Organizational Networks Research Articles

Improved Information Exchange as an Advanced Governance Tool

Whereas many organisations focus on the optimal functioning of their processes to achieve their goals, we nowadays see organisational challenges spreading to their functioning within networks. This poses a significant question for management and leadership: Are their decisions shaping or controlling their own or the network partners’ functioning? However, modern networks grant partners autonomy to make their choices, believing that the collective outcome of these autonomous decision processes can also yield results. However, cooperative decision-making between network partners is pivotal in today's society. Finding a balance between control over the network, autonomy of the partners and cooperation between them leads to what is often referred to as the emergent behaviour of the network. So, 'context is leading' requires reacting fast and efficiently to become a resilient organisational network. It is becoming evident that the resilience within network functioning lies in the exchange of information and data availability. In current practice, partners often seek solutions by striving for unity of language and/or data dictionaries. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t lead to optimal results in day-to-day practice. We propagate the adoption of a different approach. This article presents a non-invasive perspective on micro-contexts and their emerging information systems. By engaging these systems in their current form through formalised abstractions, we suggest effectively linking information and data sources to enhance information exchange and data availability. Improving information exchange will show itself instantly as an advanced governance tool

Digital transformation: The geopolitical-organizational nexus

This special issue aimed to attract articles situating digital transformation in the geopolitical-organizational nexus. Unlike innovation and change panaceas (or fads) like business process reengineering (BPR) which became popular in the 1990s, digital transformation is a multi-level concept. Extending beyond the redesign of organizational and business processes, the analytical boundaries of digital transformation include ecosystems, organizational networks, business and operational processes, organizational identities, governance structures, and quality/cost dynamics. However, the extant literature on digital transformation continues to use the organization as the primary unit of analysis. Definitions of digital transformation vary widely, with some not dissimilar to the BPR era. The papers included in this special issue provide analytical and empirical examples on the pervasive effects from contemporary digital technology for society, organizations, and citizens. Future work which isolates the digital technology artefact would benefit from further refinement of the digital transformation concept. A starting point is to revisit the digital technology evolution over past decades which reveal the inflection points of technological change, specifically for mainframes, PCs, and the Internet. Such analysis will increase our understanding and contextualization of past panaceas like BPR for generating new insights on how digital technologies are front and center in debates on digital transformation.

Mother-Child Closeness and Adolescent Structural Neural Networks: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Low-Income Families.

Mother-child closeness, a mutually trusting and affectionate bond, is an important factor in shaping positive youth development. However, little is known about the neural pathways through which mother-child closeness are related to brain organization. Utilizing a longitudinal sample primarily from low-income families (N=181; 76% African American youth and 54% female), this study investigated the associations between mother-child closeness at ages 9 and 15 and structural connectivity organization (network integration, robustness, and segregation) at age 15. The assessment of mother-child closeness included perspectives from both mother and child. The results revealed that greater mother-child closeness is linked with increased global efficiency and transitivity, but not modularity. Specifically, both the mother's and child's report of closeness at age 15 predicted network metrics but report at age 9 did not. Our findings suggest that mother-child closeness is associated with neural white matter organization, as adolescents who experienced greater mother-child closeness displayed topological properties indicative of more integrated and robust structural networks.

Investigating the differential structural organization and gene expression regulatory networks of lamin A Ig fold domain mutants of muscular dystrophy.

Lamins form a proteinaceous meshwork as a major structural component of the nucleus. Lamins, along with their interactors, act as determinants for chromatin organization throughout the nucleus. The major dominant missense mutations responsible for autosomal dominant forms of muscular dystrophies reside in the Ig fold domain of lamin A. However, how lamin A contributes to the distribution of heterochromatin and balances euchromatin, and how it relocates epigenetic marks to shape chromatin states, remains poorly defined, making it difficult to draw conclusions about the prognosis of lamin A-mediated muscular dystrophies.In the first part of this report, we identified the in-vitro organization of full-length lamin A proteins due to two well-documented Ig LMNA mutations, R453W and W514R. We further demonstrated that both lamin A/C mutant cells predominantly expressed nucleoplasmic aggregates. Labelling specific markers of epigenetics allowed correlation of lamin A mutations with epigenetic mechanisms. In addition to manipulating epigenetic mechanisms, our proteomic studies traced diverse expressions of transcription regulators, RNA synthesis and processing proteins, protein translation components, and posttranslational modifications. These data suggest severe perturbations in targeting other proteins to the nucleus.

