Standing Working Group 2 (Sub-theme 02):

Organizational Network Research –
Where is the Network Society Heading?
 

Convenors:

Call for papers

More than a decade ago, such scholars as Jan van Dijk and Manuel Castells identified the emerging network society. This observation on the emerging network society leads to a set of possible research questions. Has a ubiquitous global system of advanced interlinked information and telecommunications devices evolved to the point where anyone can be connected to anyplace at anytime? What are the organizational implications of the network society? How do network architectures compare over nations, sectors, and time? Which specific organizational functions are retained by the network society and which have become obsolete?

In this context we invite papers that, for example:

1. Examine how organizational performance is both facilitated and impeded by embeddedness within the global network society
2. Explore the business implications of proliferating cyberspace access to corporate and product information by consumers and clients, shareholders and stakeholders
3. Interpret how workplace communication networks enhance employee social capital yet enable employers to exert increasingly intrusive control
4. Analyze the impacts of citizen networking, community organizing, and social movement mobilizing on public sector agencies and governmental policymakers
5. Explain the collaborations of nongovernmental and transnational organizations in fostering the new political, social, and cultural world order
6. Investigate dark networks of transnational crime, fraud, and terror, as well as the law-enforcement networks that combat them
7. Elucidate organizational network contributions and obstructions to sustainable environments and socioeconomic development
8. Speculate about possible future directions in which the network society may be heading and their consequences for organization studies

About the convenors

SWG 2 is led by Marius T.H. Meeus, David Knoke, Amalya L. Oliver, Barry Wellman and Joerg Raab. For this EGOS Colloquium Marius T.H. Meeus, David Knoke and Amalya L. Oliver act as convenors.

Marius T.H. Meeus is a professor in Strategy, Innovation, and Organizational Learning, at Tilburg University, Department of Organization Studies. His research is on organizing innovation within and between organizations, interactive learning processes, R&D management, development of technological communities.

David Knoke is a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. His current research interests involve organizations, social networks, and economic sociology.

Amalya L. Oliver is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her current research involves inter-organizational networks, university-industry technology transfer, scientific entrepreneurship and professions.