The Nets We Weave

Leadership Books

2007-01-25T07:16:00.000-08:00

A former (and current!) student (Jenna Camann) asked me if I would supply a list of leadership books for the University bookstore to highlight as part of a leadership series leading up to an event. I was happy to help, and it was great to see a student taking such an active role in the academic and co-curricular life of the university.

She has been working with a Dean form student affairs to develop a leadership program, and they are both interested in building a more solid bridge to the classroom and academics (one that goes both ways). I know "leadership" as a field often tries to integrate academics and practice, with practice winning out maybe more often than not. As Bucknell changes its management curriculum, it will be interesting to see what happens to this leadership program as it is mostly being pushed from outside the faculty.

Here is a list of leadership books that I am suggesting. These mostly reflect two of my own interests 1) leadership of organizations as political coalitions and 2) books I would want to curl up with and spend more time exploring. Also, I tried to add some "classics" to avoid the infatuation with novelty so rampant in most business publishing.

In no order:

Rules for Radicals Alinksy, Saul.

Beyond The Hype. Eccles, Robert; Nohria, Nitin and Berkley, James

The Fifth Discipline. Senge, Peter (This si a new Edition, I am not sure how much has been updated.)

The Lifelong Activist. Rettig, Hillary.

Geeks and Geezers. Bennis, Warren.

Building the Bridge as you Walk On It. Quinn, Robert E.

And, to leaven them all, a great book by Chris Argyris.

Flawed Advice and the Management Trap: How Managers Can Know When They're Getting Good Advice and When They're Not. Argyris, Chris.

First Day Down, 42/14 to go

2007-01-18T06:45:00.000-08:00

Back in the saddle for "Six Degrees of Separation" and first time for "Organization Theory."

Egads, OT is an awful name for a course. Especially since I want to focus on org stories, org data, validating theory. At the least, we should call it org theorizing (genuflect to Karl Weick).

Six Degrees seemed great. Amazing how the second time through makes all seem easier. They read an essay from Chronicle of Higher Education by Jeffrey Nesteruk that links up social capital and liberal education. Just making sure the (clients) students get to appreciate what they are in for.

In OT we had three hours, so lots of icebreakers, a simulation of an org. Read Senge "The Leaders' New Work." Leaders need to be designers, teachers, stewards. Me: OK, to develop those roles you need the knowledge and mental discipline of org theorizing.

Tonight: "Rise of the Network Society."

Source on Privatization of Intelligence

2007-01-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

Heard interview with TIM SHORROCK, an author who investigates privatization of intelligence operations by US.

Democracy now interview.

This is a possible future research thread for me. Critics will say privatization doesn't work by its own metrics of effectiveness and cost efficiency. Why does it persist then? How is it institutionally perpetuated? A network image springs to mind- there is a thick and lumpy skin of overlaping contractors around the core funding source of US intelligence. There are network questions. There is the revolving door phenomenon. There are also 1,000s of top secret classification analysts who leave government and then install with private contractors at big premiums.

Note to self: x-post with MGMT339 blpog.

Cute picture of Thea

2007-01-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

A ridiculously cute picture of my daughter, Dorothea "Thea."

Tip to her maternal grandfather.

2007-01-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

Two paragraphs I like from my draft teaching statement.

I don't know if they will make the final cut. I don't know if the amalgam of moments will work, but since writing about teaching usually sounds like airy cool-whip generalities (all the same and all bland), I hope this is acceptable risk.

“Line up in a circle!” The first year students in my foundation seminar (or the seniors in an Organization Change class) pause, look puzzled, and then shuffle with the studied aloofness of adolesence that they have not quite yet shed into something a misshapen ellipse. A simple game follows. I ask students to describe what they have been doing in one word. “Weird. Fun. Chaotic. Unexpected.” These are typical responses. “How is your learning Weird? Unexpected?” They loosen up. They share a story of how they discovered an unspoken norm in the last place they worked. We shift back to our seats. I praise the day’s discussion leader for her astute questions. I ask them: “You are a new manager at an advertising firm. Is it better to have four links to four clusters of four people, or sixteen to links to everyone?” They discuss both in terms of ideas of centrality, effectiveness, and information redundancy using the day’s readings. I continue: “How could we discover which is better? What kinds of questions would you ask?” We record their responses on the board and post them later on a class forum so that they can use these ideas as they pursue their final research or service-learning projects.

