For the last year, I have been endeavoring to identify the elements of a network, specifically an inter-organizational network. These are the components that networks often have that when pursued lead to important information about a network.
There are complexities in this kind of investigation. For example, networks have governance. So do corporations and countries. Exploring the nature of governance in a network leads to finding the unique ways that a particular network handles governance. If we find out that the network has a king, it is likely not a network. But, then maybe there are exceptions.
Networks have creative tension. So do corporations, sports teams and symphony orchestras. Again, it is what those unique tensions are that tell us something about a network.
Many networks do tend to have dispersed leadership. Here is where things get a little complex. A network at the early stage of development may not yet have dispersed leadership. And, some entities that call themselves networks seem not to have dispersed leadership. Does this make them not a network?
I have discovered that often networks have a great deal that is emergent in their operation, far more so than your typical bricks and mortar organization. Yet, is an entity with a low degree of emergence not a network?
The Executive Director of one educational consortium with whom I have been speaking took issue when I asked about a "leader's theory of change" which I have as one of my network elements. Although it appeared to me that the Executive Director did have a philosophy of change, his point was that there was no such uniform theory or philosophy held by the entire entity. Nor, he indicated was there a common culture. His advice to me I heard as saying, try to see each entity with fresh eyes.
This was welcome to me because of the self-induced plight I find myself in having to decide what is or what is not a network. I find myself bending my own criteria this way and that to include entities which are quite constructive and productive as if their lives depended on my edict as to their "networkiness."
I have tried to finesse this by using the phrase "network mindset" to encompass those entities that have their noses pointed in the right direction but do not meet the "typical" indices of a network. Still, one can rightfully quibble about what is the right direction to which one's noses should be pointed.
Since this Executive Director with whom I spoke is a non-linear physicist, I thought of the following explanation. Maybe an entity currently called a network is like like energy and matter. Sometimes when you look at it, you see dynamism, emergence, intense conversations. Other times you see form, structure, leadership. For an instant you can proclaim the phemonena that you are observing energy or matter or even a particular kind of energy or matter. This, however, really misses the point. It is all of these things and more. It is the "more" for which I seek a handy label.
In another recent conversation with an associate from the U.K. Rob Farrands, Rob expressed that maybe what we are speaking about are conversations. My view of conversations is that they are fluid, they involve different people, organizations, topics, places, media, purposes. Sometimes they occur in what we can see as part of a more steady state constellation. This constellation might be held in place for a period of time by common areas of self-interest, common ideology, common goals, common disciplines, common areas of focus, common work or practices. Rob thinks that language is one indicia of a conversation. For given periods of time, we act to help these conversations be more useful by becoming aware of what they are about and helping them to move through the creation of knowledge or towards taking action in the world.
I am left with the question of what to call this accumulation of related conversations. Rob suggests calling them "worlds." I find this a bit refreshing. It might get me off the hook from trying to figure out whether something is a network, a consortium, a look alike for the National Football League.
Still, we need to inquire into these worlds, these conversations. We need some handles to get our bearings. We can take a wide, open fresh view. But at some point, we do have to ask: how do you turn on the lights in this world, where are the rest rooms, how do you navigate in this world, who is here and why are they here. Rob thinks that worlds are held together by language. I think of Ken Gergen and his work in the field of social constructionism which holds that words create worlds. This is a deep, complex area. On the other hand, many conversations, worlds or consortia start by one person saying to another, "Come, let's talk?"
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