The American Behavioral Scientist association did a research study to see how the internet affects social capital. They published their results and analyzed them in the article: Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? I was extremely intrigue and curious to read this article because I have always been interested in knowing how the internet has changed the way society interacts.
Many years ago, the world was completely different and much slower than today. The article suggests that community ties were much more appreciated. There was no email, just plain old fashion post-cards to remain in touch with those far away. Then, communication slowly took a turn when the internet was introduced. People had the opportunity to send email’s to stay connect to those far away and you could find people that you haven’t talked to in years. Now, social networks, such as facebook, myspace, and hi5, have allowed people to show pictures, videos, and share stories with your friends all around the world. Not only has communication among people changed due to the internet, but the way businesses operate since they are more cost effective. The world is completely different and society is adjusting to these changes. Some people are agaisnt the internet, others things is a very useful tool that enhances social capital.
The authors of the article, Barry Wellman, Anabel Quan Haase, James Witte, and Keith Hampton, concluded that “greater use of the Internet may lead to larger social networks with more weak ties and distasteful interaction with some of these ties, resulting in lower commitment to the online community.” I do agree that the internat may lead to larger social networks, since it is easy to become a member and you can stay close connected to your friends and family that are live far away. Also, I do feel that ties will be weaker, no distasful however. People are always going to stay connected to their social circle and family and I find difficult to see a decrease in online community commitment.
Therefore, I do feel that the internet has a positive effect on social capital because people have the opportunity to build new bonds.
When researching blogging I ran across the book Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg. I did not have time to read the entire book, but I did come across a excerpt from chapter 9, “Journalists vs. Bloggers,” on the books web page. This chapter focuses on beliefs from journalists that blogging is nothing more than simple amusement that should not be taken too seriously. This offended many bloggers who started blogging in response to disagreements with the media and other published documents.
I read a cool BusinessWeek article called “Social Media Will Change Your Business.” The article, by Stephen Baker and Heather Green, is a follow up (in 2008) to a May 2005 article titled “Blogs Will Change Your Business.” Three years later the authors still claim that blogs will change each and every business, but they recognize that it is no longer just blogs. Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and others have popped up since the original article and so the power of all social media tools is discussed.
I recently read portions of a book called Socialnomics by Erik Qualman. In this book, Qualman discusses how social media has revolutionized how people interact with each other and how individuals receive and come across information in today’s world. He says that social media has become the most popular internet activity over the last three years because it helps people to avoid what he calls “information indigestion”. This is the idea that people can avoid coming across and reading useless information and stories that they do not care about on the internet. Continue reading →
In deciding whether or not social media is “revolutionary” in today’s world many focus on the great things these networking sites are able to do for business. Sites such as Twitter and Facebook are able to market products, connect members of a business society to share processes and even keep the public aware of certain company strategies or upcoming events. However, these sites, specifically Facebook, have also been used to create awareness and vent anger stemming from social issues and turmoil as well. These networking sites are revolutionary for business, but for actual revolution as well. The article from the NY Times, Facebook, Revolution Style points out one instance of this currently occurring in the Middle East.
The article I read does not make what I would call a profound statement about blogging (profound being if someone said, “Blogging will replace books completely” — as idiotic as that may sound). However, it was written in 2002 and appeared in Wired. The Blogging Revolution, by Andrew Sullivan, is ahead of its time, only having been written 2 years after the idea of “Web 2.0” emerged for the first time. I think it was a very important insight into what blogging would become and how it would affect our lives on a daily basis. The author makes an analogy between Napster for music and blogging being the future of words and information — and I couldn’t agree more. For I always have much more respect for someone if they make a claim that isn’t readily accepted because it is ahead of its time. Continue reading →
Readers can click on a “Digg” icon on news stories, blog posts, and websites all over the internet and the stories clicked the most are featured on Digg.com.
On May 1st, 2007 Digg.com, as a result of reader votes, featured a story with the above number at the top of its homepage. Within hours, Digg had received a cease-and-desist e-mail from lawyers. The link to the page containing this number was consequently removed.
Yet, internet users around the world ensured that the spread of this number occurred.
