Can you have your Cake and Eat it too? Structural Holes' Influence on Status Accumulation and Market Performance in Collaborative Networks

Analyses of investment banks acting as advisers for merger and acquisition transactions in the United Kingdom during 1992–2001 are used to examine the relationship between structural holes in a firm's network and its performance. We argue that the firms need two types of information—about new business opportunities and partners' cooperativeness—to pursue, respectively, two types of performance goals: status accumulation and market performance. Open networks facilitate access to information about new business opportunities, but at the same time, open ego networks limit access to information about partners' cooperativeness. We find that there is a positive and reciprocal relationship between status accumulation and market performance. We also find that structural holes increase firms' status accumulation but also dampen their market performance.