Networks for healthcare delivery: asystematic literature review.

Network configurations have been proposed as an efficient form of organisation and a promising area of research; however, a lack of conceptual clarity can be noted. The purpose of this review is to allow for a broad appreciation of network configurations and provide guidance for future studies of the concept. A systematic literature review was conducted based on the PRISMA method; Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and the Cochrane Library were searched for conference proceedings and journal articles describing organisational networks to integrate resources aimed at care delivery. Around 80 articles were included in the final review and analysed thematically and by use of bibliographic coupling. The last decades have seen an increase in the frequency of articles describing networks for healthcare delivery. The most common contexts are care for multiple and/or long-term conditions. Three clusters of articles were found, corresponding to different conceptualisations of networks in healthcare: efficiency-enhancing cooperation, efficiency-enhancing integration and involvement for cocreation. To increase conceptual clarity and allow the research on network configurations in healthcare to produce meta-learnings and guidance to practice, scholars are advised to provide ample descriptions of studied networks and relate them to established network classifications. The current review has only included articles including networks as a key concept, which provides a focused overview of the use of network configurations but limits the insights into similar approaches not described explicitly as networks.

Thinking alike, acting alike? An assessment of organizational homophily and paradigmatic pragmatism in networks for local integration policies

As migrant integration policies touch upon almost all spheres of citizens’ life, collaboration across policy levels as well as across policy domains is needed. Over time, a series of both policy and analytical paradigms on the integration of migrants emerged, going from the traditional ideas of differentialism and assimilation, over multiculturalism, interculturalism, integrationism, liberal egalitarianism and mainstreaming, up to superdiversity and intersectionality. While networks for integration policies are likely to be at least partly driven by these paradigms, recent studies seem to nuance this assumption based on so called paradigmatic pragmatism, meaning that cities draw on a variety of ideas and pragmatically combine them under the header of diversity policies. The need for multi-level and multi-actor governance on migrant integration, the theoretical knowledge about homophily in organizational networks, and the recent findings on paradigmatic pragmatism, raise the question to what extent collaboration between public and non-profit organizations active around migrant integration is based on a shared policy paradigm on the integration of migrants. This question is answered based on a multiple case study of four central cities in Flanders (Belgium), covering 1.403 organizations. In the quantitative and qualitative (social network) analyses, comparisons along both the axes of cities and policy domains are made. Findings contribute to literature on organizational homophily, showing that clustering of organizations is likely to be at least partly driven by policy paradigm on integration. This is however nuanced by the observation that policy paradigms appear to be ambiguous, which in turn reveals opportunities for more flexible collaborations between actors and for avoiding deadlocks in policy making.

Examining The VTP Protocol, Identifying the Risks of Its Use and Providing Risk Reduction Solutions in The Computer Networks of Offices and Large Organizations

Today, one of the challenges of computer networks implemented in large offices and organizations is maintaining the stability and security of networks, as well as the ease and automation of their configuration to save the time and energy of network administrators. The VTP protocol is a tool to ease and reduce the burden of manually configuring changes to VLANs on Cisco switches. However, the use of this protocol, despite having advantages such as automatic configuration and centralized management of VLANs, has great risks such as the complexity of implementation in large networks and the loss of settings in case of wrong configuration. The problem studied in this article is to investigate the characteristics and function of this protocol and to recognize the possible risks and dangers associated with its use. In the following, solutions are provided to reduce these risks so that the benefits of this protocol can be used and at the same time protect the stability and security of the network implemented in the organization. By using this evaluation, network administrators can have an optimal and more informed use of this protocol.

Mapping the Knowledge Management Education and Professional Landscape in Brazil

Abstract: The article shows how the knowledge management area has developed in Brazil, in terms of academic and scientific foundations as well as organizational support and collaboration networks in the extra-academic context. In this way, it documents the existence of a corpus of reference sources already available for those interested in the subject as well as a deepening the understanding of knowledge management at the master’s and doctoral program levels.

Water Troubles: Peruvian Capitalists, Mining Infrastructure, and the First Copper Bonanza

This essay examines struggles over a water drainage tunnel as a window into the politics of mining, infrastructure, and national development in early twentieth-century Peru. It argues that the Peruvian mining elite operated as an organized network of entrepreneurs, mobilizing capital, environmental technology, and the power of the state to challenge the rising hegemony of US interests in Peru's copper corridor. Unlike the classic literature on nineteenth-century mining in Peru, which has presented Peruvian mineowners as a struggling bourgeoisie, this study focuses on this group's innovations and dynamism in the wake of the copper bonanza. It also studies its discursive strategies, which appealed to preexisting skepticism of free trade and anxieties about foreign influence. Altogether, this essay contributes to the literature on US imperialism and capitalist penetration by centering local actors and studying US hegemony as a contentious and contingent process.

