Mapping peace structures and their impact on social cohesion in the Gidda Ayana cluster of East Wallaga Zone, Ethiopia

Community-level integration of health services and community health workers’ agency in Malawi

PurposeAlthough current strategic communication research is particularly interested in deviations from normative ideals, there is a surprising lack of interest in the structures that lead to such deviations from formal specifications. To this end, this paper explores the classic, but of late largely forgotten concept of informality. The aim is to develop a theoretical framework and a systematization that can be used to answer central questions in strategic communication research. The focus is on three research questions: How can formal and informal structures of strategic organizational communication be systematized? How are formal and informal organizational structures thematized in strategic organizational communication? What is the relationship between (in)formal structures of strategic organizational communication and the thematization of (in)formal organizational structures?Design/methodology/approachThe conceptual contribution is based on systems theoretical organization theory, which understands formal structures as decided decision premises and informal structures as undecided decision premises.FindingsThe understanding of informal expectation structures presented here has enormous potential for describing and researching central issues in strategic communication research in a far more significant way, both theoretically and empirically. For example, decoupling can be described in a much more differentiated way than is possible using the neo-institutionalist perspective.Practical implicationsThe systematizing framework for researching informal structures enables a deeper understanding of informal structures and thus a better handling of them in practice. In addition, the framework provides a basis for future empirical studies.Originality/valueInformal phenomena and structures seem to be the elephant in the room in many discourses in strategic communication research. With the theoretical perspective and systematization presented here, these phenomena can finally be explored in a differentiated and meaningful way.

This chapter analyzes trade contracts in Canton, using examples of 64 documents reproduced in the plate section. These documents are little known among scholars, primarily because none of them have survived in China. They are important, not only because they provide a window into each merchant's operation, but also because they reveal the limits of the system supporting the trade. Contracts help to define the formal and informal legal structures that governed commerce. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the formal structure (written agreements) was important in building foreign confidence and attracting more traders to China. By the late eighteenth century, however, the informal structure (practices) was, in fact, more important for growth. Contracts help to identify the parameters of these formal and informal structures that were defining and supporting trade.

This article analyzes the combined effect of the formal and informal structures on the outcomes of six technologically innovative projects in an R&D laboratory of a Fortune 500 company. To this end, it employs qualitative and social network analyses. The study not only identifies four factors as critical to R&D project success but also specifies how they operate. Success on technical projects is enhanced through a unique project design--one that weaves social networks and social capital into the projects' formal structures. The results also demonstrate that centrality in two social advice networks--technical and organizational--constructed to reflect the information exchange and communication flow in an R&D environment is critical in shaping the projects' outcomes. In addition to providing one of the few empirical accounts of the effects of social networks and centrality on the performance of R&D projects, the study challenges the prevailing views with regard to the relationship between formal and informal structures. It demonstrates that on the successful technical projects the two structures shape the outcome not separately but in interaction.

This study examined contrasting models of the impact of formal and informal structural factors and the communication environment on organizational innovativeness. Specifically, three formal structural variables (decentralization, formalization, and slack resources), two informal structural variables (range and prominence), and two communication environment variables (communication quality and acceptance) are posited to be antecedents of organizational innovativeness. In the traditional model, formal structural impacts are posited to be shaped by informal structure. Conversely, the coexisting model argues that both formal and informal structural variables directly affect the communication environment, which, in turn, shapes perceptions of innovativeness. Data were gathered from self-report questionnaires and network analysis communication logs completed by organizational members (N = 79) of a geographically dispersed government health information agency, the Cancer Information Service (CIS). Tests of the models demonstrate that the coexisting model is clearly superior. These results suggest that the dual role of formal and informal structures needs to be more systematically specified as we focus on innovation in new organizational forms, such as the CIS.

