Organizations as Networks

Organizations are an extension of “natural” community life, gradually more purposeful and designed more consciously. Examples are firms, hospitals, governmental agencies, universities, churches, armies, labor unions, voluntary associations, prisons, political parties, sport clubs, schools, and criminal organizations, to mention just a few. An organization can be regarded as a special purpose community, ¹ and can likewise be defined as a network – a component, to be precise – of people spending part of their time in working and in power relations to each other, with relations extending to the socio-economic environment of the organization. Obviously, both internal and external relations are fleshed out culturally. Following up on our community detection approach (Chapter 5), organizational boundaries tend to be fuzzy, since individuals can be members of multiple organizations or communities, and can have ties to other organizations.