“You can’t take something off the Internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.” (NewsRadio, 1990s television show)
Over time, how an organization is defined has changed. Traditionally, there have been common features of organizations that deal with their structure. Scott and Davis consider organizations to be “social structures created by individuals to support the collaborative pursuit of specified goals.” All organizations must define objectives, induce participants to contribute services, control and coordinate these contributions, and gather resources and offer products or services, train (or select) participants. They also must find a way to coincide with the pressures of the workforce.
5) Technology – New techniques, processes, products, inventions, or innovations that increase the efficiency (with respect to economics) in some area of business, society, or government that have not become widespread or a “norm” within said business, society, or government.
Words should serve a purpose. Currently the definition of technology is something along the lines of “everything”. People could argue that everything we use today is some form of technology, from the chairs we sit on to the cars we drive and even to the fire we use for heat. But how does this definition of technology provide us with anything useful we can use when analyzing the world around us. We don’t need another word for “everything”. My definition is much more specific, useable, and relevant.
I chose not to use this concept in my responses to the other two questions because even though it would be easy to work it in, I felt that with its current definition, it does not add anything useful or offer any new or unique insight. The word simply refers to too great a spectrum of ideas, processes, and innovations. Would it make sense to talk about fire as a source of heat and cell phones in the same sentence?
Words should facilitate learning, understanding, and the conveyance of information. There is a reason using a word like “stuff” is not the best way to express ideas. For example, a research paper titles “The Study of Stuff” does not really help the reader understand what the author is talking about. If the definition of technology is so broad, then we might as well replace the word with “stuff”.
In his work Organizations in Action, James D. Thompson attempts to reconcile rational, natural, and open system perspectives on the basis of three levels within organizations. The first is the technical level, which carries out production functions and encompasses the rational system perspective. The second is the managerial level, which designs and controls how the organization is run and brings in the natural system perspective. Finally, the institutional level relates the organization to the greater environment, similar to an open systems perspective…At least this is what Thompson argues… Continue reading →
After reading Chapter 3 of “Organizations and Organizations”, I chose to write about organizational cultures as one of my concepts. Organizational culture shows a “group’s shared values, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, artifacts, and behaviors” (Tharp 2). Organizational culture reflects a broad spectrum of internal and external relationships and “guides individual actions even to the extent that members are not even aware they are influenced by it” (Tharp 2). Chester Barnard believed that organizational cultures should have “motivating power and purpose” and use structure and procedures so that they become infused with value (Scott and Davis 72). Barnard also recognizes “the importance of organizational cultures shaped by zealous managers supplying strongly held values to members” (72). Strong organizational cultures include good environments and open communication. Organizational cultures should function to support the organization in implementing its goals.
Organization theory scholars recognize that organizational cultures directly correlate to the performance of an organization. In studying various organizations, scholars have determined that, in general, there are four types of organizational culture types, including control, complete, collaborate, and create (Tharp 2). Continue reading →
These are the instructions for your super special, extra, extra last post. The stakes are high. Success is worth a third of a letter grade on your final grade. So, C –>C+; B+ –> A- and so on.
You need to write a post that riffs, reflects, or analyzes the idea that blogging and social media (also known as the living web, as the read write edit web, as the blogosphere, as cyberspace) are revolutionary.
You will need to find a published argument by someone who makes bold, strong claims about the impact of these technologies and how they are used.
You can agree or disagree.
You can not use the same source publication as someone else.
Published means from a print or digital source. Digital sources must have a clear author (no wiki) and be demonstrably relevant or well-known. For example, if it is an essay or long post form a blog, it should be a blog with some authority. There are ways to ascertain authority. Learning about them can be part of your learning process.
Hey, a BOOK is a published form also. (You don’t have to read a whole book, but relevant portions).
You may be creative in the style or format of your post.
You must post this by May 16, noon. No exceptions.
Posts must be of high quality in terms of style, mechanics, and insights.
I am the final arbiter of earning credit. No exceptions.