In this amalgam of moments from my classes, I am illustrating the three guiding principles of my teaching. These are: the wisdom of social science, experiential cycles, and building a community of learners. To “line up in a circle,” throws my students off-guard. They pause on the way to complying. In a minute way, the pause throws into relief the ability to take the flow of experience, language, and influence that permeates our normal existence and to hold those moments, large and small, at arm’s length. To be in and out of the moment simultaneously is, for me, one of the delights of knowing the wisdom of the social sciences. I point my students towards the unexpected and with readings, movies, activities, humor, or provocative questions.

Teaching SNA resorsz

2006-12-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

David Lazer at the Kennedy Center for Networked Governance has a nice collection of syllabi and course links.

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov/html/sna_courses_events.htm

I'll need to check out what other people are up to.

Networks and Movements

2006-12-19T06:50:00.000-08:00

This looks interesting. And it is the kind of work I think I should be doing. I don't know the (vast?) social movement literature real well, but what a chance to explore it. The obstacle I wonder about is how to get data in such a compressed time frame.

Are these topical special issues more for people already for people well-entrenched in their sub-sub area, as opposed to being incentives for hungry young scholars like me to branch out? Or maybe incentives for wiley old scholars (not me) to reinvent themselves?

And to collaborate with someone presupposes I am appealing to collaborate with. How do you become very appealing? Seems like a chicken-and-egg problem.

Cluck, cluck...

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue on Social Movements in Organizations and Markets

The Administrative Science Quarterly is seeking papers for a special issue on Social Movements in Organizations and Markets, guest edited by Gerald Davis, Calvin Morrill, Hayagreeva Rao, and Sarah Soule. Social movements are motors of cultural, technological, and institutional innovation in organizations and markets and have increasingly attracted the attention of organizational researchers. Organizations are both actors in, and sites of, social movement activities; moreover, movements and organizations share common mechanisms of organized action. A special issue provides an opportunity for ASQ to develop better theory about organizations and organizing in the light of contestation and collective action.

The guest editors encourage submissions of theoretical and empirical work on social movements in organizations and markets. We invite contributions that span the interorganizational, organizational, and the person level. The call for papers, and some prospective topics, can be viewed at:
http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/

The last date for submissions is May 1, 2007. Manuscripts in ASQ format can be submitted to Asq-submit@johnson.cornell.edu, with the subject-line heading "Social Movements Special Issue." See the Notice to Contributors on the ASQ Web page (http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) for information on preparing manuscripts.

The last date for submissions is May 1, 2007. Manuscripts in ASQ format can be submitted to Asq-submit@johnson.cornell.edu, with the subject-line heading "Social Movements Special Issue." See the Notice to Contributors on the ASQ Web page (http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) for information on preparing manuscripts.

Variety of opinions on letters

2006-12-19T06:47:00.000-08:00

I am applying for a tenure track job at Bucknell. I need three letters fo reference. I have been canvassing folks to find out if my third pletter is better to be from someone who is topically simialr (organizations) but in a different field (Socioloy) and who can say more about me than a necessarily more shallow letter from someone at another univeristy who is more clearly a network/management scholar.

So far, the opinions range widely from the first option is good tpop the first option is a mistake.

Anyone want to weigh in?

Teaching OT… impossible?

2006-12-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

So a colleague tells me that no one knows how to teach Organization Theory [OT]. He tells me about seeing a presentation by an author of an OT textbook in which the author claims that she/he won’t teach OT anymore.

GRRRRRRREEEEEEEATTTT….

This is one of the classes I am teaching next semester.

Before I read his message, I had just spent two hours in vain trying to find reviews of Mary Jo Hatch’s Organization Theory; Modern, Symbolic, and Post-Modern Perspectives and Gareth Jones’ Organization Theory, Design ,and Change. No luck.

Three ideas I am kicking around now include
1) Groups of students will select a rich, ethnographic or narrative book-length account of a particular organization. I looked for works with lots of detail and engaging stories and little analysis. This way they can deeply engage with this story, almost treat it as a source of qualitative data, and test drive some OT perspectives.
2) Use cases and case preparation to foster in-class discussion.
3) Maintain a “scrapbook” of organizational theory ideas and links based on news and current events. I was initially imagining an actual scrapbook, but am toying with the idea of a blog. Students could be required to post regularly and comment on each other’s.

More later…

My World, circa now

2006-12-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

There is much to do in the next month. Classes to plan, jobs to apply for, papers to write. Through all of this, I am focused on how to define my scholarly trajectory. The Spanish word is “rumbo” meaning the bearing a ship follows while navigating.

