Judges' Comments and Results

Debate 2: +++ vs. Woot:

Affirmative Constructive:  You start well by defining terms, then wander a bit in definition of “success,” although you get back on track with three well-argued examples of success.  You lay down the basis for arguing that technologies support this with their rapid expansion and uptake. It goes off the rails somewhere in the Drezner/Collins area, but recovers nicely with the Cross/Thomas reference.    Especially like point at end, that success is not always for a “moral or noble objective.”  You might have referenced the creator of this argument, who is none other than Max Weber (ethical vs. instrumental rationality.)  Making “success” an absolute value potentially weakens any argument the other side might have about the “bad guys” winning.  In sum: lots of points made, but more of a shotgun than a rifle.  More examples than sources, but the sources used are OK.

Negative Constructive:  It is always tricky to start an argument with a chicken-and-egg issue like networks and organizations.  Your argument would have benefited from a deeper dive into the literature on organizations, because simply asserting that a network can be used to accomplish goals but doesn’t create them is a bit simplistic. In fact, you have to look no further than my dissertation (on Trunk) to find a reasonably complete discussion on the interdependence of nets and orgs, which, ironically, could have benefitted either side in this debate. 

You could read your intro the following way: organizations are organizations, and social networks are social networks, and only organizations are structured with the aim of achieving a specific goal.  But can't an organization have a social network in it?  Would that social network not be structured towards achieving a goal?  Also, you say social networks are composed of individuals with different priorities.  But so are organizations.

You use OWS as an example, but the HuffPo quote underscores the fact that the movement is still in its formative stages and could go either way. A look back and some historical examples might have helped you.  Solidarity, for example, seemed to have a common agenda when it formed, but it took them years to coalesce into one effective enough to bring down the Polish government.  And it was the formation of communication nets that made it so.  Ditto for “consensus unlikely to emerge.” Your point about quantification and measurement is well-taken, although it was reasonably-well rebutted subsequently. And isn’t a “small group of leaders connected by strong ties” as much of a network as a small-world, weak-link one? As for your Gladwell and Arab Spring arguments, what would have helped (and Gladwell subsequently agreed in a debate with Shirky) was to make the distinction between social media/tools as the sole indicators of success and the underlying network of people brought together in common cause, through means of communication that they felt free to use.

The comment that traditional organizational structures are necessary to reach a consensus, etc., has been addressed by Yochai Benkler in his analyses of the open source software movement and collective efforts like Wikipedia.  Your opponents could have called you on this—had they read it.

Affirmative Rebuttal:  Very effective to follow the opponent’s points in order. Perhaps your most effective points were that SNs facilitate success (see the Solidarity point above,) and that using SNA to assess the robustness of the OWS networks could help predict its eventual success or failure, allow it to reshape itself accordingly.  You provide a lot of support for Point 2 on quantification, and there are lots of studies now in the works about the links between employee engagement and SNs. Apple with its networked leadership vs. Dell the autocrat is also effective.  Although one could argue with many of the points raised, especially when some of them have only a tenuous connection to networks (as the opponents point out in their rebuttal)  the point of a debate is to present a broad array, a preponderance of directed arguments, and you do that.

Negative Rebuttal: Statements like “if social networks must make fundamental changes to become organizations” revive the chicken-and-egg issue mentioned previously. One does not necessarily become the other.  The affirmative team did a pretty good job of making this distinction; although you rightly point out that they never really did define what a social network is.  However, I think that you use of Powell’s definitions to make the distinction between market and network misses their point that even smaller companies acting together in networks can achieve success in the marketplace. It’s not a one-or-the-other issue.  Other points: your Apple counter-argument would have been more effective if you had (if you could) address the post-Jobs share price issue. Steve Jobs was certainly essential to Apple's success, but perhaps so too were the social networks at Apple linking hardware engineers and industrial designers.  To say (correctly) that Jobs was critical does not exclude the possibility that social networks played a major role, too. 

And I’m not sure that the opposition stated that the only strong network was a highly-interconnected (or dense) one.  You saved the most relevant  of your arguments for last, which is that your opponents failed to support the “main” driver contention. The only thing you might have done is to support that with a bit of speculation on the future, perhaps talking about technology.

