Samenvatting RANO
Lecture 1 – RANO
The myth of individualism & the relational basis for success
‘social’: resources available in and through personal and business networks
‘capital’: it is productive, it creates value (e.g. information, financial resources)
Social capital is a feature of a relationship (relational variable) not: attribute
Relational variables often have an equal/higher explanatory power than attribute var.
“The friction is that society consists of a set of independent individuals, each of whom
acts to achieve goals that are independently arrived at, and that the functioning of the
social system consists of the combination of these actions of independent individuals”
(James Coleman)
Social capital and success: Multi-level effect
Individual success and performance:
Talent – relations are important for developing talents
Intelligence – genetically determined + developed & strengthened by relations
Education – writing and reading skills are a result of social interaction
Chance? The importance of spider web networks
Social capital and individual’s quality of life
Well-being – social relations + sensemaking work are predictors of well-being
Health – networkers are often healthier
Life expectancy – networkers live longer
Social capital in the economy
- Payment and career development – if you are stronger embedded: tend to get higher salaries
and experience faster career development (‘structural holes’, Ronald Burt)
- Raising financial capital – informal financial capital market
- Learning in organizations – informal relations and learning
- Marketing – verbal advertising, importance of soc. networks for diffussion of new products
- Strategic alliances – importance of relationships between org. (learning + reputation effects)
IORs (Inter Organizational Relationships) & IONs (Inter Organizational Networks) are the
lifeblood of business a lot of organizations have alliances or relationships with an
organizations matter
Lecture 2 – RANO
Closed vs Open Systems
1
,Input and output
Environment and its components
Bv. de PESTEL analysis political – economic – social – technological – ecology – legal
En als je bv. naar een iPhone kijkt – elk klein onderdeeltje komt ergens anders vandaan
Social Networks: A researcher’s perspective
The interorganizational problem
IORs are ‘relatively enduring transactions, flows and linkages that occur among and between
an organization and one or more organizations in its environment’
Keep in mind (voor IORs and IONs)
- Er zijn verschillen tussen netwerken binnen (within) en tussen (between) organisaties
- IORs display absence of true hierarchy absence of boss dit heeft gevolgen voor
coordination, ownership, profit-sharing etc.
IORs en IONs komen veel voor doordat mensen sociaal zijn en samen willen werken. IORs
are important for running organizations and achieving their goals
Why?
Organizations lack all the necessary resources to attain their goals – resource deficit
- This drives organizations to form ties with other organizations to obtain resources
- Organizations exchange resources (from IORs) with each other to achieve mutual
benefit
These are the main elements of the exchange theory of IORs
Welke factoren beïnvloeden de interorganizational exchange relations?
Organizational goals/functions (‘need’)
Access to resources from outside the system (‘access’)
If there is domain consensus: is there agreement on their claims to pursue particular
goals?
IORs as ways of reducing environmental uncertainty
- Internal: designing organizational structures to produce a closed & stable system in the core
technology component
- External: organizations can make relations with other organizations more reliable &
predictable
2 strategies to deal with environmental uncertainty:
2
, 1. Cooperative strategy
- To obtain reliable commitments from other actors (requires making a commitment in
return)
- This reduces uncertainty + also place constraints on future action
2. Competitive strategy
- Maintaining alternative resources (prevents concentration of power over the org.)
- Seeking more power or prestige (gaining power without increased commitment)
Resource dependency theory
Organizations are not self-sufficient and need to manage resource dependencies to reduce
uncertainties in their environment
Actors in environment hold rersources that the organization needs
Hoe groter de afhankelijkheid op de resources van andere actors, en hoe minder er
alternatieve sources beschikbaar zijn, hoe groter de power van deze actors over de
organisatie
Doel van IORs & IONs (buffering and bridging)
To access resources
To stabilize outcomes/market rents
To prevent environmental control
To coordinate the respective interests of actors
Organizations, institutions and networks
Organizations compete for: resources, customers, political power, institutional legitimacy
(acceptance), social and economic fitness (geschiktheid)
therefore, organizations tend toward isomorphism with their institutional environments
- Isomorphism = mechanism by which organizations conform to rules, values and beliefs of
their institutional context
Coercive isomorphism = state, regulators that exercise legitimated power over
organizations; impose norms with fines, sanctions
Mimetic isomorphism = organizations tend to imitate other (successful) organizations
Normative isomorphism = pressure for comformity arising from culture and norms of
professionalism
Studying social networks
What is a network?
- Nodes
- Ties
- Set of nodes and realized and absent ties
Realized ties are meaningful, i.e. social closure
Absent ties are meaningful, i.e. structural hole
What is a node?
In principle, it can be whatever you would like it to be: computer, person, city, department,
organization, animal, machine etc.
Maar bij RANO: nodes = organizations (for profit, non-profit, government) and ties = links
between organizations (e.g. alliances between firms)
3
, What is a tie?
Connection/link/edge between 2 nodes
Characteristics of inter organization ties:
Tie strength
Direct/indirect tie
Contractual form (e.g. joint venture)
Single/multiplex
Tie content (e.g. friendship, advice, research & development)
What is a network?
So it has nodes, ties (and a strong tie,
dikkere lijn), dyad, structural hole
Structural holes and social structure
Bij een structural hole zit er dus een absent tie/geen tie
De entrepreneur staat in het middelpunt
Structural holes and social action
Conduit = actor spanning the structural hole, i.e., the broker
Tertius gaudens = the third who benefits (George Simmel)
Tertius iungens = the third who joins
What flows through ties?