In the revising stage I have a paper on brokerage and closure. I would like to revise this so it more accurately reflects the most current research including Burt’s 2006 book by the same title. I also have some additional data to collect if I can that is domain experts being asked to rate ideas on a radical-incremental scale so I can test reliability. I need to find a study that does that as well.

In the drafting stage, I have “Innovation^Social.” (the title has social as the exponent). This is a poster/paper for the Organization Science winter conference. I went two years ago and it was a great conference for meeting people and seeing how ideas come about. (Capped off by a mock trial for the paradigm wars with Bill McKelvey and Ralph Stablein squaring off and Stewart Clegg as the judge. I should revisit that event). To do this paper, I will immerse myself in SIENA, the cool longitudinal network statistics package. If I get it, this will allow me to take longitudinal data of networks and node attributes and tease out direct and interaction effects for multiple dependent variables.

Of course, there is my dissertation. I am waiting to see if it needs more revision. Also, moving forward there is this fundamental trade off between trying to extract more publications or material from that data, which may prove futile, versus starting newer projects which, for the same amount of effort, may lead to more concrete success. Ha! It’s an exploitation versus exploration problem!
A third paper possibility that is kicking around in my head is to take the core ideas from the introduction about how to integrate OL and networks and develop that into a theory paper for AOM, a conference (Europe?) and maybe AMR or some other venue down the road. This would involve revising, looking more a literature to see if someone else is not already doing this, and fleshing out what networks would do to each stage of OL (creating, retaining, and transferring). Finally reading Argote’s book that develops the C,R,T model is probably also a good idea. D’oh!

Then there are new possibilities. I feel like I have to be careful because I tend to be seduced by the glint of novelty. Nonetheless, several factors come together to induce me to ponder new possibilities. One, I just savor the feeling of new vistas now that I pulled myself up to a new plateau with the dissertation. Two, I am sick of the Mg 101 data. Three, the organizational change class I taught this semester gave me a real hunger to be close to ground truth; to practitioners, to tangible value creation. So, I would love to develop some scholarship that gets me closer to OD or change efforts. I use scholarship pointedly because I mean research but also more practical efforts. I have flirted with the ideas of action science, praxis, or my own consulting practice before. Being scholarly, then, is about developing this way as well. Fourth, I am interested in how to take my new network knowledge and skills and link them up with other fields including organizational development and consulting. Synthesizing networks and other research domains extends to networks and innovation, networks and social entrepreneurs, networks and public management, networks and power, and networks and social movements. Fifth, I am more and more interested in social entrepreneurship, social innovation as they like to say at Stanford. Its optimistic nature fans my own idealism and its practicality feeds the hunger for practical action.

Immediate possibilities that grow out of this convergence of inducement factors:

☼ The IBM grant program through its business of government program. My kernel of an idea is about local government using social capital strategies to encourage business innovation or to solve sticky problems like regional planning.

☼ The NSF grant program for http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5378. Maybe there is something with Keystone Innovation Zones and Regional planning and land use.

☼ Exploring Food and Green innovations in terms of longitudinal networks and developing local trust-based economies. This is Dreamcatcher, Sweet Meriam’s, and maybe others.

☼ Looking an network coaching for organizations and companies. This would be the Cross and Parker approach in terms of using fairly straight forward approaches to networks to help companies improve innovation, knowledge flows, adaptiveness, and positive sense of community. I am not sure how much off the shelf software there is to do for this.

☼ An idea Mark Ciavarella and I kicked around awhile ago was to look at leadership and networks over time. This would use similar methodology to the InnovationSocial paper for OSWC13. We could have MG 101 companies answer network surveys at two or three point sin time, as well as some standard leadership trait questions. We could combine this with advocacy and adoption info to test whether network position or leadership or both mattered more for formal leadership roles (won through elections).

☼ Network Fascism. This is an idea inspired by Stephen Barley’s speech at AOM last year. His argument was that lots of organizations that used to be variably arranged in temporary alliances to influence the government have now coalesced into a solid ring mediating all relationships between the “people” and the government in our republican democracy. He had some nice case studies. This is a scientific and normative question. What struck me was the intersection of private and nationalistic interests. This seems to me one of then tenets of fascism. Whereas Italian or German fascism may have had organized fascism, the idea that wide-ranging and flexible networks of organizations could have the emergent effect of merging capitalist and nationalistic agendas struck me as “networked fascism.” This sounds interesting and important, but I am not sure what data to use or where to go from here in terms of theory. For data, military contractors seem obvious, maybe too obvious. Astroturf, oil companies, and energy policy? Pharma and Medicare part D? These seem like just big guy versus under dog stories. I am not sure there is something new there in terms of networked fascism.

