Latent ties identification in inter-firms social networks

Social networks are usually analyzed through manifest variables. However there are social latent aspects that strongly qualify the networks. This paper aims to propose a statistical methodology to identify latent variable in inter-firm social networks. A multidimensional scaling technique is proposed to measure this latent variable as a combination of an appropriate set of two or more manifest relational aspects. This method, tested on an inter-firm social network in theMarche region, is a new way to grasp social aspect with quantitative tools that could be implemented under several different conditions, using also other variables