Localization of proteins involved in the biogenesis and repair of the photosynthetic apparatus to thylakoid subdomains in Arabidopsis.

Thylakoid membranes in chloroplasts and cyanobacteria harbor the multisubunit protein complexes that catalyze the light reactions of photosynthesis. In plant chloroplasts, the thylakoid membrane system comprises a highly organized network with several subcompartments that differ in composition and morphology: grana stacks, unstacked stromal lamellae, and grana margins at the interface between stacked and unstacked regions. The localization of components of the photosynthetic apparatus among these subcompartments has been well characterized. However, less is known about the localization of proteins involved in the biogenesis and repair of the photosynthetic apparatus, the partitioning of proteins between two recently resolved components of the traditional margin fraction (refined margins and curvature), and the effects of light on these features. In this study, we analyzed the partitioning of numerous thylakoid biogenesis and repair factors among grana, curvature, refined margin, and stromal lamellae fractions of Arabidopsis thylakoid membranes, comparing the results from illuminated and dark-adapted plants. Several proteins previously shown to localize to a margin fraction partitioned in varying ways among the resolved curvature and refined margin fractions. For example, the ALB3 insertase and FtsH protease involved in photosystem II (PSII) repair were concentrated in the refined margin fraction, whereas TAT translocon subunits and proteins involved in early steps in photosystem assembly were concentrated in the curvature fraction. By contrast, two photosystem assembly factors that facilitate late assembly steps were depleted from the curvature fraction. The enrichment of the PSII subunit OE23/PsbP in the curvature fraction set it apart from other PSII subunits, supporting the previous conjecture that OE23/PsbP assists in PSII biogenesis and/or repair. The PSII assembly factor PAM68 partitioned differently among thylakoid fractions from dark-adapted plants and illuminated plants and was the only analyzed protein to convincingly do so. These results demonstrate an unanticipated spatial heterogeneity of photosystem biogenesis and repair functions in thylakoid membranes and reveal the curvature fraction to be a focal point of early photosystem biogenesis.

Lacking Accountability and Effectiveness Measures: Exploring the Implementation of Mentoring Programs for Refugee Youth

A high proportion of refugees coming into the U.S. are under the age of 18, and many continue to struggle to attain basic educational qualifications which may lead to viable economic opportunity. Recently, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) began issuing youth mentoring (YM) grants to support the integration of refugee youth. This paper explores the decision-making processes of resettlement organizations in a vertically complex network of organizations which implemented the YM programs for refugee youth in one large city of Texas. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with program implementers, findings suggest that resettlement agencies remain powerless in making key programmatic decisions, including implementation of the programs and designing accountability and effectiveness measures, which can truly evaluate the program quality. Other findings suggest that across the network of organizations involved in implementation of the YM programs, compliance with federal regulation is prioritized over accountability. The lack of program effectiveness and accountability measures have implications for one of the most vulnerable population, refugee youth. The main recommendation for policy and practice argues for the lead public agency’s increased involvement in defining key outcomes for the program recipients in a vertically complex network.

Marfan syndrome is associated with increased risk for gynecologic disorders and maternal complications.

To determine whether patients with Marfan syndrome are at an increased risk for reproductive disorders. This retrospective cohort study was conducted using the US collaborative network on the TriNetX research network of health care organizations. We included female patients aged 18-44 and identified a cohort of 4347 patients with Marfan syndrome (ICD-10 Q87.4). Our control cohort consisted of 16,424,990 patients without a diagnosis of Marfan syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (ICD-10 Q79.6). The primary outcomes included gynecologic diagnoses such as dysmenorrhea and endometriosis, and our secondary outcomes included urogynecologic, fertility, and obstetric outcomes, all identified by ICD-10 codes. We conducted a relative risk analysis with a p-value of <0.05 considered significant. Patients with Marfan syndrome were at an increased risk for pelvic and perineal pain, dysmenorrhea, abnormal uterine bleeding, endometriosis (all p <0.0001), dyspareunia (p =0.0009), leiomyoma (p =0.0076), polyp of female genital tract (p =0.016), urinary incontinence (p <0.0001), female genital prolapse (p =0.0006), fertility testing (p =0.0075), cesarean delivery (p =0.0003), gestational hypertension (p =0.0012), and pre-eclampsia (p =0.0024) compared to the control group following an adjusted, matched comparison. Patients with Marfan syndrome have an increased risk of numerous reproductive disorders and obstetric complications compared to patients without this diagnosis.

