+++ First Pro Argument

We rise in support of the proposition that by the year 2025, social networks will be the main indicator of organizational success.  While other factors will of course play a part in determining organizational success, it is our firm conviction that social networks will be the most important among these.  As an article in Foreign Affairs magazine states, in speaking about America’s edge in the world economy, “Leaders connect across different power structures.  Such linkages are as distinguishing a characteristic of the superclass as wealth or individual position.  In other words, it is connectivity, more than money or stature that determines individual power" (Slaughter, 2009).

Let us begin by defining what an organization is.  An organization is a social unit of people, assembled together in pursuit of a common mission over a continuing period of time.  By this definition, organizations can consist of many different types of entities from businesses to political parties to militaries to NGOs to universities.  

As for success, success is the condition of obtaining better results than other competing organizations in a given group, which uses similar metrics to measure their performance. Moreover, success is a notion that is measured differently depending on the kind of organization.  For example success for a business is measured based on profits or return on capital.  On the other hand, a political party’s success would be to get their candidate elected whereas for an NGO, success might be to decrease illiteracy or the rate of infectious disease in a community.  

It should be noted that up until now there is no type of a social network mechanism that always yields success.  For some organizations, hierarchy might be best.  In others, a centralized structure might be best.  The fundamental point, however, remains; those organizations, whose members’ social networks are best structured and adapted to their mission, will have the edge.

Social networks make organizations more successful in 3 principle ways. First, they expand an organization’s access to resources, like capital, talented people, information, and raw materials.  For instance, let’s assume that a business wants to buy the cheapest raw materials from a supplier.  An organization with a small network, limited to its immediate region, will be unable to identify the cheapest source.  On the other hand, an organization with a broad network, consisting of strongly connected people, has a higher possibility of accessing cheaper and potentially even better quality supplies. The robustness of the social network of the organization can determine how expansive its access to resources and inputs is. Thus it is evident that a strong network can add significant value to the organization.

Second, strong social networks reduce the costs and increase the speed of certain transactions by increasing trust.  For example, let us imagine a government ministry.  If the ministry has strong ties between employees at different levels of the organization, that might indicate a level of trust and swift communication.  When employees have concerns, they can bring them up directly to the relevant senior manager instead of having to go through the bureaucratic chain of command to get something done.  This means that things can get done faster.  Imagine another example, where a salesman is trying to get a new client.  If he has no connection to the client, he may have to spend time trying to get an appointment, go to expensive conferences to try and build a relationship with this potential client, and wine and dine multiple times to make the sale.  On the other hand, if the salesman had a stronger social network, he might get referred to the client through a common friend.  The potential client will immediately be more responsive to the salesman because of their common friend and the salesman improves his chances of closing a deal.  Less time is spent building the relationship, and less money is spent trying to cultivate it.  Therefore, the structure, strength, and nature of one’s social network become a key factor in determining the success of the organization. 

Third, social networks improve access to end consumers, whether those are buyers of a product, potential voters for a candidate, or rural villagers receiving medication.  Let us take the latter example.  An NGO wants to give children in a rural village in Pakistan shots to protect them from a disease.  When a new aid worker tries to do so, the villagers object because they do not know the person or trust him/her.  But if an aid worker from a nearby town or a foreign worker who has been in the area for 3 years and has strong ties and credibility in a neighboring village comes to give the shots, he/she may have a better chance of succeeding due to the fact that their social network is closer to the people in the village where shots have already been given.  The construction of a social network associates the image of people with trust and credibility which allows them to perform tasks that would have not been possible otherwise.

In addition to the power of social networks to achieve organizational success, we also emphasize that this will be even more true by the year 2025.  Let us observe the relevant trends in support of this proposition: over the past 10 years, Internet connectivity has increased exponentially.  Cell phone penetration has increased at an even faster rate, and the volume of Internet traffic is expected to be 100 times greater in 2012 than it was in 2002 (EIF, 2009).  In addition to this, the number of tweets per day increased more than 100 % from the beginning of the year and now exceeds 230 million (The Economist).  This existing trend shows that thanks to new technologies and tools of mass collaboration more people will be connected to the Internet and “user interfaces to access the network will be simplified and more intuitive” (EIF, 2009).  

