Transformative Networking (original) (raw)

The Network Society is a Disruptive Society

This short essay explores how the network society disrupts not only business models, but also our subjectivity and our ways-of-being-in-the-world. The paper then highlight how leaders need new support structures and specific coaching approaches to manage themselves in this new context. It briefly highlights one such approach the Analytic-Network five-frame coaching system (Western 2012, Western 2013, www.analyticnetwork.com) that shows how leaders need to work at deep personal levels, how they relate to others and are related to, how they take up leadership in a unique way, and how they influence change in networks. Finally they need to hold onto a strategic mindset and draw on the previous four frames to shape their personal and workplace strategy.

Network leadership for transformative capacity development: roles, practices and challenges

Global Sustainability

Non-technical summary A wide variety of social innovations exist today that offer urgently needed pathways for transforming societal systems into more just, sustainable and regenerative ways of organising human existence on this planet. However, a more systematic and practically useful understanding is needed of how individuals and organisations can strengthen the transformative capacity of people working on connecting, spreading, maturing and structurally embedding these innovations. This study presents an updated conceptual framework of network leadership roles and practices, and describes how these can contribute to more widespread, systemic and lasting impact of social innovations. Technical summary This study tests and refines a conceptual framework, describing the roles and practices of network leadership that can support the development of transformative capacities, in the context of social innovation networks. Such capacities include spreading social innovations in wider soc...

New technology, communities, and networking: problems and prospects for orchestrating change

Telematics and Informatics, 2001

This paper discusses the concept of community networking using new technologies. It speci®cally focuses on relatively large-scale town networks, where the network has outside sponsorship, and provides some examples of these networks. After examining the motivation for community networks, we attempt to see to what extent local concerns are being met in these social experiments. Unfortunately, there is a serious shortage of evaluation studies on many of these networks. In the ®nal third of the paper, we discuss in more detail the eircom Ennis Information Age Town (eEIAT) project in Ireland, and provide some information on an on-going project, in which we are involved, concerning the design of community networking centres. Ó

Sustaining the Vision through Networking...(and a Few Challenges Too!)

1996

Networking has always been regarded by librarians as an essential tool to facilitate the timely provision of information. Teacher librarians have often been vocal supporters of networking in theory, but in practice networking has been rather a failure. The first part of this paper provides a historical overview of the rationale for networking and the reasons for its lack of effectiveness. The second part of the paper provides an analysis of the way that Information Technology (IT) can change the network landscape. It is argued that. IT has the potential to solve many of the problems associated with traditional network models and is, therefore, able to sustain the vision of access without ownership. The new challenges of funding, contributing to the information pool, a shared vision for library and information services, and the exponential growth of information in the electronic information environment are discussed. Existing and potential applications of the Internet at the local, national, and international levels are also noted. (Contains 10 references.) (Author/AEF)

OTASC 8 (2) pp. 183–197 Intellect Limited 2011 Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change

Some first steps in the search for ‘hidden ’ Communities of Practice within electronic networks Copyright Intellect 2011 Do Not Distribute This article examines the problem of how to discover hidden Communities of Practice (CoPs) inside electronic networks and whether it is possible to nurture them into fully fledged Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoPs). It discusses the characteristics of hidden communities and the relationship between virtual communities, Distributed Communities of Practice (DCoPs) and VCoPs. It then examines some of the methods that might be used to search for hidden CoPs and the ways by which these might be transformed into full VCoPs. Finally, the article presents some findings from two early studies conducted in the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network in the United Kingdom.