The Result:   The Pro team on the whole made stronger arguments, although the Con team’s point about them not having clearly made the “main driver” argument about SNs is valid.  However, debates are relative, not absolute, and the Con team did not make as strong or clear a set of arguments against the resolution as the Pro team did for it. Also, the Pro team, by recognizing the interconnection between organizations and networks and by pointing out that success can be positive or negative, took the wind out of much of the Con team’s arguments.  So the edge goes to the Pros.

Team Woot Rebuttal

The Pro Team appears to have misread many of our arguments, while making several false assertions of their own. For example, the opposition claims that we assume that “social networks are in and of themselves organizations,” when our opening remark in fact states that “all organizations are composed of networks, but not all networks are organizations.” In fact, much of our constructive argument was based on distinguishing between a network and an organization so as to emphasize the point that networks in and of themselves lack the characteristics necessary to make them the “main driver” of organizational success.

For example, we addressed the Occupy Wall Street movement to illustrate that a movement with a strong network of ties will never coalesce into an organization without additional steps, and argued that these additional steps are paramount to achieving organizational success. If social networks must make fundamental changes to become organizations, they can hardly be seen as the main driver of an organization’s success.

Our opponents point to a Jim Collins study that focuses on the importance of managing one’s internal employee structure to capitalize success as a refutation of our argument. We absolutely agree that “getting the right people on the bus” will have a significant impact on an organization’s operations; however, this claim does not address a fundamental flaw in our opponent’s position: An organization by definition needs to have a shared goal, and without capable leaders who direct the energies of the members of the organization toward that goal, an organization cannot be successful. Apple is not successful primarily because they have a strong internal social network; they are successful because they had a visionary who bucked market trends with a completely new idea and created an organization that can consistently attracts quality talent in the market. Steve Jobs was essential to creating this environment and must be given far more weight than any social network in Apple’s success.

On another front, it is curious that our opponent takes the time to attempt to define what an organization is but neglects to define a social network. The fact of the matter is that you cannot convincingly argue for the primacy of a variable (i.e. social networks) without defining the boundaries of what that variable is and is not. Doing so would have served them well, as several examples of what they argue as evidence of networks are in fact not explicit features of networks.

For example, if we adopt Powell’s definition of a networked form of organization as “typified by reciprocal patterns of communication and exchange” (Neither Market Nor Hierarchy, 1990), then it becomes apparent that they have conflated social networks with markets when describing the first of their three supposed principles underpinning the success of social networks. When illustrating the activity of a business sourcing raw materials, our opponent incorrectly identifies the utility-maximizing forum for this transaction as a social network, when this is clearly a market activity. The term “social network” is not a catchall. A market is a distinct organizational form, and is the most important “interface” for exchanges - like the purchase of a ton of bauxite - that are “straightforward, non-repetitive and require no transaction-specific investments” (Powell, Neither Market Nor Hierarchy, 1990: 297). Should a business have a need for a regular source of a particular commodity, certain possibilities like bulk discounting or fixed-price contracts might emerge that increase the attractiveness of engaging with firms to handle those arrangements, where firms are defined by Richardson (1972) as “islands of planned co-ordination in a sea of market relations.”

To take another example: consider a trip you are planning with your family. When contemplating the most appropriate platform for obtaining the best flight ticket price, are you more likely to get the best answer quickly by posting the inquiry on your Facebook wall, or would you engage a firm like Expedia?

The bottom line is that by failing to define the boundaries of social networks, our opponents have attributed far more activity to social networks than even the staunchest social network theorists would dare to. Social networks do not encompass all market-related activity. There are other distinct organizational forms, like markets and firms, which play an important and vital role in organizational success.

Another problem with the notion of social networks as drivers of organizational success concerns Powell’s observation that “each point of contact in a network can be a source of conflict.” Powell continues, “Parties to a network form of exchange lose some of their ability to dictate their own future and are increasingly dependent on the actions of others” (Neither Market Nor Hierarchy, 1990: 305). Our opponent assumes that a more connected and interdependent network is always a source of strength that propels organizations to success. But what happens when a point of contact in a highly interdependent network becomes a problem? The other nodes in that network are less able to react independently or buffer themselves from the consequences of that problem node’s actions.