Any ideas? Any collabroators out there?

Through the big push

2006-12-05T19:52:00.000-08:00

Well, well, well… I pushed through the big push and ended up with a better product. The beast still has a monstrously too long introduction that is like the bastard offspring of a book proposal for an unpublishable book on organizational learning as meta-theory and a dissertation proposal I never wrote.

Sandra and Rafael, my intrepid advisors, told me they were working on bringing in a network expert. There is a professor at IESE, Fabrizio Ferraro, who came in after I was no longer in resident. I read an AMR article he did with Pfeffer. He does organization theory and networks, so that would seem like a great match. Meanwhile, I played catch up on classes and grading and also family time.

Now I am on the cusp of next stage of life as a scholar. I have many goals and half-cooked aspirations. Some new, some leftovers from the last ten years of professional meander. The sense of having passed through a stage has brought this jumble of ideas back. I am excited by new possibilities even as I remind myself to try and build profitably from all that I cooked up in dissertation. And, that particular pie is still in the over, so to speak.

2006-12-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

A colleague of mine, Skip McGoun, told me a good joke the other day. I can now add it to my repertoire of economist jokes.

Three economists go hunting for deer. They come to the edge of a meadow and they see a deer. The first economist aims, fires, and misses five yards in front of the animal. Startled, it doesn’t move. The second economist aims, fires, and misses by five yards behind the deer. Poor beast is paralyzed with fear. The third economist throws down hhis rifle and says:
“Damn, we nailed it!”

:<)

Skip then told me he wrote a paper about the other famous economist joke. He emailed it and I need to read it ASAP! I love the idea that he wrote something about a joke!

November push on dissertation

2006-10-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

I need to integrate the diffuse ideas that coalesce in my dissertation, but are so far left underwhlemingly disarticulated.

□ There are two dualisms in the heart of my thinking. Dualism of knowing and knowledge and dualism of structure and agency. Integrating these would provide me with the overall theoretical framework.

□ I never articulate the very specific mechanisms or elementals of why networks matter for learning.

Why do networks matter for learning? This is the question I think I have been trying to answer for a while now. The attempt to answer leads me to tackle what is learning? Change in K. Then, what is K? Then, zooming in and out on causal arguments as well as human/org nature questions. This is the stuff that bogs me down for now.

This is also where I tried to start by critiquing the two black boxes. This becomes an argument about how to think about org learning. I talk about how to talk about the phenomenon of interest rather than the phenomenon.

Since March and Cyert, and Leavitt and March, we have been talking about the org as an entity that behaves. From a network perspective, it is a node that is suffused with networks at higher (nations? Orgs?) and lower (groups, individuals) levels. If we define K as socially constructed, and OL as a social process of changes in socially constructed knowledge, than it is clear we should be serious about this social business. We need to know what kinds of differences in what kinds of social contexts will matter (like Watts’ arguments in Six Degrees about madness and delusion of crowds).

To say that K is socially constructed means (this can map to various create, retain, and transfer stories? Also, what about people like Carley and Argote who see whole thing as network and want to talk about flows among people, tasks, and artifacts.):

- people rely on ties to acquire information before creating knowledge

- people accept as legitimate knowledge that is transmitted over different networks and/or ties (threshold models and social influence in Watts)

- the info available is bounded by the cognitive and network horizons of the individual (search problems; Rob Cross and Borgatti’s work).

- risk-taking in knowledge creation is a function of trust.

- creating knowledge creates new ties, or mediates existing ties if the knowledge is created across ties or is communicated across ties.

- variation in knowledge creation is a function of closure to generate knowledge and heterogeneity to cross fertilize knowledge.

To say that learn is a social process means: that a person learns when they change they are either creating or absorbing knowledge; in the case of creating knowledge, what they “know” is partly a function of the previous knowledge acquired through links. In the case of absorbing knowledge, they are also of course using links in their immediate social space. Furthermore, the cementing of individual learning as knowledge that can reasonably be kept, transferred, and used for future action, comes about as actions are assessed and reflected upon. This is true for both creating and absorbing knowledge. The means for assessing and reflecting upon knowledge-based action, who one is connected to, how the norms of that organization are embedded in ties, and how the social context will effect legitimation processes all come into play. These all have a network component.

