Social Networks 179
branched-out trade networks evolved. Since most Hanseatic merchants oper-
ated as self-employed traders, these networks were not only networks of
people, but also networks of firms. Thus a further feature of such networks
was that they consisted of firms of quasi-equal rank. Nevertheless, these net-
works did not have a formal or legal definition. They lacked formal hierarchies
and showed only a small degree of formalism. Moreover, there were no head-
quarters, and all the trading activities had to be coordinated by means differ-
ent from hierarchy. Hence it follows that the organizational form of Hanseatic
trade networks cannot be judged using Max Weber’s nineteenth-century-style
model of bureaucratic organization.36 As a medieval example37 of the modern
paradigm of network organization,38 this form fits into the conceptual frame-
work of present-day organization theory accordingly.39 A network organization
36 See on the effect of Max Weber’s theories on organization science Jürgen Hauschildt,
“Entwicklungslinien der Organisationstheorie,” Berichte aus den Sitzungen der Joachim
Jungius Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften e.V. 5/5 (1987), 3–21.
37 See on networks of persons built to fulfil commercial purposes and networking strate-
gies of merchants in pre-modern and modern times e.g. Gunnar Dahl, Trade, Trust, and
Networks: Commercial Culture in Late Medieval Italy (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 1998);
Francine Rolley, “Entre économie ancienne et économie de marché: Le rôle des réseaux
de parenté dans le commerce du bois au xviiie siècle,” Annales de démographie historique
(1995), 75–96; Claude Markovits, The Global World of Indian Merchants 1750–1947: Traders
of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Magrit
Schulte-Beerbühl and Jörg Vögele, eds., Spinning the Commercial Web: International
Trade, Merchants and Commercial Cities 1640–1939 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2004);
Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, eds., Diaspora
Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History (Oxford: Berg, 2005).
38 See on the concept of network organization e.g. Walter W. Powell, “Neither Market nor
Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization,” Research in Organisational Behaviour 10
(1990): 295–336; Joseph Galaskiewicz, “The ‘New Network Analysis’ and its Application
to Organizational Theory and Behavior,” in Dawn Iacobucci, ed., Networks in Marketing
(Thousand Oakes: Sage, 1996), 19–31; Anne Illinitch et al., “New Organisational Forms
and Strategies for Managing in Hypercompetitive Environment,” Organization Science 7
(1996), 211–220; Richard N. Osborn and John Hagedoorn, “The Institutionalisation and
Evolutionary Dynamics of Inter-organisational Alliances and Networks,” Academy of
Management Journal 40 (1997), 261–278; Thomas Ritter and Hans-Georg Gemünden, “Die
netzwerkende Unternehmung: Organisationale Voraussetzungen netzwerk-kompetenter
Unternehmen,” Zeitschrift für Organisation 67 (1998), 260–265; Grahame F. Thompson,
Between Hierachies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
39 Stephan Selzer and Ulf Christian Ewert, “Verhandeln und Verkaufen, Vernetzen und
Vertrauen: Über die Netzwerkstruktur des hansischen Handels,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter
119 (2001), 135–161; Ulf Christian Ewert and Stephan Selzer, “Wirtschaftliche Stärke durch