Dialectical network analysis: a critical approach for researching networks in management and organization studies

Abstract

Network research within and beyond Management and Organization Studies (MOS) is booming in recent decades. Numerous scholarly debates have been held on the development of network research, both as a methodology and as networks in and of themselves as organizational forms. This chapter adds to a particular stream within MOS, namely Business administration scholarship that applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) to research inter-organizational networks. I first delineate the shortcomings of this stream in doing network research, to then combine current advances of SNA with a theoretical grounding of inter-organizational networks as material-discursive entities in a critical political economy perspective. I argue for the politico-economic embeddedness of inter-organizational networks, considering that inter-organizational networks (1) are historically contingent, (2) always involve multiple agents including the state, and (3) are arenas of power asymmetry. Four essential dimensions of inter-organizational networks in business environments are prevalent in shifting from a more mainstream to a dialectical understanding of the same in MOS: State-industry relations, labor-capital relations, technology, and cooperation and competition. This dialectical approach towards inter-organizational networks necessitates a critical methodology, which foregrounds the convergence of multiple sources of qualitative and quantitative data stemming from diverse research methods. Therefore, SNA is advanced through re-introducing the long-neglected methodology of Dialectical Network Analysis (DNA) to Management and Organization Studies.