Another possibility is to adapt lave and Lave and Wegner’s social learning theory. You learn by acquiring recognized expertise. Legitimate peripheral participation. Well, your peripheral position is network observable. As is the core. Also, the competence in the core is socially stored, constantly reinterpreted, and socially recognized.

Part of the puzzle is knowledge search through networks.

Part of the puzzle is power and norms and institutional stuff that is embedded in ties and emerges from network dynamics.

Part of the puzzle is how knowledge/learning activity shape networks.

□ Take the three processes, the Argotean definition, and for each discuss how networks matter. Problem is it don’t line up with my paper hypos all that well.

	Net effects
Creating	- Variation will be result of brokerage-closure balance. - Inter-org bridges will be important
Retaining	- Power and influence will matter for which ideas -
Transferring	- Network cohesion will matter for transfer of explicit knowledge -

□ Just acknowledge that each chapter is in discussion with a different author working out of a different tradition.

Ch 2 is Burt- working out of social capital as a mechanism for advantage.

Ch3-4 is March- working out of behavioral view fo firm as adaptive entity.

This maps on to Argote:

Ch 2 is about how network structure will affect creation.

Ch 3 is about how nets will affect creation and retention because by looking at explor-exploit it is looking at type of knowledge created AND retained in round 1

Ch 4 is about how networks will affect all three because it is looking at how knowledge is created, retained, and transferred as org deal with adaptive pressures… (Ok, do Mg 101 really deal with adaptive pressures?)

2006-10-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

Also, about self organization.

Recent discovery- a new information storage and retrieval devise- portable, flexible, cheap! Its paper!

I decided to finish up my notebooks. I had this silly habit of keeping them until half fill and then getting caught up in worrying about fill them up. Would then I have to transfer everything over to the old one? I have some from Europe with this heavy, grid-lined A4 paper that I love. I’ve used it since my comprehensive PhD exams. Now I will fill it out and then get a new one as needed.

I have been under posting on blog because I was worried about exposing ideas too early and risking them being “stolen.” I was also worried about them seeming too rough and reflecting poorly on my academic reputation (not much of one really, so why the worry?). Well, the solution is so gob-smackingly obvious. I will just keep a word file journal and cut and paste selectively onto the blog. Worth a try.

Teaching change as teaching human nature?

2006-09-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

I am into second week of organizational change. I was thrilled to find Breaking the Code of Change edited by Michael Beer and Nitin Nutria because it takes major themes (leadership, systems or culture, consultants, etc) and presents two strong advocates for differing viewpoints in each topic followed by a third person’s commentary and/or synthesis.

What I got out of readings for next class was a reminder of how clearly I see organizations as complex systems of multiple feedback loops that, as the system dynamics people would say, are fundamentally non-predictive. The same organization, with the same technology and people, making the same decision, may arrive at tow wildly different outcomes because of the turbulence of the environment and the nonpredictive dynamics of all those components’ interacting.

The puzzle for me in teaching this idea is how to convey the visceral sense I have of complex organizations as described above. I want the students to discover this view of reality, but I worry that such an approach will leave them either a) feeling like I am hiding something from them or b) missing the point about complex orgs.

The two chapters for Monday, by Jensen and Senge, also bring up the question of the purpose of organizations and businesses (maximize value or expand learning ability) which parallels the classic stockholder-stakeholder debate: Milton Freidman-esque (only business of business is business) stockholders first vs. Robert Freemanesque (many others have a say and are affected) negotiate among stakeholders. I can see how this debate, in turn, tends to turn on questions of human nature. Do I bring this up, or does that tend to collapse other debates and limit conversation?

2006-08-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

Roger says...

ROger, from my writing/French philosophy group says I should carry around a little card with all my publishing goals on it. He does one, and ritualistically retypes, prints, and cuts it to size once a month or so. You have to carry it in your wallet, like an ID card or something. He swears by it, and he did just go on a tear through tenure review year (publishing ro submitting about 5 dozen things).

I just always turn up my nose at "gimmicks." But, hell, why not? What can it hurt?

The Paradox of Technology and Revising

2006-05-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

I had my students read the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz this semester. The thesis is that too many choices makes people less happy, not more so (take that! Hegemony of consumer capitalism!). In the midst of revising my dissertation, I feel a similar paradox entangling me.

