ABSTRACT
This chapter explores networks and networking among healthcare managers. It identifies the networks which managers engaged with, emphasizing their range and diversity and using this to illuminate some important differences between the organizations and managerial groups studied. Identifying key complementarities and synergies between particular approaches to networking does illustrate the potential power and benefits of networking within these organizational and occupational contexts. Networks are seen as highly dynamic and fluid systems of inter-related nodes, capable of rapid expansion or adaptation. The model of the network has been used to represent and analyze a vast array of social phenomena: as methodological tools to understand the functioning of communities and society; as designs for new and more effective organizations; as models to account for the vital flows of knowledge within and between contexts, organizations and communities; and as the solution to the failings of markets and bureaucracy.