This reminds us of the situation precipitating the collapse of the financial markets in 2008, when tightly intertwined investment banks were unable to disentangle themselves from one another as bad investments sank Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, bringing the world financial system to the precipice of disaster. Simply put, highly efficient and interdependent networks are susceptible to systemic risk. Which begs the question: Is a strong social network a fortress, or a house of cards? Moreover, the only way to prevent this systemic risk from manifesting is through deliberate actions to curtail the influence of networked forms of organization.

In conclusion, let us point out that we are not arguing against the notion that social networks matter for organizational success. Nevertheless, the burden was on our opponent to persuasively argue that social networks are the main driver for success by 2025, and we aren’t even sure what they mean by a social network. We also note that our opponent’s overall argument is so tenuous that they have been reduced to arguing that social networks do not always ensure success, but “only … increases the likelihood of success over what the situation would have been in their absence.” The resolution under debate is that social networks will be recognized as the “main driver” of organizational success by 2025, not that most of us will perhaps agree that they increase the likelihood of success. The opposition has failed to make a convincing case.

Rebuttal +++

The opposition’s arguments contain flaws on several levels, and we stand by our original proposition that by the year 2025, social networks will be the main indicator of organizational success.  In its argumentation, the opposition lays out three major points to debunk this proposition. 

In the following lines we are going to demonstrate how those arguments are invalid. Let us dissect each point in turn:

1)    First, according to our opponents’ own definition, an organization is “structured with the aim of achieving a specific goal”.  Yet to refute that social networks do not indicate something about success, they provide the example of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which they say has no specific goals despite being composed of a social network of individuals.  By their own description and definition then, OWS could not be characterized as an organization for the very reason that it lacks a specific goal.
Their argument is founded on the assumption - which is incorrect - that social networks are in and of themselves organizations. While this may be true in some cases, this is not the question at debate here. Social networks serve as a tool for success, facilitating organizations’ functions leading to it.

Nonetheless, let us assume that OWS is an “organization”.  If it were, we would argue that in fact it is the nature of OWS’s social network that explains the very fact that it does not have a coherent direction or well-defined goals.  After all, a social network analysis of OWS would probably reveal a jumbled and erratic series of connections, a lot of weak ties or no ties between most members, disparate cliques of people focused on different issues, no well-defined organizational structure, and a lack of clear leadership.  These observations of their social network would, therefore, be very effective in allowing us to predict that the OWS will not be successful at working towards a coherent and well-defined set of objectives, at least not in its current state.  While its network is not well suited to effectively defining goals at the moment, it is indeed quite effective at gathering people across the world for protests. We are now witnessing the ripple effect of OWS and its impact is yet to be seen.

2)   The second point of the opposing team, is that neither “organizational networks” nor “success” can be quantified in such a way as would prove a causal relation between the two.  Of course, this is not true at all, and we are going to explain why.

Many studies done by social scientists and statisticians have proven that there are ways to measure the impacts of organizational networks on success.  We know that social networks affect and can reflect employee engagement in an organization: in reality, social networks can increase the employee engagement rate by allowing them to establish ties with colleagues that for instance specialize on similar focus areas or work in the same location. These personal networks actually contribute in bridging information gaps. In fact, numbers presented by Aberdeen Group indicate that 52% of organizations using Web 2.0 achieved Best- in-Class performance and companies using Web 2.0 tools achieved 18% increase in engagement.‏

We also know through studies done by Kotter and Heskett, that employee engagement affects customer satisfaction.  Therefore, we can use employee engagement and customer satisfaction as proxies to represent good social networks.  According to Gallup, the companies with employee engagement and customer satisfaction rankings in the top 25% have been proven to outperform their peers by 200% (in terms of return on investment). This finding is supported by another study done by Guide Star Research, which found that at Sears Roebuck a 5% increase in employee attitudes (as measured by survey data) resulted in a 1.3% rise in customer satisfaction, which in turn increased revenues by .5%.