Lets call it the paradox of technology. The more technological options there are too facilitate writing and thinking, the more muddled the thinking becomes. Points to consider:

- I have a big Word file with the putative text of the dissertation (“the beast” or “the big, hairy, ugly beast” I call it).

- With Word, I can highlight and insert comments.

- I started a second file called revision plan where I put comments from the committee and my responses. It also had some random notes of mine about process. I started a big to do list as a table. Like this:

Task	Ideas
- Write Intro	- Read “classics” of brokers
- Summary overview of 4 companies	-Do more domain expert surveys.

Tabling lists has worked well for me with syllabi and other tasks.

- Meanwhile, as I read the beast (in some ways for the first time since I never really read through the beast from A to Z), I am putting little notes to myself in comments. Things like “Move this to intro.” Or “Check Billy Bob Jones 2003.” Or “These results need to be checked. Why include gender when its not significant?” On one hand, this helps me to get through a reading without getting distracted by every little thing I notice or think about. It reduces anxiety because I don’t sit there going “I Damn well better remember that!” On the other hand, it is comments crack- highly addictive and provides the illusion of comfort. Instead of actually revising, I just stick a comment in and the whole beast starts growing more heads than a hydra on steroids.

- I started to do a reverse outline of the beast in a now THIRD Word file. I dropped as I moved into the mind mapping \(see below).

- Word, Word everywhere: There are also older pre-writing and parallel writing files that live on the hard drive that cover topics like methodology, theory, my process, and research questions. There are also about thirty files of reading notes. I worry sometimes that good ideas, good text, or important connections are languishing amongst these, but I tend to avoid looking at them as it feel like a procrastination technique.

- Last winter, I stumbled across the use of mind maps (Example). I thought they looked cool because I tend to be a very visual thinker. I stopped myself from exploring too much as I smelled another procrastination trap. Now, in this revision, I let myself play with OpenMind for about 15minutes and the ability to visually map out levels and ideas seems to be working pretty well. As I read the beast, I am mapping the outline as it should be and making note of what is already in the beast and what needs to be added or moved. The mind map overlaps somewhat with the revision plan, the comments, and the reverse plan. I can imagine finishing the mapping, printing the map as an outline, and then using that outline as the template for the big time revising where I go through the beast and make all the pastes, cuts, and redrafts needed on the way to the final version.

- As I re-examine some of my analysis, I find myself needing or wanting to double check some quantitative results. This leads me to variably open network software (UCINET), or Stats software (Excel and SPSS). In some cases, is imply put a comment in saying “(check results.” In other cases, I run a new analysis and included the revised results. For example, in Chapter 2, I had written about included results that had non-significant variables and I pasted a different regression model with only significant results.

Three issues that emerge from this account:

1) I worry about overlap or inefficiencies in having basically three repositories of pre-writing or goals: the revision plan, the comments pegged to the beast, and the mind map. Also, switching between 3-10 word files, two stats programs, UCINET, citation software (RefWorks) and possibly some net visualization software ends up providng a world of side tracks, cul-de-sacs, loops, ambles, and long pauses in my writing/thinking. (Ask me about p-ness sometime :<))

Put another way- should I divide and conquer revising using separate files or should I stick to the beast and use the main Word file as the only revising “space” (in other words only work with that file and fix it as needed)?

2) Am I making life more difficult for myself by ignoring various files of pre- and parallel writing or by not opening and using those files?

3) Am I combing too many layers of revising? Should I simply read for concepts and re-organizing and then go back and fix tables, redo analyses and such? Or, is my multi-level revising better since it will allow me to look at actual analyses and see what results I have or need and have that feed into drafting or revising of theoretical and let review sections?

Preliminary Facebook Reaction

2006-05-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Well, having talked to a few people face2face an on-line, the general reaction is that using facebook data as source data for a student-directed research and writing project (where they would use their own egocentric network as the data) is a good idea.

Two sites recommended by Spencer Schaffner (of http://metaspencer.com) that look like promising starts are: Fred Stutzman's work on Facebook (http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/) and dana boyd's papers on Friendster (http://www.danah.org/papers/).

Other folks on SOCNET have made suggestions, and I am wading through those and will put here the most useful and provocative.

I registered with facebook with the intention of poking around and checking out its functionality. I did not see any obvious way to generate maps or export link data.

