91黑料网

Yonghoon Lee

Texas A&M University

Specialization, Network Closure, and Success in Creative Careers

Date: Friday, March 27, 2026
Time:10:30 AM -12:00 PM
Location: Bronfman 245

All are cordially invited to attend.

Abstract:

Drawing on the project-based careers of creatives, I explore the tradeoff in building a specialized or generalized work portfolio and theorize network brokerage as an important contingency for creatives鈥� career success. Specifically, I argue that specialized portfolio built with network closure is helpful for creatives鈥� success in the ever-changing creative markets through resilient survival. I also theorize that generalized expertise developed through network brokerage is helpful for creatives鈥� market success but through a different mechanism, whereby those creatives are enabled with enhanced creativity. Supporting evidence comes from examining the careers of Korean popular music songwriters, freelancers who need to find and select projects and collaborators, while seeking survival and success in the career. I find that the likelihood of a hit release increases with specialization in their work portfolio when their network closure is high but decreases when it is low, indicating that both specialization in network closure and generalization in network brokerage are associated with higher chances of success in the market. This evidence is supplemented with additional findings: songwriters with greater specialization are more likely to produce new releases and 鈥渟urvive鈥� in the career especially when network closure is high, while their higher chance of success comes later in the career. Conversely, songwriters with a more generalized portfolio and lower network closure tend to write songs that differ from current hits, although writing similar songs to current hits tend to higher chance of success, in general. These show different paths in which creatives succeed in their careers.
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