The ongoing relevance of any major organisation both within itself and to a nation's social, political and economic prosperity depends, in large part, on its ability to respond to a rapidly changing operational context. Organisations must now be capable of exploiting new opportunities and of coping with new challenges. In short, organisations must be adaptive and agile in responding to changes in their environment. Informal collaborative arrangements in organisations and the salient role of informal networks in many aspects of life are well recognised. However, research on organisational responses to the complexity of the environments in which they operate, largely focuses on the formal aspects of organisations in terms of their design, structures, and business strategy. Although in organisational life formal and informal structures are intertwined, what research and discussion there is of informal structures tends to treat these as separate entities. In overall terms, the interaction of both formal and informal organisational structures and the mechanisms that enable this interaction have not been sufficiently explored. This study examines the interaction of informal and formal organisational structures in complex and changing operational environments. More specifically, this thesis explores contingencies, both external to the organisation and within, that give rise to informal network activity and looks at the characteristics and modus operandi of the networks that arise. Furthermore, this study investigates whether such networks contribute to organisational goals, and what factors enable a complementary relationship between formal and informal organisational structures, in responding to a complex operational landscape. These issues provide the foundation for the empirical program, conducted in the context of a deployed military organisation, the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The thesis examines and reports on three different deployments, comprising humanitarian and combat operations. The confluence of research objectives and complexity underpin the methodological approach adopted; narrative data and participants' sensemaking further informs the researcher's approach to analysis. The emergence of distinctive themes from the analysis of the collective narratives provides a basis for further explorations. The consistency over time of tentative early findings is examined through a workshop with a sample of military personnel who had a more recent deployment experience than that of their counterparts in the initial three deployments analysed. The substantive findings of this study provide insights into the dynamics of the interaction between formal and informal organisational structures. In particular, they illuminate relationships between three enabling factors - accountability, responsible autonomy, and command and control arrangements -that need to be considered to fully exploit the strengths inherent in formal and informal organisational structures during deployments. The study results clearly demonstrate that agility of response in an operational setting can be enhanced by a symbiotic relationship between formal and informal organisational structures. Implications of the study's findings for military organisations are explored, together with their broader organisational and practical applicability. The novel combination of techniques used for data acquisition and analysis within the empirical program extends the methodological approaches, for study of phenomena situated in the organisational and complexity domains. The overall outcomes of this research align with the convergence of organisational and complexity theories, and through empirical exploration the present research enriches this convergence.

Organizations in disaster-prone areas generally have formalized plans that will help them recover after environmental disasters. However, these formal mechanisms are usually adapted “on the fly” because disasters don't unfold according to plans. This paper examines how a cross-sector network of community organizations used both formal structures (planned/bureaucratic relationships within and among organizations) and informal structures (emergent/social networks) that interacted to support organized response work in response to both anticipated and chaotic events during and following Hurricane Harvey. Results showed that formal reporting relationships that included preestablished network relationships predicted organizing structures on the days when volatility was highest, while emergent networks were crucial in guiding recovery actions during periods of crisis. The findings extend phase models of crisis with a more granular and longitudinal analysis of these organizing processes, advancing organizational theory that often frames bureaucratic structures and social networks as dichotomous rather than as symbiotic.

Most large firms fail to take advantage of the opportunity to create new businesses that combine resources from disparate parts of the firm. Although research on incentives and on formal organizational structure offer partial explanations for the difficulty of cross-divisional innovation, a deeper understanding of the problem requires research that simultaneously considers formal and informal structure. Unfortunately, such research faces two substantial methodological hurdles. First, the kind and quality of data that have typically been collected to conduct network analysis are inadequate; and second, there is a paucity of research that accounts for the embeddedness of the informal structure in the formal. In this paper, I begin to resolve these two issues. I argue for data collection methods relying on archives of intraorganizational e-mail data for network analysis. E-mail data are abundantly available ¿ though difficult for researchers to procure ¿ and represent substantially better measures of the social structure of the multi-divisional organization than alternative data sources. I also develop and pilot-test new measures that use e-mail data to quantify the relationships between formal divisions; in doing so, I explicitly link formal structure with informal structure. Together, these contributions of data collection and analysis promise to better equip future research to bridge the gap between formal structure and informal structure and, in doing so, to lay the groundwork for a fuller examination of the challenge of cross-divisional innovation from a network perspective.

Development and return on execution of product innovation capabilities: The role of organizational structure

Successful organizations rely on a healthy mixture of formal and informal structures to coordinate effectively and operate efficiently. Formal structures, such as documented business processes, are valuable when they can be applied successfully to new contexts and because they provide a high degree of visibility and traceability during their application. When they fail, or are simply not available, an organization relies on its informal structures and the human capacity for innovation to continue operating. Despite their resiliency, informal structures are not as easily understandable which can make them difficult for outsiders to learn, comprehend, and audit. Although formal structures are often the byproducts of recurrent patterns of ad-hoc collaboration, most cooperative tools cannot externalize usage data into human readable artifacts that can be systematically reused and evolved. In this paper we introduce BlackTie, a collaborative system designed to extract tangible and reusable models of collaboration during ad-hoc interaction and facilitate their reuse and evolution over time.

