2021
Inter/organizational
Relations and Networks
MASTER ORGANIZATION STUDIES 2021-2022
I hope this summary helps you in your studies! I have put a lot of
effort in this summary, so a good review on Stuvia is greatly
appreciated! :)
Oral exam:
• Approximately 20 minutes (including intro and exit).
• Start with 2 (out of 6) key papers (random draw).
• In total 8 to 12 questions
• On at least three of the five central topics of the course:
o General overview + Network as a form of governance;
o Fundamentals of network research;
o Generating social capital in and through networks + network evolution;
o Interorganizational relations and networks in innovation;
o Management and effectiveness of interorganizational networks.
• The questions are distributed across 4 levels. You will get at least 2 questions per level:
o Knowledge & understanding;
o Application;
o Analysis & evaluation;
o Synthesis & creation.
,Table of content
Table of content .............................................................................................................................................. 1
Lecture 1.1 Exploring the field ........................................................................................................................ 2
Lecture 2.1 How to conceptualize and measure social structure? From theory to the analysis of relational
data ............................................................................................................................................................... 19
Lecture 3.1 Social capital............................................................................................................................... 31
Lecture 3.3 Network dynamics and evaluation............................................................................................. 44
Lecture 4.1 Field networks and innovation policy ........................................................................................ 57
Lecture 5.1 Management and effectiveness of networks ............................................................................ 73
Lecture 5.2 Management and effectiveness of networks ............................................................................ 92
Granovetter (1973): The strength of weak ties ............................................................................................. 99
Uzzi (1997) Social structure and competition in interfirm networks .......................................................... 102
Burt (1992): Structural holes, the social structure of competition ............................................................. 106
Powell (1990): Neither market nor hierarchy: network forms of organisation .......................................... 110
Powell et al., (1996), Inter-organizational collaboration and the locus of innovation: networks of learning
in biotechnology .......................................................................................................................................... 112
Provan & Milward (1995): A preliminary theory of interorganizational network effectiveness ................ 116
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,Lecture 1.1 Exploring the field
Network studies
Tilburg Organization Studies: A relational perspective on adaptive organizations
We will start with an organization studies perspective on organizations and organizing. You can bring this
down to the four I’s:
• Intra-organizational relationships. This regards interaction within organizations, in projects and
teams. In the course organization dynamics the focus is on intra-organizational relations.
• Inter-organizational relationships. Networks, alliances, value chains, or project networks. This
comes in many different shapes, but is always about relations between two or more
organizations.
• Institutional context of organizations. Like norms, values, rules, regulations and how
organizations can deal with them.
• Innovation. The output can be innovation (new products, new services) but also organizational
innovation.
Heading towards a society of networks?
This is basically a historical development of the last 200 years in terms of organizations and organizing.
Society of individuals (19th century - ?). First we see the society of individuals, where people live as
individuals and even if they are part of an organization then it’s still very much connected to an individual.
You did not work for an organization like this university or Phillips, but for basically one person. People
therefore had individual identities. The individual lifetime with possible succession was the time horizon
of organizaitonal forms. If the individual died then it could only be continued if there was succession
(mostly by sons at the time), but that was uncertain. Nowadays we perceive organisations as basically
endless in time, even though we know they might die (go bankrupt or merge) so that is a different
perspective.
Society of organizations (1900 - ?). In terms of theory we can see in the second period that the society of
organizations came into being. This was sort of the heyday of large vertically integrated organizations. The
Phillips that came into beings, the development of an organizational identity, and the organizations
becoming a legal form. Before 1900 you could not bring an organization to court. There is an
organizational identity developing, which comes on top of the individual identity of a person. Next to
being Joe Schmoe you also become a member of an organization and identify yourself as such. Now we
have very large organizations with formal bureaucratic control structures. The theories that you learned in
organizational theory from this timeframe are theories that try to describe and understand these classical
vertically integrated organizations. Important theoretical concepts: scientific management, bureaucratic
theory, contingency theory, neo-institutional theory. For a long time this was conceptualized as closed
systems, so the environment of the organization did not really play much of a role that changed with the
neo-institutional theory.
Network society (1970 - ?). From the 1970s we see an increasing sort of linking behavior of organisations
through globalization, information technology. Here we can talk about the network society. So
organisations start to build bilateral relationships in alliances for example. In terms of control the focus
shifted toward output control and reputational control, not so much as bureaucratic control anymore.
because if you work together with other organizations then bureaucratizing this will be counterproductive
so it has to be oriented towards the output. Here in terms of theory we can see transaction cost theory,
resource dependence theory, which are about the dyadic ties of organizations and why they exist.
Society of networks (2000 - ?). The last theory is that organisations consciously start to form groups of
organizations. Not only bilateral or dyadic ties, but whole groups (for example network alliances).
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, Example: If you fly today with KLM you can buy a ticket from KLM to Bali and then you might fly with
three different airlines that belong to the same SkyTeam alliance. Here there is actually a third identity
forming, which is a network identity.
In the last two periods (network society and society of networks) we see new analytical tools developing,
namely network analysis. This is different from the classical statistical operators because it uses relational
data rather than attribute data.
Figure 1. Summary of the text above (the text is what was highlighted during the lecture).
Every year there are more publications on IOR/ION, so there is a lot of interest in scholarly publications
giving the increasing importance of that phenomenon.
Inter-organizational relation (IOR)
What is an inter-organizational relation?
Individuals form groups. different groups form departments. Departments form divisions. Divisions form
organizations. The inter-organizational relation is then a connection of different types (example: alliance)
between two organizations.
We can also distinguish the organizational set, which is an organizational ego network. And then the
whole network includes organizations not starting from an individual organization, but from a problem
where the organizations come together to tackle a problem.
An inter-organizational relationship is:
• Relationship between two more or less autonomous organizations to achieve their goals more
efficiently and more effectively.
• Organizations can be competitors, suppliers, customers, service providers, knowledge
institutions, etc.
• Organizations can cooperate or collaborate horizontally or vertically with regard to the value
chain.
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