I was immediately faced with the conundrum of how to present. I initially said I was faculty, but gave myself a pseudonym. I was thinking that to assemble my own network it might be easier if I could “pass” as a student. Then I looked at my own profile and realized that anyone who could see my email would figure out I was posing. So, either I hide my email, revert to my real name (and give up the chance to pass as a student), or get a new .bucknell.edu email. The last seems very problematic.

I will be interested to see if students think I am being intrusive into “their” space. I had heard about vaguely horrified reactions from faculty or administrators about the level of debauchery or some other supposed social sin visible on facebook. I have not seen much at all. Lots of pictures of students drinking and socializing with friends or potential lovers (or sex partners). Nothing that shocks me. Maybe they have been cleaning up what’s there or it is more hidden content.

One faculty member was concerned that I would stumble upon or expose myself or students to issues of sexual violence (rape, date rape). She was not specific, but I gathered she meant that perpetrators might be tagged in their profile or that there may be fantasies or purported accounts of sexual acts or aggression. This may be the kind of content that was cleaned out by students once they realized that the veil between “us” and “them” could be so easily pierced.

Teaching Using Facebook

2006-05-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

I am planning a new course to teach at Bucknell called "Six Degrees." I plan to do a mix of social networks and network science in other domains (like communictaion and transportation networks). The class is called a foundation seminar and it is limited to First Years and is meant to provide an introduction to college rigor.

Through media reports, I heard about facebook, my space, and the other "live" web sites and apps. (Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12015774/site/newsweek/)

It occured to me that maybe I could use my students' inetrest and involvement with this type of site as the basis for a series of assignments where they would collect data on their own network, anyalyse it with network software, and then do some analytical and creative writing assignments with their own analysis.

I am trying traditional and reaching out research to collect ideas. So far, this seems to be novel.

I am worried about two feasibility issues:
1) Can the students get network data in a sociomatrix for ease of analysis?
2) Will their networks be "interetsing"? I mean, will there be variation (cross-sectionally or longitudinally) in density, subgroups, roles, centrality (measured different ways)?

Clustering coefficient or Something else?

2005-12-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

Snetthis to SOCNET. Posted here too.

I have been chewing on the idea that in a given intra-organizational network the process of knowledge creation is going to be enabled or constrained by the number of distinct, non-overlapping sub groups. Also, that rather than totally unconnected fragments, what is key is that these groups are connected by to each other.

One way to capture this idea, I thought, would be to look at the number of non-overlapping subgroups of strong relations in an advice-seeking relationship. But what is the mechanism of linking? Options include brokers in a different network of strong relationships, brokers in a different network of weak relationships, or brokers in the same network, but using weak relationships. So, if you are a subgroup with a broker, you are more connected (and more likely to spread your knowledge) than one without. A related question than becomes who "counts" as a broker? Is there some good cut-off value? Or maybe use the five individuals with the highest brokerage score?

So, three questions (and thank you paid forward)-

1) Is this similar to some work out there already?

2) Does the clustering coefficient already capture what I am describing as connected subgroups?

3) Does one of the options above sound better to you? (Advice subgroups with brokers in communication, Advice subgroups with brokers in weak communication, or advice subgroups with brokers in weak advice relations)?

Exploration and Exploitation

2005-12-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

I am interested in a very pragmatic perspective on learning. Like Schulz (2001), I am interested in how emergent organizations confront problems. This leads to a “pragmatic” perspective one learning in which I assume “…that org knowledge arises through learning from experiences with problems. In that view, knowledge consists of assumptions about problems and their solutions.” (Schulz 2001: 662). A further distinction that deserves attention is whether this pragmatic learning is exploration or exploitation. While this distinction ahs been discussed and studied (see refs), we still need a better idea of how properties of certain organizations facilitate or frustrate exploration or exploitation.

Routines have long been a focus of OL literature and research. Routines are the supra-individual unit of analysis for OL. Routines are the schema, procedures, rules, and norms that are the basis for taking action. In terms of exploration and exploitation, routines for problem-solving may be exploratory or exploitative. For example when facing a new challenge, a routine that calls for brainstorming in small groups is more exploratory than assigning a solution to one person who is instructed to look at past experience with similar problems. The link between routines and exploration-exploitation is multi-faceted and mediated through the structure of an organization’s social network, especially its subgroup articulation (non overlapping groups linked to each other by brokers). Routines matter for exploration and exploitation in two ways. First, an organization may have certain routines for problem-solving that promote exploration or exploitation. More subgroup articulation will facilitate exploratory routines because the knowledge produced by those routines will be more likely to develop and compete for adoption. Conversely, less subgroup articulation because of its greater efficiencies in knowledge transfer and retention, will tend to frustrate a specifically exploratory routine for problem solving. An organization may try to be more innovative or radical in its solutions (emerging from policy or organizational culture), but the effect of less sub group articulation will be to limit the creation and viability of that exploratory potential. Second, the amount of variation in problem solving routines will increase the amount of knowledge potential for the organization and hence exploration. This is a more indirect effect on exploration. However, it is also mediated by the relational property for subgroup articulation. More subgroups will tend to develop and nurture a greater variety of problem solving routines just as they foster and nurture a greater variety of ideas for solving problems.

