Social Network Research: Managing 21st Organization (Essay Sample)

Social Network
Student’s Name
Institution of Learning
Managing 21st Organization
There are complex connections through which our economies operate. There is a large web that inter-connects every individual in the organization to another. In the late 1980s, some researchers started noticing that some of the managers were better in accomplishing their objectives than others through relationships. John Kotter discovered that managers who are effective spend 80% of their time with others. This made other scholars to see the need for relationships and conversations with management. Social networks enable those in managerial positions to reach others within or without the organization in order to acquire information, advice and solutions to the problems that they have. Their positive outcomes in productivity with both social and human capital. The managers who had good personal networks were found to be more productive.
According to Hansen, teams that had good network connections were easily able to reach other teams and acquire information that teams that had a poor network connection and therefore had high productivity. He also found out that those teams that used both direct and indirect ties to link with others were more successful while those that were only based on direct connections were overwhelmed with so many ties and did not do well. The better the connections are the better since they offer connections top nodes that an organization has no access to. The best ties to monitor whatever is taking place in an organization is the diverse radial network, which contains many ties that are indirect (Partridge, 2011). It also will help to discover the pockets of expertise and knowledge. However, the network may not be useful in transfer of knowledge. It depends on the type of knowledge that is to be transferred. For example the best connection that could be used to transfer explicit knowledge which is easy to codify would be indirect through various technologies such as the FTP, email or the webs that are worldwide.
On the other hand, a direct interaction is required for complex tacit knowledge and sharing of experience between an individual with the other. Tacit knowledge requires a direct connection with the establishment of the knowledge source. In most cases, network ties in organizations are unevenly distributed. Those who work together form networks while the network combinations form the cluster around the working relationships that are established (Knoke, 2008). Clusters differ with each other where some have many ties, whereas others have fewer ties. Long paths within the organization at times arise if there is a poor connection in the clusters. There is usually much constraint in acquiring the knowledge that one requires if the paths between the clusters are long.
If a network is created between professionals or the community, it...