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Convener in chief:


David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

Editors:


Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)
Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)
Allan Friedman
(Simulations)
Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)
Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Current Trends)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Citizen Relationship Management)

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    « Knowledge Networks: Knowledge Transfer within and between Organizations | Main | The Strength of Weak Ties Revisited - A Practical Example »

    7 February 2006

    Structural vs. Relational Embeddedness: A useful Concept for Effective Knowledge Sharing within Firms?

    In today's class on Network Analyis for Managers and Analysts we discussed how embeddedness matters for conducting transactions with friends, colleagues, or business partners. Since we attempted to make it an application driven class, we discussed managerial implications of the embeddedness concept a lot. We concluded that both relational ties and one's structural position in a network of personal contacts matter. Please find below some of the after-thoughts.

    Building on our last entry, Hansen's search-and-transfer problem, we would like to highlight that effective knowledge creation and sharing is, among others, is dependent on one's structural and relational embeddedness in the organizational network. When analyizing knowledge sharing within firms, one might have to ask the following questions:

    - Who are the persons that most effectively spread new throughout the organization. In every firm, there is an information communication network, which might be helpful to spread the news. What ist the structural embeddedness of the "communication hubs"?
    - How do individuals within the organization think about sharing novel information? Are the knowledge "realms", do people tend to protect their personal knowledge, or is there an open communication atmosphere? What is the people relational embeddedness when it comes to information/knowledge sharing?

    One can often see that firms spend huge amounts of money into knowledge management tools in order to foster knowledge sharing and creation. In many cases without even knowing how the (information) communuication network within the firms look like. Along these lines one might ask the question, whether or not awareness of the firm's (informal) communication networks can supplement at least parts of a big and expensive IT knowledge management infrastructure?

    Posted by Thomas Langenberg at February 7, 2006 10:18 PM