The number of groups is very important to pursuing exploration because even specific individuals or routines that are focused on risk, innovation, creating new knowledge, or radical changes will see their efforts evaporate as the exploitative tendency of the denser network effectively (if unintentionally) limits the amount of requisite and viable possibilities. Hence, exploratory drive will suffocate under the weight of exploitation’s density and larger subgroups.

Two features of the interaction between networks and learning can influence exploratory or exploitative learning. One has to do with the creation of knowledge while the other has to do with the transfer of knowledge. To be more exploratory, an organization must have more ideas, more knowledge potential. More distinct subgroups will have more knowledge due to the insulating effect on knowledge and creativity of distinct subgroups. This first factor is requisite diversity of knowledge in the idea or knowledge stock available to guide company action. Higher requisite diversity leads to more exploration. The second has to do with knowledge transfer; specifically, whether the multiple relations of an organization’s social network are highly coupled or loosely coupled. Highly coupled relations will lead to more exploitation as knowledge has more conduits to spread and as actors will accord more legitimacy to knowledge that comes form a friend, work colleague, and trusted advisor than knowledge coming across only one of those relationships. Loosely coupled relations allow for the productive misfit of social networks.

The World Cup and my Dissertation

2005-12-12T13:56:00.000-08:00

12/11/2005

Inspiration from Bruce Arena (US Men’s Coach) on drawing Italy, Czechs, and Ghana for World Cup in 2006. “it is what it is.” Indeedy.

For better or for worse, the black thoughts that plague me should just be left behind.

There is a certain troubled relationship with expertise I have. I seem to berate myself for not being more of an “expert.” Meanwhile, I jump from interest to interest so that my expertise doesn’t seem to accumulate that much in any one thing. But maybe my sense of expertise is off-target. Like, I think if I have to think about something, or do some reading, then I am not an expert. If the answer Is not on the tip of my tongue, then I am not an expert.

But maybe this is where I need a massive dose of “get over myself.” The very act of revisiting my own experience and knowledge, my own writings and musings, is what builds my expertise. It is not the internalization of all possible knowledge that makes me an expert. It is the ability to perform in a given context that makes me an expert, which is, of course, always a relative reference anyway. I am an expert compared to someone else.

So, having 60+pages of pre writing and free writing is a resource for being an expert, not evidence for the eternal prosecutor to use to make the case that I am a fraud. Having my e-journal spread over12 files with file names that are hash of indexing is not one more datum in the great “jordi-is-not-an-expert” database. They are what they are- the sinews and stitches of my thinking and doing.

Too much of the former, not enough of the later.

Hence, next post on the exploration and exploitation.

Here we go

2005-12-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

This may be a very bad idea. I am finishing a dissertation in management. I spend a lot of time journaling and pre-writing. Getting ideas down on screen so that I can build momentum and see how a thought looks once made concrete. Over tow years, this has accumulate into quite an amount of detritus of ideas, possibilities, and mental prospecting.

I have slowly learned that this actually may help me finish (I can be a slow learner).

I have not a lot of contact with my dissertation committee for many valid reasons that don’t need enumerating here.

Over time, I have assembled a loose collection of friends and contacts who have advised me about one aspect or another about this project.

As a peripheral observer and consumer of distributed information, web-based discourse, email-based discussions of a community of interest, and all the other fauna of the web-ecology, I have gained an appreciation for how this infoscape can facilitate writing and thinking.

So, I will try this weblog about my dissertation.

Some ground expectations…

I anticipate a small readership.

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to add them.

I will avoid much of the personal ranting and neurosis dwelling that populates other pre-writing and journaling I have done.

The best way to start writing is to…start writing. Corollary: the best way to get out of a hole you have dug for yourself is to stop digging.

If you are a researcher or writer and you happen to like what you read here, cite away, but give credit too.

Here goes…