Hierarchies and social structures in the organization.

- How they interplay across online spaces and offline places - and unfolds in the

company social platform Lene Pettersen, NWP, November 2013

Twitter ID @LeneJBP

Photo by Hector Ceballos-Lascurain http://ibc.lynxeds.com/photo/cattle-egret-bubulcus-ibis/four-birds-flying-over-my-former-home

A POST DOC OR OTHER EXITING WORK FROM MID 2014! PRESENT | PHD CANDIDATE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, ARTIST, FREELANCE CONSULTANT PREVIOUS | CONSULTANT/CONCEPTDEVELOPER, COMM. ADVISOR, JOURNALIST, SECURITY GUARD SUN COUNTRY AIRLINES, HAIRDRESSER, LECTURER IN ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM AT UIO AND MORE EDUCATION | SOCIALANTHROPOLOGY, HYPERMEDIA, FILM- AND MEDIASCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY + VARIOUS COURSES E.G. W3C, AGILE DEVELOPMENT AND MORE LENE.PETTERSEN@BI.NO 4641 0232

SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGIST SPECIALIZED IN THE TRIANGLE TECHNOLOGY, ORGANIZING AND STRATEGY IS LOOKING FOR

is based on one of my doctoral thesis’ articles that I am currently working on improving in compliance with suggestions and feedback received from the review-process in Journal of Organization Science. Keywords: social software, social identity, offline/online, homophily, social structure, structuration, networking, knowledge workers, enterprise 2.0, multinational KIS.

THIS PRESENTATION

• A French listed multinational knowledge intensive company with entities in 20+ countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa • Employs 5000+ professional knowledge workers • Provides services in the intersect of information communication and business • Employees work within a typical billable-hour structure • Introduced Jive social business software in order to "build professional networks, develop competence by following others more skilled, finding out what others are doing and not reinventing the wheel, having things you’re working on easy to find and share, easily work with colleagues in other business units" (from the company’s implementation strategy).

THE CASE

MIXED METHODOLOGY

• 27 in-depth interviews in six

entities in four countries

• social network analysis of off-line collaboration tendencies

• pilot study in Norway 2010

• participatory observations

• close analysis of E2.o functionality, overall strategy, user patterns, engagement within E2.0, selected content (blog post, comments), statistics (traffic, page views, user profiles )

• self-perceived ICT-competence

• field studies in Norway and Morocco

in 2011 and repeated in 2012

• close analysis of participators E2.0 use, in particular the ‘Following’ and ‘Group’ functionality in the software

• key informant methodology

• close analysis of the participators social capital (numbers of connections) in Facebook, LinkedIn) and @work offline-connections

MIXED METHODOLOGY

SOCIAL STRUCTURES - Organized sets of rules and resources out of time

and space

Agents & Structure

Social systems (Giddens, 1984)

According to structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), individuals’ actions occur within the contexts of existing social structures, governed by norms and rules distinct from those of other social structures. However, relations that took shape in a structure can exist "out of time and place" independent of the context in which they are created.

HIERACHY - Distinguishes the organization from being a market

(Andersen, 2009; Williamson 1995)

http://www.mantispest.org/web_images/ants.gif

THE

- Hierarchies comes in a variety of models

- Controls and coordinates the internal resources (Weber, 1971; Penrose, 2009)

- Unequal distribution of authority and

hence rank and status (Weber, 1971; Sørhaug 2004)

HIERARCHY

+ 2.0 =

“Cook (2008) and others argue that new social platforms will minimize vertical and horizontal communication since the platforms are by nature democratic - individuals can interact with others without going through hierarchical levels or formal paths” (Pettersen 2013, forthcoming).

ORGANIZATION - Not a static size (Do institutions have

a telephone number?) - Dynamic systems consisting of

individuals actions - A product of ongoing actions

(Davis and Scott, 2007; Weick 2001)

ORGANIZING HENCE MORE USEFUL TO FOCUS ON

AND THUS STUDY THE INFORMAL INTERACTION PATTERNS

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g HOMOPHILY - The tendency that people tend to associate and bond to similar others McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin and J.M. Cook. 2001

BIRDS OF FEATHERS FLOCK TOGETHER

• Two conceptual subsets have been proposed as ideal by Heinz and Rice, (2009: 143): Communities of practice (CoP) and Networks of practice (NoP).

