Cross-national similarities in the personal networks of small business owners: A comparison of two regions in North America

Following Granovetter (1985), we propose a social embeddedness model of business relations to explain how the personal networks of business owners are constructed. Using questionnaire survey data on 261 business owners in Atlantic Canada and the Research Triangle area in North Carolina, we examine two issues: what are the characteristics of business owners' personal networks; and to what extent does social networking behavior vary across regions with different business environments? Our empirical results are consistent with the embeddedness model. in both regions, friends and family are at the centre of owners' networks, the networks are of long duration, and the owners make moderate use of brokers in assembling network members.