Tobacco Free Advent Calendar: Evaluating innovative strategies in Public Health digital campaigns

Abstract Introduction Two editions, 2022 and 2023, of the Tobacco Free Advent Calendar (TFAC) built a large network of Organizations, Universities, Institutions, individual experts and medical students across Europe, coordinated by ENSPNext (European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention Youth Group), to advocate for Youth and for Public Health. This study has 2 objectives: 1. Monitor the performance of TFAC 2023 vs TFAC 2022 for 31 days 2. Evaluate improvements in reach and engagement made for TFAC 2023. Methods For 24 days, TFAC 2023 featured thematic messages, embedded fact sheets, quizzes, videos and call-to-action buttons. New content was accessible daily starting on the first day of advent, ending on Christmas. TFAC was available in English and Armenian. AI was used to assist for various tasks and challenges during development and research. Comparative and Time Series Analysis were conducted in Excel and IBM SPSS26. Results TFAC 2023 was accessed 3764 times (8.8% increase), the doors were opened 1506 times (3.9% decrease), Call to action buttons were clicked 261 times (169% increase). For english version a strong variation in reach was observed, but not in engagement which remained relatively constant. In Armenian version both reach and engagement varied in 2023 vs 2022. A seasonal component was identified for both versions, particularly an increase at weekends and a decrease on weekdays. Similar to 2022, the reach and engagement were higher at the start and lower as time passed, although in 2023 the reach and engagement remained higher and more constant over time. Completion rates of interactive materials ranged between 21.4% to 100% in the English version and from 7.1% to 100% in the Armenian version. No interactive material remained unanswered. Conclusions Decrease of translations didn’t lower the reach and engagement of TFAC. Engagement with TFAC 2023 was higher, possibly due to the implication of students organizations and collaboration with influencers. Key messages • Targeted dissemination increased the reach and engagement of TFAC 2023 versus TFAC 2022. • Members of the target group should be recruited for being members in the projects affecting them to increase engagement and impact of the campaign.

Leveraging Advanced Machine Learning Algorithms for Enhanced Cyberattack Detection on U.S. Business Networks

Cyberattacks' rising volume and sophistication have made conventional security measures, such as firewalls, signature-based intrusion detection systems, and antivirus software, increasingly inadequate. The upsurge of cyber threats has been one of the most pressing predicaments for U.S. organizations in the digital age. With the increased dependence on internet-based forums, cloud computing, and interconnected networks, companies face an advancing number of extreme cyberattacks. The chief objective of this research project is to design and deploy proven machine learning methods to enhance the detection and combating of cyberattacks on U.S. organization networks. This research project retrieved a cyber-attack dataset from Kaggle.com, which had a collection of public datasets of cyber threats. This dataset was curated precisely, offering a realistic representation of cyber-attack scenarios, making it an ideal playground for various analytical tasks. The collection was classified as per the source of the relevant information, such as host-based datasets, network traffic datasets, malware or fraud reports, or a special section for datasets that can be classified according to a specific source. The dataset comprised numerous network traffic attributes such as source and destination IP addresses, ports, protocol, payload size, and attack labels. For this research project, three machine learning algorithms were used, namely: Logistic Regression, XG-Boost and Random Forest. This research project applied performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score for the performance of the classification models were considered. The result illustrated that the random forest model was far superior in accuracy compared to the logistic regression model; particularly, it had excellent accuracy. Through the use of advanced machine learning models, organizations will be in a position to devise more dynamic and intelligent security systems that evolve with the threat landscape. These intelligent systems monitor every kind of anomaly, malicious activity, and threat response with unparalleled effectiveness. The findings of this research project have significant implications for enhancing cybersecurity in U.S. organizational networks.

