Book Review: Epinets: The Epistemic Structure and Dynamics of Social Networks

Mihnea C. Moldoveanu, A. C. Joel Baum: Epinets: The Epistemic Structure and Dynamics of Social Networks. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2014. 187 pp. $44.96, hardcover.

You can read the book review by Matthew S. Bothner of the European School of Management and Technology and Henning Piezunka of INSEAD in the December 2015 issue of Administrative Science Quarterly. From the review:

Valuable ideas and leads mark each chapter. Weick (1996) famously asked organization theorists to “drop their tools” if they wish to gain new insights, but many have been reluctant to do so because of the lack of new tools. Moldoveanu and Baum make a case in chapter 1 (p. 3) for a new “tool kit for modeling, measuring, and manipulating” epinets using a series of intriguing vignettes, and in chapter 2 they discuss their tools in detail. They illustrate their epistemic description language (EDL) in a way that is rigorous and accessible, yet not pedantic. We see their tool kit—intuitions, concepts, language, and methods—not as forcing a full-scale abandonment of existing tools but as complementing existing approaches and, in some cases, forcing researchers to soberly rethink their use of those approaches.

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