic exchange – and their underlying mechanisms lead to the emergence of multiplex ties. Results from a longitudinal network analysis of firms located in an Italian multimedia cluster support the authors’ hypotheses, confirming that both social and economic drivers contribute to the emergence of network multiplexity, and that social ties have a stronger impact than economic ties on this process, thus providing further insight into the microdynamics of network evolution.

Winemakers and Wineries in the Evolution of the Italian Wine Industry: 1997–2006

This work concerns the role of winemakers as independent consultants of wineries with respect to recent changes in the Italian wine industry. Internationalisation and new consumption styles have turned the wine market into a mass market. Furthermore, new actors have emerged that mediate the convergence of supply and demand, and foster the adoption of new winemaking practices. Innovations in winemaking have had to overcome the resistance of the advocates of the traditional conception of quality, institutionalised by the denomination of origin regulations. Independent winemaking consultants and industry media, mainly wine guides, were key actors behind the innovations that fit the new context. We document the growing importance of winemaking consultants, and how they have been complemented by wine guides. We analyse the networks of wineries induced by the multiple affiliations of winemakers, as reported by the oldest Italian guide, I Vini di Veronelli, in the period 1997–2006. In these networks two wineries are tied if a winemaker has an affiliation with both of them. We analyse the evolution of these networks, and assess whether the structural position of a winery is associated with the ratings of its wines.

A New Order of Things: Network Mechanisms of Field Evolution in the Aftermath of an Exogenous Shock

This study examines the role of a major environmental shock in triggering change in the social structure of an organizational field. Based on the longitudinal analysis of changing network configurations in the global airline industry, we explore how logics of attachment shift before, during and after an exogenous shock and how the rewiring of network ties in response to the shock may act as a countervailing force to the network dynamics that drive field stratification. Using the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as a natural experiment, our work reveals how shocks may affect key mechanisms of network evolution thus altering tie distribution and access among members of the field. Overall this article contributes to emergent literature on field dynamics by exposing the evolution of interorganizational dynamics when external events produce unsettled times that render extant logics brittle and open prospects for change.

Professional emergence and boundary work in the Italian wine industry: ‘Nella botte piccola c’è il vino buono’: Topics and Issues from European Research

Marco Bottura, Raffaele Corrado, Bernard Forgues, and Vincenza Odorici focus on the issue of field-level change by discussing the transformation of the Italian wine industry. Conceptually, apart from different strands of institutional thought, they make particular use of the sociology of professions and the concept of boundary objects in the social studies of science and technology. By applying network analysis, they show the emergence of a new field structure where experts, consultants, ratings and rankings increasingly shape the field. Professional winemakers are of outstanding importance here, as they spread their expert knowledge throughout the network and connect wineries and, ultimately, their products in a hitherto unknown way.

Is there a global small world of owners and directors

This chapter investigates whether a global small world of business owners and corporate directors exists. It evaluates the descriptive power of the tools of the new science of networks to understand governance networks and examines how corporate control had changed in the 1990s and to whose advantage. The findings indicate that the global transnational graph is still strongly structured by national governance networks and that owners and directors are strongly connected to their national markets but loosely connected to other national governance networks.