The trend of globalization continues its expansion, thus moving towards the year 2025, we can only see these trends and the spread of social media use continuing at an even faster pace.  In addition, Drezner and Carpender argue that “As international studies programs spread from the developed world to the rest of the globe, these technologies will become ever more important as means of engaging peers across many time zones” (Drezner and Carpender, 2010).  In such a context, where organizations will connect to each other in a fraction of a second despite the actual distance between the parties involved, which can be thousands of miles, we believe that social networks and particularly those networks, enabled by communication technologies, will be even more critical in organizational functions.

Surely, the assets of an organization, its people, its financial resources also matter.  But social networks are relatively more important because they determine how these things are utilized.  Jim Collins, in his seminal work, Getting from Good to Great, finds that some of the most compelling factors that affect organizational performance are things like corporate culture, adaptability, leadership, and having the right employees in the right roles (Collins, 2001).  An organization’s social network encompasses all of these factors and understanding the social network can give us key insights on issues like how adaptive the organization is, how integrated and open the culture is, what the role of leadership in decision-making is, and how employees are functioning vis-à-vis other players in a company in their roles.  We can use a lot of this information to understand if the organization is structured for success, and if not, what the key points of contention might be. 

For instance, organizational leadership, which is “the capacity to set direction, create alignment and maintain commitment to get work done,” has been one of the underlying factors of organizational success for decades (McCauley & Van Velsor, 2004).  Also, the proper implementation of leadership functions within organizations will determine the extent of future organizational success.  According to Cross and Thomas, organizational leadership networks, which are “the informal relationships that exist alongside the formal structure within an organization”, have become the driving forces behind the efficient execution of leadership functions (Cross & Thomas, 2009).

A final note on success: being successful does not always mean that you pursue a moral or noble objective.  The achievement of an immoral goal can also be perceived as success depending on which side you are standing.  We have seen social networks used in various protest and revolutionary movements throughout history and especially recently in the Middle East and North Africa.  Social networks have played an important role in bringing people to the streets to participate in organized resistance, peaceful or military.  Social networks were used during the Civil Rights Movement when classmates and family members would bring each other to participate in civil disobedience.  People in Tunisia and other countries used social media to spread information to their connections about protest times and places to increase participation and enforce the desired outcome.  While both of these movements leveraged social networks for positive ends, we should not forget that militant or criminal groups can also use social networks to succeed at achieving sinister objectives. Al-Qaeda used its social networks in mosques, through members’ friends or family, or through connections made with sympathetic and motivated people online to recruit new members.  The government of Bahrain published photos of anti-regime protesters and allowed pro-regime Bahrainis to use their social networks to identify people in the photos so that the Bahraini government could arrest and punish them.  Therefore, we are even starting to see the social networks of two different parties brought to bear in a confrontation between two sides, and what we see is that the side, which better uses its social network against the other, ultimately more successful in attaining its objective. 

In conclusion, we stand firmly in support of the proposition that by the year 2025, social networks will be the main indicator of organizational success.  It is clear that, with the trends towards greater connectivity and with the transformative power of social networks to enhance organizational performance, the evidence strongly supports this assertion.

Sources:

Charli Carpenter & Daniel W. Drezner (2010), International Studies Perspectives International Relations 2.0: The Implications of New Media for an Old Profession, pp11, 255–272,

Jim Collins (2001) Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Jonathan Rowson, Steve Broome, Alasdair Jones (2010), ConneCted Communities, How social networks power and sustain the Big Society, RSA Projects

Peshala Wimalasena (2010), Terrorist Recruitment in Cyberspace: Evolving Approaches from Web 1.0 to 2.0

European Internet Foundation (2009) The Digital World in 2025, Indicators for European Action
(http://www.eifonline.org/en/articles/digital-world-in-2025/digital-world-in-2025.cfm)

Anne-Marie Slaughter  (2009), Foreign Affairs Issue published by the council on Foreign Relations, America’s Edge, Power in the Networked Century, Article Summary (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63722/anne-marie-slaughter/americas-edge)

Matt Richtel (2011), Egypt Cuts Off Most Internet and Cell Service, The New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html)

Malcolm Gladwell (2010) Annals of Innovation, Small Change - Why the revolution will not be tweeted, The New Yorker
(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell)