A collaborative network for first responders: Lessons from the CapWIN case

It is increasingly important for government agencies to collaborate across jurisdictional and functional boundaries. Interorganizational systems supporting interagency collaboration must accommodate a wide range of factors from the external environment and participating organizations as part of their design and operation. This paper presents the findings from a case study of CapWIN, a collaborative network created to enable first responders to share information across jurisdictional and functional boundaries as they work together during emergencies and other critical events. The study examines how aspects of the external environment and the agency context impeded or facilitated the CapWIN collaborative network and the interorganizational system (IOS) that supports it. We identify factors affecting information sharing and collaborative processes, and describe how these factors interact to enable and constrain an IOS. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research on the interplay of environmental, organizational, and technical aspects of interagency collaboration networks as they evolve over time.     

Promoting collaboration: the role of relational multiplexity in an interorganizational health justice network

Organizations need to collaborate to achieve complex goals. Although interorganizational relations often take the form of multiplex ties, our understanding of how multiplexity itself may facilitate interorganizational collaboration is limited. We use dynamic network analysis (SIENA) to test the role of relational multiplexity – specifically, relationships involving communication outside of coalition meetings and expertise-seeking – in promoting collaboration in a health justice coalition over three years. The results offer strong support for the role of multiplexity in the formation of interorganizational collaboration, indicating that having multiple ties between organizations facilitates collaboration, and that certain types of ties (i.e. communication relationships outside of coalition meetings) are more influential than others. We conclude that coalitions hoping to support successful interorganizational collaboration will benefit from offering opportunities for member organizations to communicate outside of group meetings, because such small acts of dyadic interaction can build into deeper levels of engagement. Additionally, our study demonstrates how network analysis can help organizational coalitions to track and suggest potential partnerships between member organizations.     

Information networks and social media use in public diplomacy: a comparative analysis of South Korea and Japan

This article examines how South Korean and Japanese public diplomacy organizations employ digital media to embrace the principle of ‘networked public diplomacy’ through analyses of the web and social media practices. A network analysis was used to map interorganizational information networks among core public diplomacy organizations in each country. To reveal the key organizations' communication strategies on Facebook, a content analysis was also conducted. The findings indicate that Japan had a strong internal network infrastructure achieved through dispersed connections and partnerships; however, Korea had a centralized network, including a limited number of dominant actors. The results of content analysis suggest that both South Korea and Japanese public diplomats focused on promoting their cultural products and national values through their use of texts and visual images. In addition, user profile analysis gaged the degree of users' engagement in the organizations' profiles and identified the demographic features of users. Comparative data suggest the Korean public diplomacy organization was more successful at attracting and engaging with foreign public than the Japanese public diplomacy organization. These results imply that although these two countries had similar sociopolitical backgrounds and perspectives of public diplomacy, they had distinct forms of internal information networks, communication strategies, and social networking performances with public.     

Collaborative Tensions: Practitioners' Experiences of Interorganizational Relationships

Organizations and the relationships they create are rife with tensions that pull individual participants and whole organizations in opposing directions. When multiple organizations form relationships with one another these tensions may take on new forms and create new challenges for individual and organizational participants. This study utilized a focus-group methodology to explore how participants in collaborative interorganizational relationships (IORs) experience and cope communicatively with tensions. The data suggest that tensions exist across two areas: relationships and structures. We found that tensions in collaboration are common, acknowledged, and that the tensions manifest and are addressed through communication.     

The Evolution of Networks and the Resilience of Interorganizational Relationships after Disaster

This study uses social capital and evolutionary theory to examine organizational resilience in terms of interorganizational networks of disaster-struck organizations following Hurricane Katrina. Approaching post-disaster organizational resilience using social network analysis highlights the way pre-disaster relationships and networking patterns play a vital role in post-disaster rebuilding. Data support the idea of structural inertia, suggesting that disaster is an event that further strengthens pre-existing networks and is not a time when organizations might benefit from forging new networks in seeking support and fueling survival. Implications suggest that the social capital accrued through long-standing partnerships and efficient pre-disaster networking through building communities of practice significantly impact post-disaster resilience.     

Divergent Perspectives on Language-Discordant Mobile Medical Professionals' Communication with Colleagues: An Exploratory Study

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart as it re-entered the atmosphere. Months later, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board determined the immediate cause of the crash, but it also alluded to relationships NASA has with other organizations as being problematic, suggesting that Columbia was a painful symptom of a deeper disease. This paper uses resource dependency theory and structuration theory together to examine NASA's interorganizational network, illustrating that NASA is involved in multiple toxic relationships and that a pattern has developed through NASA miscues in the last 20 years. This case study demonstrates the advantages of using these two theories together, how such integration provides a useful perspective for understanding power and change in interorganizational relationships. The paper also discusses practical suggestions for NASA specifically, but also for others as organizations become more dependent on external stakeholders and interorganizational relationships.     

Masters of the Universe? Resource Dependency and Interorganizational Power Relationships at NASA

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart as it re-entered the atmosphere. Months later, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board determined the immediate cause of the crash, but it also alluded to relationships NASA has with other organizations as being problematic, suggesting that Columbia was a painful symptom of a deeper disease. This paper uses resource dependency theory and structuration theory together to examine NASA's interorganizational network, illustrating that NASA is involved in multiple toxic relationships and that a pattern has developed through NASA miscues in the last 20 years. This case study demonstrates the advantages of using these two theories together, how such integration provides a useful perspective for understanding power and change in interorganizational relationships. The paper also discusses practical suggestions for NASA specifically, but also for others as organizations become more dependent on external stakeholders and interorganizational relationships.     

Analysis of cooperative research and development networks on Japanese patents

To sustain economic growth, countries have to manage systems in order to create technological innovation. To meet this goal, they are developing policies that organically connect companies, national laboratories, and universities into innovation networks. However, the whole structures of these connections have been little investigated because of the difficulty of obtaining such data.We use Japanese patent data and create a network of jointly applying organizations. This network can be considered as one representation of an innovation network because patents are seeds of innovation and joint applications are strong evidence of connections between organizations. We investigated the structure of the network, especially whether or not the degree distribution follows a power law. After that, we also propose a model that generates the actual network, not only degree distribution, but also link distance distribution.     

Virtuality,Technology Use,and Engagement Within Organizations

Multinational organizations are turning to collaborative technology to enable virtual organizational structures. While collaborative technology provides distributed workers with new affordances to form relationships and share knowledge, collaborative technology also has complex, interwoven implications for virtual organizing. To disentangle these concerns, this study considers four key dimensions of virtuality—spatial dispersion, temporal dispersion, dynamic structure, and functional diversity—in relation to technology use and engagement with peers within an organization. Survey data were collected in a multinational organization that facilitates work through extensive use of collaborative technology. The results of structural equation modeling reveal connections between two dimensions of virtuality, use of collaborative technology and peer engagement in the organization. Findings suggest that understanding interactions in virtual organizations requires a more nuanced approach to virtuality and active management of technology implementation. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that managers need to actively manage the deployment of new collaborative technology by focusing on specific characteristics of work groups.     

Network dynamics of interorganizational cooperation: the Croatian civil society movement

Throughout the world, social cause organizations and independent media organizations work together, despite their differences and competition with each other for resources, toward creating civil society. This paper assesses the network dynamics of a system of cooperative competitors in Croatia. The research is framed from the theoretical perspectives of resource dependency, cooperation competition, and structural holes with results that describe the roles of various organizations in the development of civil society. Network relationships are described among 18 civil society organizations from their initial participation in the Croatian transformation in the year 2000 to a democratic nation to two years later. Results identify benefits and drawbacks of the general system structure, specific organization's network roles, and reputations associated with networking activities. Theoretical implications address the complementary contributions of using multiple theoretical perspectives to approach interorganizational relationships and their pragmatic utility with respect to building stronger networks among civil‐society partners.     

Interorganizational networks: The convergence of cooperative Competitors

This paper extends organizational communication research by considering external organizational issues. It analyzes the interorganizational network of real estate companies and the relationship of their network positions to organization‐level perceptions about the system. The network is divided into: (1) one group of organizations that were sparsely connected, and (2) stand‐alone organizations that were isolated from the prevailing group and each other. This interorganizational network analysis is grounded in institutionalization and resource dependence theory, vis‐à‐vis overlapping perceptions of the system, elicited by answers to open‐ended interviews. Results indicate institutionalized perceptions occurred for the group‐member organizations through indirect exposure to information in the environment. Specifically, organizations who shared similar roles in the network have convergent interpretations. These data support Mizruchi's (1993) theory that prominent organizations are more similar than those who have more peripheral roles in a network.     

A regression analysis of researchers’ social network metrics on their citation performance in a college of engineering

Previous research shows that researchers’ social network metrics obtained from a collaborative output network (e.g., joint publications or co-authorship network) impact their performance determined by g-index. We use a richer dataset to show that a scholar's performance should be considered with respect to position in multiple networks. Previous research using only the network of researchers’ joint publications shows that a researcher's distinct connections to other researchers, a researcher's number of repeated collaborative outputs, and a researchers’ redundant connections to a group of researchers who are themselves well-connected has a positive impact on the researchers’ performance, while a researcher's tendency to connect with other researchers who are themselves well-connected (i.e., eigenvector centrality) had a negative impact on the researchers’ performance. Our findings are similar except that we find that eigenvector centrality has a positive impact on the performance of scholars. Moreover, our results demonstrate that a researcher's tendency toward dense local neighborhoods and the researchers’ demographic attributes such as gender should also be considered when investigating the impact of the social network metrics on the performance of researchers.     

Participative Democracy and Voice: Rethinking Community Collaboration Beyond Neutral Structures

Decision-making in community-based, interorganizational collaboration often influences educational, environmental, and other civic policies thereby constituting it as politically and socially consequential. As such, we rethink collaboration through the lens of participative democracy rather than as a neutral organizational structure or process. We sought to understand how participative democracy was hindered and accomplished in an interpretive case study of two community collaborations. Data indicate the normative processes and structures of communication practiced by stakeholders primarily deterred voice and participation by prioritizing information exchange, practicing invisible decision-making, and emphasizing harmonious relationships. These findings: (1) add to theories of interorganizational collaboration by establishing voice as both a discursive and political feature of shared decision-making; (2) provide empirical exemplars that extrapolate political and social implications from specific communication practices; and (3) inform the development of a heuristic to improve collaborative participation and increase political accountability. Flowing from these data, we recommend practitioners utilize the heuristic of VOICE—promoting visibility and ownership of decision-making processes, less emphasis on informing, and purposeful fostering of gracious contestation—ultimately delimiting expressive modes of communication that decrease participative democracy and political accountability.     

Assessing Collaboration in One Media Ecosystem

This case study explores relationships among news organizations in one media ecosystem to determine how willing journalists may be to form a more collaborative information network. A three-step, mixed methodological approach is employed: the ecosystem was “mapped”; an ongoing dialogue with journalists was initiated, and in-depth interviews were conducted with journalists and community storytellers to understand existing news flow in this region. Preliminary findings suggest a willingness to collaborate; however, legacy media may have more reservations about collaboration than journalists at community newspapers, public broadcasting stations, and entrepreneurial startups.     

The Dual Structure of Global Networks in the Entertainment Industry: Interorganizational Linkage and Geographical Dispersion

In this article, I describe the contours of global media networks in terms of interorganizational linkages and spatial distribution of foreign direct investment in the entertainment industry. The results of multidimensional scaling revealed that there were significant differences in the positional structures of global networks in the entertainment industry. However, in the case of the structural relations between the interorganizational and geographical dispersion networks, the quadratic assignment procedure analyses revealed structural similarities between both networks in the entertainment industry. A multiple regression analysis also showed music and film industries played a significant role in explaining interorganizational and geographical dispersion networks. The findings indicate the benefit of distinguishing between interorganizational and geographic dispersion networks in understanding global media networks.     

An Empirical Analysis of Design Choices in Neighborhood-Based Collaborative Filtering Algorithms

Collaborative filtering systems predict a user's interest in new items based on the recommendations of other people with similar interests. Instead of performing content indexing or content analysis, collaborative filtering systems rely entirely on interest ratings from members of a participating community. Since predictions are based on human ratings, collaborative filtering systems have the potential to provide filtering based on complex attributes, such as quality, taste, or aesthetics. Many implementations of collaborative filtering apply some variation of the neighborhood-based prediction algorithm. Many variations of similarity metrics, weighting approaches, combination measures, and rating normalization have appeared in each implementation. For these parameters and others, there is no consensus as to which choice of technique is most appropriate for what situations, nor how significant an effect on accuracy each parameter has. Consequently, every person implementing a collaborative filtering system must make hard design choices with little guidance. This article provides a set of recommendations to guide design of neighborhood-based prediction systems, based on the results of an empirical study. We apply an analysis framework that divides the neighborhood-based prediction approach into three components and then examines variants of the key parameters in each component. The three components identified are similarity computation, neighbor selection, and rating combination.     

Young librarians unite: Possibilities for professional transformation in Japanese librarianship

The interorganizational networking communities have spontaneously emerged among young Japanese librarians in recent years. This study explores the role of the communities from the perspectives of professional knowledge management, social networks and social capital, and the possibilities to reconstruct the Japanese librarianship. The study examined the following research questions: 1) What outcomes did young librarians who had participated in the interorganizational social networking communities get especially in terms of knowledge acquisition and affections? And 2) What possibilities do the young librarians communities have to transform Japanese librarianship? Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with five librarians to gain insight into how they engage in and feel about outside social networking activities and training opportunities. The results showed that the young librarians’ voluntary communities helped build social networks, provided opportunities for the transfer of tacit knowledge, and were a source of motivation for the participants. They also suggested that the communities could have a significant impact on the transition of Japanese librarianship.     

Measuring social capital through network analysis and its influence on individual performance

Studies of social networks highlight the importance of network structure or structural properties of a given network and its impact on performance outcome. One of the important properties of this network structure is referred to as social capital, which is the network of contacts and the associated values attached to these networks of contacts. This study provides empirical evidence of the influence of social capital and performance within the context of academic collaboration (coauthorship) and suggests that the collaborative process involves social capital embedded within relationships and network structures among direct coauthors. Association between scholars' social capital and their citation-based performance measures is examined. To overcome the limitations of traditional social network metrics for measuring the influence of scholars' social capital within coauthorship networks, the traditional social network metrics is extended by proposing two new measures, of which one is non-weighted (the power–diversity index) and the other (power–tie–diversity index) is weighted by the number of collaboration instances. The Spearman's correlation rank test is used to examine the association between scholars' social capital measures and their citation-based performance. Results suggest that research performance of authors is positively correlated with their social capital measures. The power–diversity index and power–tie–diversity index serve as indicators of power and influence of an individual's ability to control communication and information.     

Collaborative Learning in an Information Literacy Course: The Impact of Online Versus Face-to-face Instruction on Social Metacognitive Awareness

Metacognition and social metacognition play important roles in information literacy, online learning, and collaborative learning. This study examines how students rated themselves in both metacognitive and social metacognitive awareness after a collaborative project in an information literacy course offered face-to-face and online. Students in the face-to-face version of the course rated themselves as having higher social metacognitive awareness, though metacognitive awareness scores were similar. Because of this finding, this article makes recommendations for improving collaboration online for information literacy instruction.     

科学文献网络中的引文扩散——以2011年诺贝尔化学奖获奖论文为例

科学知识借助引用关系发生动态扩散,客观记录科学发展与演化的轨迹。由于知识之间存在千丝万缕的联系,以孤立的观点看待科学知识的影响与价值往往得到的是片面的感观。本文从联系的视角观察科学知识产出,尝试通过被引、引用、文献耦合与共被引等文献关系为单篇论著构建引文扩散网络,探讨"文献嵌入网络"的概念、测度方式及其在引文扩散过程中起到的特殊作用。案例分析显示,科学知识的形成相伴于科学知识网络的发展,同时也受到这个网络的影响:科学知识向科学领域的扩散,遵循从核心领域向周边领域的扩散模式;施引文献可以揭示目标文献中没有显式呈现的信息;四种文献关系之间可能存在相当程度的重合,引文扩散过程显示出知识的"黏滞性"与非常明显的"小世界"特征。对科学产出的扩散网络进行量化有助于为全面评价其价值提供更多客观依据。