|
Network
Plasticity and Collaborative Innovation:
|
|
|
|
ABSTRACT While some research
suggests that social networks, organizational behavior, and innovative
outcomes influence each other in a co-evolutionary process, very few studies
have explored these processes in detail because of the difficulties of collecting
longitudinal network data. Using a multi-case,
inductive study of eight technology collaborations between ten firms in the
computing and communications industries, this paper examines the
organizational processes that enable managers to influence network dynamics
and generate collaborative innovations.
Comparisons of successful and unsuccessful collaborations show that
rather than leverage existing ties that span organizational boundaries,
managers of successful collaborations prune networks of existing
broker ties that are information bottlenecks in the emerging collaboration
network. Second, rather than relying
on spontaneous social processes to remake these networks, managers of
successful collaborations begin to remake these networks by pairing actors
with complementary knowledge across organizational boundaries, forming a
loose lattice at the executive, manager, and engineering levels the binds the
two organizations together. Third,
once this loose lattice structure is in place, managers of successful
collaborations encourage spontaneous
formation processes such as homophily which increases the density of the
boundary spanning network. By
contrast, mangers of less successful collaborations either do not prune prior
ties, fail to make new ties, or make new ties based on inappropriate criteria
such as functional equivalence. Taken
together, the combination of formal (pruning and pairing) and informal
(encouraging homophily) processes reorganize the collaboration network to
promote accelerated knowledge transfer and recombination. A primary contribution of the paper is an
outline of an emerging paradigm that explains how organizations shape network
dynamics to achieve important strategic objectives such as innovation. In contrast to structuralist and naturalist
perspectives that dominate the literature, this perspective suggests that
social network theory has a unique character in organizational contexts where
formal processes such as pruning and pairing play an important role in
network dynamics and supplement informal network processes in society at
large. The key construct that distinguishes
organizations in this emerging theory is network
plasticity – that is, the capacity of managers to change social networks
inside organizations to achieve organizational objectives. Comments are welcome. |
|
|
