Blurring Boundary

Technology had changed our lives in many different ways, blurring the boundaries between people, countries and ethnicities. Information flows over distance with fastest speed that we could never have imagined without having the internet. Emerge of the technology changed not only the communication style, but also the value of networks, and how we operate businesses.

“economists tend to define propinquity in terms of cost of transporation rather than the actual number of miles between nodes.”

The distance between people was used to be measured in terms of physical distance. In small villages, physical barriers and cultural barriers, such as mountain, and language, has distanced people from each other. However, in modern technological society, ego-centric relationship hardly exists. We can be connected to anyone through internet, and we can be on and off anytime we want. In such society, the physical distance can no longer be valid measures of distance, since people can have common attributes without having to be physically close to each other. Cyber space blurred the boundary between people, and therefore, shaped totally different way of communication values.

Since it is very easy to get contact with anyone in cyber space without having to visit people, being able to contact with someone is not advantages anymore. It is rather, how strong you can build your network and being able to get response from somebody that you can reach. To make the communication between groups efficiently, organization need more brokers and trustful mangers to operate the business. It is because, without having mutual trust or reciprocity relationship, it is hard to get valuable feedback since it is easier to ignore or pretend to not noticing the emails or any contacts. Also brokers are very important leaders because having understanding in both cultures can integrate two different communities into one bigger virtual group. This would greatly benefit the organization by lowering the conceptual barriers, the only, but large barrier that virtual teams need to deal with.

In this ever changing business environment, company would have large portion of highly conceptual and invisible assets that is trust relationship. Therefore, being able to know the relationship between people and respond to the change quickly would be especially important for the organizations.

Social Networking-Book Comment

The research on social networking illustrates the another effective way of the corporate management. Although, recognizing the social networking by informal mean has its cost, it definitely has managerial implications.

The book introduced four different types of people who have big role in the informal communications, and one of them was a bottleneck or unsung hero.
This type of manager who is not recognized by the organization but certainly has trusted by others was called "effective managers" in one of the management course that I took. Since, these type of managers are usually not recognized, the research can be really useful, giving them credits for their, otherwise invisible works, and further motivating them. Also, by rewarding effective managers, the company can build a norm to other employees that such a contribution is important for the company. Through these acts, the company can build more effective way of communication, and therefore, eliminate the redundancy between the sectors. Also by rewarding unnoticeable contributors, these managers can gain job satisfactions through rewarding system. This will lower the turnover rate and also the budget of the company.

However, as book states, connectivity has its cost. First of all, too much connectivity may produce too much politicking within the company. What so called effective managers were the unsung heroes because other employees could trust her/him without being noticed. However, if the informal mean of networking becomes the evaluation criteria, the view of these managers may change creating change in climate.

Finally, evaluating the informal communication within the organization can arise the privacy issue. Since, most of our communicating is done by the email, chatting, etc, evaluating the communication between employees can violate the privacy right. How far the company should monitor the employees need be discussed with in the organization and monitoring the informal network may take the privacy issue one step forward to the environment where employees can be monitored anytime from anywhere, since it is technically possible to do so on the internet.

Social Networking

Hello, I am a student taking a course at American University and this blog is created for the course of Social Networking.

All of the posting is my own and I am responsible for the postings.