4
Lecture 1 – RANO
The myth of individualism & the relational basis for success
‘social’: resources available in and through personal and business networks
‘capital’: it is productive, it creates value (e.g. information, financial resources)
Social capital is a feature of a relationship (relational variable) not: attribute
Relational variables often have an equal/higher explanatory power than attribute var.
“The friction is that society consists of a set of independent individuals, each of whom
acts to achieve goals that are independently arrived at, and that the functioning of the
social system consists of the combination of these actions of independent individuals”
(James Coleman)
Social capital and success: Multi-level effect
Individual success and performance:
Talent – relations are important for developing talents
Intelligence – genetically determined + developed & strengthened by relations
Education – writing and reading skills are a result of social interaction
Chance? The importance of spider web networks
Social capital and individual’s quality of life
Well-being – social relations + sensemaking work are predictors of well-being
Health – networkers are often healthier
Life expectancy – networkers live longer
Social capital in the economy
- Payment and career development – if you are stronger embedded: tend to get higher salaries
and experience faster career development (‘structural holes’, Ronald Burt)
- Raising financial capital – informal financial capital market
- Learning in organizations – informal relations and learning
- Marketing – verbal advertising, importance of soc. networks for diffussion of new products
- Strategic alliances – importance of relationships between org. (learning + reputation effects)
IORs (Inter Organizational Relationships) & IONs (Inter Organizational Networks) are the
lifeblood of business a lot of organizations have alliances or relationships with an
organizations matter
Lecture 2 – RANO
Closed vs Open Systems
1
,Input and output
Environment and its components
Bv. de PESTEL analysis political – economic – social – technological – ecology – legal
En als je bv. naar een iPhone kijkt – elk klein onderdeeltje komt ergens anders vandaan
Social Networks: A researcher’s perspective
The interorganizational problem
IORs are ‘relatively enduring transactions, flows and linkages that occur among and between
an organization and one or more organizations in its environment’
Keep in mind (voor IORs and IONs)
- Er zijn verschillen tussen netwerken binnen (within) en tussen (between) organisaties
- IORs display absence of true hierarchy absence of boss dit heeft gevolgen voor
coordination, ownership, profit-sharing etc.
IORs en IONs komen veel voor doordat mensen sociaal zijn en samen willen werken. IORs
are important for running organizations and achieving their goals
Why?
Organizations lack all the necessary resources to attain their goals – resource deficit
- This drives organizations to form ties with other organizations to obtain resources
- Organizations exchange resources (from IORs) with each other to achieve mutual
benefit
These are the main elements of the exchange theory of IORs
Welke factoren beïnvloeden de interorganizational exchange relations?
Organizational goals/functions (‘need’)
Access to resources from outside the system (‘access’)
If there is domain consensus: is there agreement on their claims to pursue particular
goals?
IORs as ways of reducing environmental uncertainty
- Internal: designing organizational structures to produce a closed & stable system in the core
technology component
- External: organizations can make relations with other organizations more reliable &
predictable
2 strategies to deal with environmental uncertainty:
2
, 1. Cooperative strategy
- To obtain reliable commitments from other actors (requires making a commitment in
return)
- This reduces uncertainty + also place constraints on future action
2. Competitive strategy
- Maintaining alternative resources (prevents concentration of power over the org.)
- Seeking more power or prestige (gaining power without increased commitment)
Resource dependency theory
Organizations are not self-sufficient and need to manage resource dependencies to reduce
uncertainties in their environment
Actors in environment hold rersources that the organization needs
Hoe groter de afhankelijkheid op de resources van andere actors, en hoe minder er
alternatieve sources beschikbaar zijn, hoe groter de power van deze actors over de
organisatie
Doel van IORs & IONs (buffering and bridging)
To access resources
To stabilize outcomes/market rents
To prevent environmental control
To coordinate the respective interests of actors
Organizations, institutions and networks
Organizations compete for: resources, customers, political power, institutional legitimacy
(acceptance), social and economic fitness (geschiktheid)
therefore, organizations tend toward isomorphism with their institutional environments
- Isomorphism = mechanism by which organizations conform to rules, values and beliefs of
their institutional context
Coercive isomorphism = state, regulators that exercise legitimated power over
organizations; impose norms with fines, sanctions
Mimetic isomorphism = organizations tend to imitate other (successful) organizations
Normative isomorphism = pressure for comformity arising from culture and norms of
professionalism
Studying social networks
What is a network?
- Nodes
- Ties
- Set of nodes and realized and absent ties
Realized ties are meaningful, i.e. social closure
Absent ties are meaningful, i.e. structural hole
What is a node?
In principle, it can be whatever you would like it to be: computer, person, city, department,
organization, animal, machine etc.
Maar bij RANO: nodes = organizations (for profit, non-profit, government) and ties = links
between organizations (e.g. alliances between firms)
3
, What is a tie?
Connection/link/edge between 2 nodes
Characteristics of inter organization ties:
Tie strength
Direct/indirect tie
Contractual form (e.g. joint venture)
Single/multiplex
Tie content (e.g. friendship, advice, research & development)
What is a network?
So it has nodes, ties (and a strong tie,
dikkere lijn), dyad, structural hole
Structural holes and social structure
Bij een structural hole zit er dus een absent tie/geen tie
De entrepreneur staat in het middelpunt
Structural holes and social action
Conduit = actor spanning the structural hole, i.e., the broker
Tertius gaudens = the third who benefits (George Simmel)
Tertius iungens = the third who joins
What flows through ties?
4
