Networks and Flows in Organizational Communication

Abstract

Communication networks are the patterns of contact that are created by the flow of messages among communicators through time and space. The concept of message should be understood here in its broadest sense to refer to data, information, knowledge, images, symbols, and any other symbolic forms that can move from one point in a network to another or can be cocreated by network members. These networks take many forms in contemporary organizations, including personal contact networks, flows of information within and between groups, strategic alliances among firms, and global network organizations, to name but a few. This book offers a new multitheoretical, multilevel perspective that integrates the theoretical mechanisms that theorists and researchers have proposed to explain the creation, maintenance, dissolution, and re-creation of these diverse and complex intra- and interorganizational networks (Monge & Contractor, 2001). This focus provides an important new alternative to earlier reviews of empirical literature, organized on the basis of antecedents and outcomes (Monge & Eisenberg, 1987) or research themes within organizational behavior (Krackhardt & Brass, 1994). Although examining the emergence of communication networks is in itself an intellectually intriguing enterprise, the inexorable dynamics of globalization provide an even more compelling impetus for communication researchers and practitioners (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1999). This chapter begins by underscoring the rationale for studying the emergence of communication networks and flows in a global world. The chapter also situates the contributions of this book in previous communication perspectives on formal and emergent communication networks in organizations as well as current philosophical perspectives on the study of emergence in structures. Communication networks and the organizational forms of the twenty-first century are undergoing rapid and dramatic changes (Fulk & DeSanctis, 1999). What is unfolding before our collective gaze is being driven by spectacular advances and convergences in computer and communication technology and by the collective economic, political, societal, cultural, and communicative processes collectively known as globalization (Grossberg, Wartella, & Whitney, 1998; Monge, 1998; Robertson, 1992; Stohl, 2001; Waters, 1995). While many of the changes brought about by globalization are beneficial to humankind, others are clearly detrimental (Scholte, 2000).