A distance-based network activity correlation framework for defeating anonymization overlays

As the effectiveness of modern Internet-based anonymization infrastructures grows, law enforcement agencies are experiencing a progressive erosion of their surveillance capabilities. This can severely undermine their efforts to prevent and investigate various types of unlawful activities, potentially increasing the impunity of organized criminal networks. Balancing the legitimate privacy needs of individuals with the imperative to maintain public safety and combat criminal behavior in the digital world remains a complex tradeoff for both policymakers and technologists who need to find a systematic and reliable way to link the traffic traces associated with criminal activities to their anonymized origins. Accordingly, this paper presents a simple but very effective de-anonymization approach capable of associating traffic traces captured at the edge of the overlay infrastructures, in correspondence with the true origins, to those captured in correspondence with the destinations. The approach is based on determining the minimum-distance pairs within a complete bipartite graph in which the traffic traces are the nodes. Experiments with different distance functions, applied in varied ways, show that the resulting framework appears to be a promising solution that is scalable and easily deployable on real-life network equipment.

Organizational Influence on Security Development in Open-Source Software Projects

Increasing technological complexity, intensified competition, and security requirements have driven open-source software (OSS) projects to become a crucial part of organizations' software development. This study focuses on the OSS project TensorFlow (TF) and uses a case study to examine how organizations and their associated developers collaborate to identify, fix and prevent security vulnerabilities. Social Network Analysis (SNA) of archived security data from software repositories is used to gain insight into security activities. The study examines the internal structure and evolution of security code collaboration, organizational networks, and top organizational contributors to TF. It also examines productivity, homophily, development diversity, and turnover rates among developers across various software releases. The in-depth insights from this research enhance our understanding of collaborative patterns in OSS communities within open software ecosystems, particularly in the security context.

Providing Cataract Surgeries at a Rural Primary Health Centre through Non-governmental Organisation Collaboration: An 8-year Experience

Abstract The National Programme for Control of Blindness and Visual Impairment aims to reduce blindness and visual impairment in India. Despite these efforts, rural areas still have high numbers of cataract patients due to inadequate healthcare services. Leveraging non-governmental organisation (NGO) networks to provide rural eye care camps has been proposed to address these challenges. This article shares an 8-year collaboration with an NGO in rural Haryana, delivering cataract surgeries. Initially, surgeries were conducted in temporary locations; however, due to complications, they were shifted to hospitals, increasing travel difficulties. In 2016, collaboration with ICARE Eye Hospital began, involving screening camps and transporting patients for surgery. This reduced patient expenses and referral burdens, performing 1690 surgeries with high satisfaction. Authors recommend similar collaborations to achieve the national blindness reduction goal.

Personal Values and Their Impact on the Opinion Leadership of Managers and Employees in Internal Communication

ABSTRACT Opinion leaders play a prominent role in the internal communication network of organizations, although the concept and its drivers have rarely been addressed in internal communication research. Based on a representative online survey of 1,030 managers and employees in German private and public corporations, this paper analyzes the impact of personal values on the opinion leadership of managers and employees. The results show that specific personal values positively predict opinion leadership and particularly harmonizing behavior, with some differences between managers and employees. Theoretical and empirical implications for internal communication research and practice are discussed.

Evaluation of Human Trafficking and its Causes in Kosovo

The occurrence of human trafficking is a very harmful and disturbing crime for Kosovo and the countries of the region, which are encountering this criminal issue that seriously attacks human rights. Human trafficking is often associated with organized criminal groups that operate outside the state borders of Kosovo, making the fight against this occurrence much more challenging for the mechanisms that combat this type of crime. This research paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of human trafficking in Kosovo, evaluating the contributing factors and assessing the effectiveness of existing legal frameworks. It also offers actionable recommendations for enhancing collaboration among key stakeholders. The method used in this research is a literature review, systematically analyzing academic literature, reports, and relevant documents on human trafficking. The findings indicate that human trafficking severely deteriorates the socio-economic conditions in Kosovo and reinforces organized crime networks. Therefore, close cooperation at both regional and international levels is essential for effectively addressing this criminality, which remains a pressing concern in Kosovo and beyond.

Community and Care: Black Civil Society and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 in the United States

Abstract During the deadliest pandemic of the twentieth century, the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918–1920, African Americans in the United States appeared to be an especially vulnerable population. The health effects of racialized segregation, produced by congested housing conditions, environmental racism, and exclusion from or discrimination in healthcare services, threatened a devastating situation during the second wave of the pandemic in late 1918. This paper argues that a network of Black civil society organizations and activists sprang into action to ameliorate the worst effects of this public health emergency, and that it was able to provide care and relief that would have largely been denied by white-led public and private institutions. This network had been built up in the preceding decades and can therefore serve as an important model and informational resource in utilizing community-centered planning to prepare marginalized peoples for the spread of pandemic disease.