Network Effect on Creativity and Organization Formation: An Empirical Examination of Korean Popular Musician Network before and after the Drug Investigation in 1975

Abstract

Researches on collaborative relationship and creativity suggest that certain structural position is beneficial for creativity based on the idea of knowledge transfer and combination via collaborative ties. However, most of studies pay less attention to conditions that can hinder this positional benefit. Also, some network conditions can shape network dynamics. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether existence of high status actors affect topological benefit and network dynamics. This study examine affiliation network of Korean popular music band and solo artists, especially before and after the momentary drug investigation of popular music artists (The Ninth Emergency Act in 1975) in order to test whether sudden elimination of high status actors in the network can enables network effect of knowledge transfer and combination on creativity. The analysis pop music band network and musician network suggests that positional benefit does not function under the existence of strong high status actors, whereas it does after their elimination. Also, this study shows that collaboration between distant actors in terms of structural characteristics and prior experience were more likely to form a collaborative relationship under the presence of high status actors. This study highlights importance of historical condition of interorganizational structure in studying collaboration and its effect.