The M-form (a.k.a. multi-divisional) type of corporate governance began to replace the U-form post WWI. (Scott & Davis) The old U-form, which was found in companies like railroads and large industrial firms, was becoming outdated. Thus, firms like du Pont, GM, Sears, and Standard Oil decided to create a new form. It consists of a general office HQ and several regional divisions, each of which performed different functions. The form was found to perform well in diverse markets. The M-form describes a type of organizational structure consisting of a relatively large number of relatively small units, which are controlled mainly by the setting of goals from a corporate headquarters. By the late 1970s, nearly 9 out of 10 companies utilized the M-form concept to divide the company into divisions based on the output produced. (Scott & Davis) Continue reading →
In Chapter 13 of Organizations and Organizing, Scott and Davis propose different views on whether classes or organizations are the defining decision-making units in society. They say that this is an important distinction because it defines how social scientists tell history over time. So does the makeup of social classes create the rules of the game in society and also the distribution of wealth between individuals? Or is it the organizations that create the structure, which then leads to the way society functions? Continue reading →
The final chapter of Organizations and Organizing, Changing Contours of Organizations and Organization Theorydraws in many of the concepts that have been used throughout the rest of the book. Although it poses challenges to some of the theories set forth in earlier chapter, one major agreement can be found between the chapter and previous concepts. One aspect of Chapter 14 emphasizes the ways in which organizations have changed their structures over time. These developments occur due to mobilization on an international level. On page 382 it is stated that, “over time the boundaries delimiting organizational form shift as a consequence of both segregating and blending processes, as new forms arise, undergo random drift, recombination, and deinstitutionalization.” The chapter addresses the idea that organizations do not begin each day with a “blank slate” but rather that they are able to inherit many ideas from predecessors.
In the chapter “Changing Contours of Organizations and Org Theory” of Organizations and Organizing Scott and Davis discuss the changes that are developing in the area of organization theory. Two examples of change in the field caught my attention and reminded me of a concept from a previous chapter, “From Unitary to Multiparadigm” and “From Monocultural to Multicultural Studies.” These two areas of change are similar in that they both deal with the evolution of knowledge in a certain area via diversity whether it’s in theories and ideas or international professional literature on the topic of organizational literature. Diversity is gaining support as more academics and theorists become aware that “sometimes faulty assumptions and blind spots that we inherit from our predecessors” (Scott and Davis, p369). The two topics’ push for diversity immediately recalled postmodernism and its suggestion of diversity over control and suppression of non-dominant cultures in an organization. This similarity between postmodernism and the two topics from chapter 14 shows that the field of organizational theory is finally catching up with the vastly diverse cultures that make up modern multinational companies.
The concept of basic organizational forms is useful to the analysis of an organization’s nature because it details how the fundamental structure of a company impacts its information processing and goal setting behavior. Identifying the difference between unified and multiplex modes of organizing, there are a number of basic organizational forms that have been established as capable of adding to a company’s ability to deal with raising information processing demands. The contrasts between these forms helps one to realize that different organizations will have to cope with the increasing need for information processing in varying manners. Making it possible for the organizational theorist to analyze how a company’s complex goals are formed by the manner in which its structures cause information to be processed. However, as times change, so to do the forms organizations take; meaning that this concept needs to be updated to remain a useful tool of analysis.
Part 3: Revisiting Power in Informal Groups (pg 204-205):
Power in informal groups occurs when there is an imbalance in the reliance and needs between two or more people. There are also specific characteristics that are associated with people who tend to have power. “These include energy and physical stamina, an ability to focus one’s interests and energies, sensitivity to others, their interests and needs, flexibility as conditions change, an ability to tolerate conflict, and to submerge one’s ego in the interest of building coalitions and alliances,” Scott and Davis, page 205. Continue reading →
In the wake of the recent probes into Goldman Sachs and their trading operations, I thought it would be interesting to revise my discussion of the Business Networks and Political Power concept from Chapter 11 in Organizations and Organizing. My original concept:
This section explains the cohesion among the elite in business and politics. Scott and Davis also explain the differing opinions surrounding the topic between pluralists and elite theorists. The elites argue that there is cohesion among this capitalist class because they all come from similar backgrounds (schooling, socio-economic, etc) and that they Continue reading →
1. Is my comment really adding anything to the discussion?
2. Is my comment presenting a new opinion or new information or just simply summarizing what's already been said?
3. Will my comment spur any new discussion?
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