• In CoPs is knowledge shared by all members and defined by unspoken norms, implicit rules, underlying assumptions and so forth. Members of interact face-to-face and confirm the established meaning through shared experiences and perspectives, and thus creating a network of strong ties

• NoPs, on the other hand, facilitate trust, collective action and knowledge. • Members link individuals with others they may never meet in practice,

constituting a network of weak ties. • CoPs and NoPs reflect unique types of networks where a shared practice

binds members together. • Bridging weak and strong ties is found to boost new ideas and innovation

(Granovetter, 1973; Burt, 2005). • In regard to social platforms in the workplace the concept of NoP would

denote the newsfeed functionality, and CoP’s the group functionality.

TWO CRITICAL TECHNOLOGICAL FEATURES FOR SHARING AND COLLECTING KNOWLEDGE

A number of slides have been removed since this is an article I’m currently working on. Please contact me if you want a copy of the original presentation. Thanks!

“We often experience it as unnatural to ask questions like that, in the open. Like, it's no problem if you talk with someone face-to-face or if you're just a small group” (Male 40+, Norway).

TRUST IS A KEY FACET IN THE LAW OF HOMOPHILY

Some of the participators who work mostly from the main office explains in the follow-up studies in 2012 that they use the group functionality as a space to work. They closed the group to get a better overview of who accesses their content. One of the team members explain the action of closing the groups in terms of they who work together are like a family that know one another very well and trust each another.

(McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001).

Individuals are more likely to perceive members outside their social circles as more untrustworthy than they are to perceive their in-group members (Field 2008)

CARRY HOME ADVICE

• Important to build social trust, shared understandings and interpretations.

• Social platforms alone can not change hierarchical structures in the

organization.

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LENE.PETTERSEN@BI.NO @LENEJBP

Andersen, J. A. 2009. Organisasjonsteori: Fra argument og motargument til kunnskap. Oslo, Norway: Universitetsforlaget. Brass, D. J. 2012. A social network perspective on industrial/organizational psychology. In The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Psychology, edited by Steve W. J. Kozlowski. Oxford University Press. Burt, R., S. 2005. Brokerage & Closure. An introduction to Social Capital. Oxford University Press Cook, N. 2008. Enterprise 2. 0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work: Gower Publishing, Ltd. Field, J. 2008. Social capital. Routledge, New York, USA Davis, G. F., and R. W. Scott. 2007. Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural and Open Systems Perspectives: Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Giddens, A. 1984. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration: Univ. of California Press. Granovetter, M. S. 1973. The Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of Sociology no. 78 (6):1360-1380. Heinz, M. , and R. E. Rice. 2009. An integrated model of Knowledge Sharing Contemporary Environments. In Communication Yearbook, edited by C. S. Beck, 134-175. NY: Routledge. Little, D.. 2013. Giddens on agents and structures 2012 [cited November 7th 2013]. Available from http://understandingsociety.blogspot.no/2012/05/giddens-on-agents-and-structures.html. McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin, and J.M. Cook. 2001. Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual review of sociology:415-444. Sørhaug, T. 2004. Managementalitet og autoritetens forvandling: ledelse i en kunnskapsøkonomi. Bergen, Norway: Fagbokforlaget. Penrose, Edith. 2009. The Theory of the Growth of the Firm: Oxford University Press. Pettersen, L. and Brandtzæg, P. B. 2012. Privacy Challenges in Enterprise 2.0, Selected Papers of Internet Research, North America, 0, Oct. 2012. Available from http://spir.aoir.org/index.php/spir/article/view/14 Pettersen, L. 2013. From Mass Production to Mass Collaboration - Institutionalized Hindrances to Social Platforms in the Workplace. At review. Weick, K. 2001. Enactment and the boundaryless career: Organizing as we work. In The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era, edited by Michael B. Arthur and Denise M. Rousseau. New York: Oxford University Press. Williamson, O. E. 1985. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: Free Press.

REFERENCES