The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations - Hardcover

Cross, Robert L.; Parker, Andrew; Cross, Rob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591392705 ISBN 13: 9781591392705

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 2004

Synopsis

A powerful, visual framework helps managers discover how employees really communicate and collaborate to get work done - and helps them identify ways they can influence these social networks to improve performance and innovation. In The Hidden Power of Social Networks, Cross and Parker, experts in "social network analysis"—a technique that visually maps relationships between people in large, distributed groups - apply this powerful tool to management for the first time. Based on their in-depth study of sixty informal employee networks in well-known companies around the world, Cross and Parker show managers how to conduct a social network analysis of their organization.

About this title

About the Author

Rob Cross is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce in Charlottesville. Andrew Parker is a Research Consultant with the IBM Knowledge and Organizational Forum in Cambridge.

Reviews

That organizational charts rarely describe functional hierarchy is obvious to any employee who’s ever tried to adhere to one. Instead, survival often depends on incorporating oneself into unofficial social networks that allow one to gain access to necessary information and to collaborate with the colleagues who can actually get things done. In this dense but useful volume, Cross and Parker-both consultants with IBM’s Knowledge and Organizational Performance Forum-give readers insight into how such unofficial networks form and function. They also share their methodology for rendering these basically unseen networks visible to managers. By literally mapping information flow and collaboration patterns among the people who make up a department or firm, they can pinpoint individual bottlenecks, essential employees and those who have been pushed to the periphery or whose expertise is underutilized. Their analysis enables managers to adapt their strategies to exploit and support these now visible networks and improve overall productivity. Rather than using their book as a forum to garner new consulting business-with a ‘kids don’t try this at home’ approach-they encourage readers to pursue network analysis at their own organizations by arming them with step-by-step instructions through two appendixes. The authors present their material in the nitty-gritty style of an evening business course, with lots of charts and examples. They take their mission of arming managers with a substantive strategic tool very seriously. In this way, theirs is unlike many management books that are high on concept and lacking in application-Cross and Parker provide a guide that is directly applicable to improving the functionality of any organization.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591392705
• ISBN 13: 9781591392705
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304