Why a special issue on “Social
networks and social networking”? Well, because in my opinion it is well overdue
since we have been in the “network age” for a very long time – let’s face it,
no matter how structured and controlled the organization, behind the formal
hierarchy, networks of people in, across, and up and down the org-chart really
govern pretty much everything that goes on – but, more particularly, because
over the last few years there has been a revolution in network-related
capability. At one level this is evident in our enhanced ability to analyze and
optimize social and technology networks for purpose, and at another level the
ability of individuals to be unhesitatingly and ceaselessly connected via
technology.
This revolution clearly impacts
many aspects of organizational design. More subtly perhaps, it also heightens the
criticality of socio-tech concerns. For example it raises questions related to
an organization’s workforce; currently many Gen X managers feel only marginally
comfortable with a PC and the web, whereas the Millennium Generation of
professionals embrace technologies like twitter and del.icio.us
quite naturally, and are already exploring Web 2.0. Is it Luddite to ask “What
does this portend for appropriate leadership capability? Will the infrequency
of face-to-face contact give rise to trust issues? Will the rush to exchange
online discussion-bytes and texting reduce attention spans, real dialogue, and
learning? What about confidentiality and security?” And so on and on!
A number of journals do address
various facets of social networks and/or social networking, but many are too
theoretical for the average manager or practitioner. TLO, with its
mandate to emphasize the practical implementation of concepts important to
organizations, has dipped a toe in this water before (The Learning
Organization, 2005) but not with such a precise focus. I am hopeful that TLO
will in future sponsor at least one special issue per year devoted to social
networks and social networking, and to their practical impact on organizations.
In this regard, I hope that you the reader will find the current SI to be a
good start.
Gareth Morgan in Images of
Organization (Morgan, 1986, pp. 130-1) recounts a story attributed to
Hampden-Turner about Picasso who was painting the portrait of a man’s wife. The
man decided to visit Picasso with an eye to the progress that had been made.
When they stood in front of the unfinished picture, Picasso asked the man “What
do you think?” The man tried to be polite and said “Well, it isn’t how she
really looks”. So Picasso asked “What does your wife really look like?” The man
produced a photo of his wife and handed it to Picasso. Picasso gazed at the
photo for a minute or so and then said “Mmm … small,
isn’t she?!” In the spirit of Picasso, I have attempted to provide in this SI a
number of viewpoints on the differing “realities” of social networks and
networking. I hope that you the reader will agree that the six excellent papers
included here illuminate many important facets of this topic; in this same
vein, the goal of future related SIs will be that a
reader should not say of this topic “Mmm … small,
isn’t it?!”
Patti Anklam
sets the scene through her exploration of “Net work”, starting in 1999 with the
application of social network analysis and visualization methods from the
social sciences to understand how organizations really work. She traces
development of applications during the dot com boom before providing a
perspective on emergent web technologies of a social interactive nature.
Patti’s paper provides a valuable guide to making sense of the plethora of
social tools, social networking sites, and web applications.
Verna Allee
provides an overview of value network analysis (VNA) together with examples and
insights from its practical application. VNA overcomes the “split” in business
management where human interactions and relationships reside in one world of
models and practices and business processes and transactions reside in another.
Verna’s paper expands the application of social or organizational network
analysis by pointing to a next generation of analysis and analytics that can
support organizational effectiveness.
Stephan Henneberg,
Juani Swart, Peter Naudé, Zhizhong Jiang and Stefanos Mouzas elucidate the role of social networks in mobilizing
how individuals both impact and are impacted on by their colleagues. They
compare the human resource management (HRM) academic community to two other
comparable communities and show the application of SNA to identify how groups
interact over time, and how a large network can be systematically analysed to reveal its underlying structure and properties.
Janel Smith’s paper is intended to stimulate
interest and investigation regarding solidarity networks which are much less
studied than social networks. She explores in depth the theoretical foundations
of solidarity networks and also their utility as an enabling force for social
organizations to influence change. Janel proposes a
theoretical framework for solidarity networks, and highlights elements of it
that are applicable to such important private-sector business issues as
sustainability, corporate responsibility, and innovation.
Hsi Chang Li, Sam Mirmirani
and Joseph Ilacqua focus on Confucius Institutes in
assessing the applicability of theories of leadership and knowledge sharing to
multinational organizations and worldwide networks. Their findings suggest that
distributed leadership is a suitable management style for coping with global
cultural and socio-political issues, and that when paired with a knowledge
sharing network the combination is suitable for complex decision making
globally in both learning institutions and business organizations.
Klara Palmberg, in
pursuing the development of knowledge, metaphors and language for management of
new forms of organizing, explores the concept of complex adaptive systems (CAS)
from the perspective of managing organizations. To this end Klara
presents a “CAS – system management” model for managing organizations and
illustrates its application via a case study of management principles in an
organization with unconventional ways of management.
As always the comments of you,
the reader, are much appreciated.
Guest Editor
(The) Learning Organization (2005), “Knowledge sharing”, The
Learning Organization, Vol. 12 No. 6, special issue (Guest Editor: Peter
A.C. Smith)
Morgan, G. (1986), Images of
Organization, Sage Publications,