A region’s institutional structure is crucial in the implementation of policies for its development activities. It is essential for policymakers to be familiar with these institutional frameworks for successful policy implementation. Considering four char villages as representations of the total char area of Assam, we investigate the nature and existing structures of the institutional arrangements in the char areas of Assam. We use a descriptive approach to present the results. In our research, we gathered information from focus group discussions using semi-structured questionnaires. In this study, we explore the differences between formal and informal institutional structures across the char locations of Assam. We conclude that the formation of formal and informal institutions in the char regions of Assam are influenced by physical elements, such as location and environmental circumstances, as well as social aspects, such as social cohesion and related sociocultural practices.

This study explores an alternative healthcare innovation project in its making using ethnographic research methods. The project is a confined space—a living lab—that cannot fully be described or explained in the same way we normally understand set-ups for healthcare innovation. By creating its own space, in the intersection between formal and informal structures, it draws our attention to a new way of organizing healthcare innovation. Taking an ethnographic research approach, it is suggested how a concept of a bubble can be used to describe the nature of the living lab as a partial and flexible object that constitutes multiple future possibilities. The concept of the bubble challenges the notion of the living lab as a cheese bell, which is the term used by the field participants, inspired by Clayton Christensen. Bringing in theoretical points from Bruno Latour regarding laboratories, this study explores the materiality of the laboratory and its political nature. The study contributes to the debate on innovation in healthcare and especially fuses to the discussion of how to organize healthcare innovation. It argues that we need to pay attention to new kinds of living labs—like the one introduced in this study.

The public sector is facing an equation that cannot be solved by continuing doing business as usual. External demands of availability, quality and resilience of services, as well as internal demands of resource efficiency, are putting pressure on the public sector to seek for innovation. In this study, we focus on local government innovation where high expectations are set on better utilisation of employees’ creativity and innovative capacity. Based on a qualitative case study of an innovation programme in a Swedish local government organisation, this study applies institutional theory as a theoretical lens to further investigate and analyse the relationship between formal and informal structures of local government innovation. The institutional structures related to norms and values, legitimacy and decoupling as well as digital artefacts as institutional carriers are discussed. Implications for practice show that formal structures, processes and digital artefacts to support local government innovation are important in this work. However, to achieve government innovation, equal attention should also be given to informal institutional structures of innovation. For research, this implies that government innovation studies can benefit from an institutional theory perspective to develop a better understanding of how informal structures affect related processes. We conclude by arguing that the needed change towards the innovative bureaucracy is a transformative innovation in itself that needs to be acknowledged.

In my dissertation, I examine intraorganizational social networks and their antecedents and consequences. The first paper, jointly authored with Michael Tushman, is a theoretical discussion of the role of social networks in inter-divisional coordination. Most large organizations fail to develop new businesses that combine resources from disparate parts of the firm. I define and explore a brand of corporate entrepreneurship based on interdependent innovation - the deliberate creation of interdependence between autonomous divisions of multi-business firms to create new products. I argue that interdependent innovation is difficult because the social structures that promote exploration of new possibilities are inconsistent with the social structures needed to successfully execute interdependent innovation; I suggest that senior leadership plays a crucial role in transitioning the organization between different network structures.Empirically, there are at least two methodological hurdles to researching the complex interaction between formal structure and social structure in contributing to organizational outcomes. First, the kind and quality of data that have typically been collected to conduct network analysis are inadequate; and second, there is a paucity of research that accounts for the embeddedness of the informal structure in the formal. In the second dissertation paper, I begin to resolve these two issues. I argue for data collection methods relying on electronic communication archives (e.g., e-mail) for network analysis. I also empirically develop novel measures that use this data to quantify the social structural relationships between formal divisions; in doing so, I explicitly embed informal structure within formal structure in novel ways.The third dissertation paper, jointly authored with Toby Stuart and Michael Tushman, is an empirical study of the pattern of communications - and, by extension, the coordination that it enables - in a modern organization. We analyze a dataset with more than 100 million electronic mail messages, calendar meetings and teleconferences for a sample of more than 30,000 employees of a single, multidivisional firm. In dyad-level models of the probability that pairs of individuals communicate, we find very large effects of spatial proximity and formal organizational structure on the rate of communication; homophily effects based on gender, organizational tenure, and salary levels are much weaker.

The purpose of this article is to examine the effects of epistemic motives and social structures on individual actions and the implications for organizational outcomes. It has been suggested that the informal social structures that develop within organizations affect the behavior of individuals, perhaps more so than formal structure. If this is true, when studying organizations it may be important to examine the effects of informal social structures on individual actions and organizational outcomes. Drawing on findings from epistemic motive theory and expanding social capital theory, a cognition–structure–action model is introduced as a way to begin systematically examining the informal structure of relations that form within organizations on individual behavior. A multilevel perspective is used to examine the interrelationships between formal organizational structures and epistemic motivation and the formation of informal social structure. This article contributes to network research by examining potenti...