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Ronald Stuart Burt (born 1949) is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. He is most notable for his research and writing on social networks and social capital, particularly the concept of structural holes in a social network.

Originally a pre-medical major, Burt earned his B.A. in social and behavioral sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 1971 with a focus on social psychology. He earned a M.A. in Sociology from The State University of New York at Albany in 1973 working with Nan Lin. He moved to the University of Chicago to work with mathematical sociology professor James Samuel Coleman and earned his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1977.^[2] His dissertation committee also included the social network analyst Edward Laumann.

Prior to joining the University of Chicago in 1993, he was a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. He is also the former Shell Professor of Human Resources at INSEAD and has held various organizational development positions at Raytheon.

He currently resides in the Milan metropolitan area.

He is the author of several books on sociology, organization behavior and network analysis, including Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Harvard University Press, 1992) and Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford University Press, 2005) His research has been published in numerous academic journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Social Networks, Sociological Inquiry, and others.

• Burt, Ronald S. (2010). Neighbor Networks: Competitive Advantages Local and Personal. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199691913.
• Burt, Ronald S. (2005). Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199249152.
• Burt, Ronald S. (1992). Structural holes: the social structure of competition. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-84371-4.
• Burt, Ronald S.; Minor, Michael J., eds. (1983). Applied Network Analysis: A Methodological Introduction. Sage Publications. ISBN 978-0803919075.
• Burt, Ronald S. (1982). Toward a Structural Theory of Action: Network Models of Social Structure, Perception, and Action. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0121471507.

• Burt, Ronald S. (1997). "The Contingent Value of Social Capital". Administrative Science Quarterly. 42 (2): 339–365. doi:10.2307/2393923. ISSN 0001-8392. JSTOR 2393923.
• Burt, Ronald S. (2000). "The network structure of social capital". Research in Organizational Behavior. 22: 345–423. doi:10.1016/S0191-3085(00)22009-1. ISSN 0191-3085.
• Burt, Ronald S. (2004). "Structural Holes and Good Ideas". American Journal of Sociology. 110 (2): 349–399. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.388.2251. doi:10.1086/421787. ISSN 0002-9602. S2CID 2152743.
• Burt, Ronald S. (1987). "Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion versus Structural Equivalence". American Journal of Sociology. 92 (6): 1287–1335. doi:10.1086/228667. ISSN 0002-9602. S2CID 22380365.
• Burt, R S (1980). "Models of Network Structure". Annual Review of Sociology. 6 (1): 79–141. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.06.080180.000455. ISSN 0360-0572.

• Personal website
• University of Chicago homepage
• Bocconi University Homepage