Contemporary Organisations as Social Networks

You may have already associated the title above with Facebook or Twitter. This piece of text, however, is not about these or any other social networks on the cyber space. This is our Business School’s BedsBiz Blog and we talk Business here. My intention is then to shed a light into a different perspective of the term social networks and let you see how it fits within contemporary organisations.

Here, I tend to draw the focus to the concept of organisation and a particular angle of looking at it, namely a social network. Indeed, organisations are social structures designed to get projects and tasks done through the co-operation of individuals. People are thus the pillars of organisations – the entities that make up a social network and strengthen the ties within it. Borders of organisations are not, however, always clear as they have numerous stakeholders that should be ‘convinced’ to co-operate and contribute to social discourse. The latter being fundamental to meeting organisations’ objectives. Organisations may then sometimes be loosely represented. These challenges involve utilising a chain of authority or command - that is, a network.

Organisations use internal and external networks to develop ideas and products, share knowledge – thus helping them decide what to do and how to do it. What do we understand by internal network? This is when the network is embedded within the organisation. In other words, the internal social network is a reflection of the individuals constructing and acting as agents of the organisation. In today’s increasingly globalising business environment, most organisations are also being part of larger, external social networks, thus contemporary organisations are open systems. They cannot perform in isolation, as two of the key characteristics of business organisations are to co-operate and compete - both scenarios involving interaction with either allies or foes.

Let’s pick our Business School as an example. One would probably notice that the School can be such network as well – both internal and external. Internal, as the Business School organisation is a social network per se. It involves horizontal and vertical co-ordination of departments and other internal bodies allowing for better delegation of tasks and responsibilities and importantly, communication among individuals representing the network. External, as the School is also part of the wider University network involving communication with individuals representing various bodies within the University of Bedfordshire. Through our external engagement with partner colleges abroad (e.g. Oman and Singapore), or business engagement with local, national and international companies, our School is also sharing knowledge and ideas, thus being part of external social networks.

It turns that organisations tend to be more network-centric than ever with our Business School being just one of many examples. Network-centric organisations are new organisational forms emerging in knowledge-intensive industries, such as the Higher Education (HE) and Information Technologies (IT) sectors. And this is the natural way they evolve in today’s dynamic operational environment. This is where the network is equally important for nurturing alliances to tap into opportunities or boost competitiveness, as well as to cope with conflicting organisations, or even negative external scenarios having economic, environmental, and social dimensions.

About the Author: Deyan Hristov

Deyan is a Graduate Academic Assistant at the University of Bedfordshire Business School, where he has been engaged in various research projects. He joined the Business School in January 2013 and has also been working towards completing his PhD in organisational change since then.