Had a good email exchange with Peter Smith last night. H'es helping me sort out the woolly stuff with respect to OL and LO. He came up with a nice angle -
"You might look at social networking as an influential topic for building Social Capital and competitiveness in offices being developed in new environments - I have done work with orgs showing that expats do well if they have good networking skills."
Which leads to a new research question:
'To what extent are Social Capital Networks a CSF in the successful establishment of a new overseas office for the internationalising firm? The case of Emerald and the UAE.'
Issues that could be explored:
- Resolving conflict between new and extant knowledge
- Appreciation of cultural norms in the creation, and subsequent perceieved value, of social capital networks from different countries
- What properties best describe efficient organisational structures for dissemination of knowledge acquired through and residing in SCNs - Organisational Network Analysis, Communities of Practice/Inquiry, Weka & strong ties??
- Can OL result from the interaction of actors within the SCN?
- Directing the social capital network. Can it be done? What levels of Managerial intent can be leveraged
- Fostering emergence of Social Capital in a network
- How to measure the effectiveness of a SCN