3)    The final major point our opponents make is that, rather than the social network being the more important factor in determining organizational success, it is in fact the leader or a small group of leaders who define organizational success.  However, there are several problems with this argument.  First, according Jim Collins’ conclusions in his book Getting from Good to Great, which are based on substantial empirical and academic research, while leadership is in fact very important, the data has shown time and time again the failure of what he terms the “Genius and 1000 Helpers” model of organizational structure in which 1 brilliant person at the top leads an organization of mediocre individuals to great success.  

Collins find in fact that factors like “getting the right people on the bus” (getting the right people into the right positions) and corporate culture are critical in creating successful organizations that last the test of time and outlive any one gifted leader or group of leaders.  As social networks can give us insights about who is “on the bus”, how they interact with each other, and what the corporate culture might be like based on information flows, we can therefore say that Collins’ research refutes our opponents’ claims.  

In the same argument, our opponents cite some examples of great leaders to try to support the point that leadership is more important than social networks in indicating organizational success.  They cite Apple’s Steve Jobs, who of course was a spectacular leader.  However, as we know, Steve Jobs recently passed away, and in fact, since Steve Jobs’ death, the stock price of Apple has actually increased by 5%.  This means that even without Steve Jobs, investors are valuing other aspects of Apple, including its organization and its people at all levels of the company.  But perhaps investors are valuing the new leaders of Apple, one might argue.  However, as Adam Lashinsky describes in his book Inside Apple, Apple is not just a one man show.  Apple has a company policy of assigning a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) to every task (one component of Apple’s organization network), which empowers employees across the company beyond just Jobs and his senior leadership and helps improve efficiency.  

A final flaw in our opponents’ argument is its citing of Michael Dell as proof that leadership is more important than an organization’s networks.  While it is true that Michael Dell did a spectacular job in his first stint at chief executive of Dell, since his return in 2009, Dell Corporation’s stock price has grown by a paltry 1.8% per year.  Clearly, there are many reasons for this, but the relative impact of those other reasons clearly outweighs whatever virtues Dell, as a leader, may possess.  We would maintain that one of the factors that did differ between Dell’s first stint as chief executive and his second was the corporate culture of the company.

Lastly, we wish to address 2 smaller peripheral arguments advanced by the opposition team. We never made the claim that Facebook or Twitter caused the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. As our group contains individuals who experienced the Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions firsthand, we know that this was not true and that the frustrations and indignities caused by oppressive regimes were in fact the root cause.  However, there is no doubt that while such grievances caused the revolutions that social networks enabled them and greatly increased their chances of success by allowing people to coordinate massive gathering to demonstrate for their freedom.  

We also do not claim that having a good social network (by “good” we mean well-adapted to the objectives at hand) always ensures success, only that it increases the likelihood of success over what the situation would have been in their absence.  Although social media and social networks were used in Iran, it was the coercive apparatus of the state and that apparatus’s loyalty to the regime and not the people that ended up foiling the Green Movement.

In conclusion, after dissecting our opponents best arguments and rebutting every single one of them with ease, we not only maintain but reaffirm our initial resolution arguing that by 2025 social networks will indeed be the main drivers of organizational success. This resolution cannot be refuted.

Sources:

Robinson D, Perryman S, Hayday S (2004),The Drivers of Employee Engagement, Report 408, Institute for Employment Studies

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

Kotter J and Heskett J (1992) Corporate Culture and Performance, The Free Press.

Adam Lashinsky (2012), Inside Apple How America's Most Admired--And Secretive--Company Really Works, Bussiness Plus
( http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9781455512171_Description.htm )   

Octavia Nasr (2009), Tear gas and Twitter: Iranians take their protests online, CNN
(http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-14/world/iran.protests.twitter_1_facebook-president-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-supporters?_s=PM:WORLD)

Toby Ward (2009), Building Employee Engagement With Internal Social Networks,
( http://www.communitelligence.com/blps/article.cfm?page=693 )

Toby Ward (2008) Employee social networking - case study
( http://intranetblog.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2008/8/26/3856898.html )
           
Caterina C. Bulgarella (2005), Employee Satisfaction & Customer Satisfaction: Is There a Relationship? GuideStar Research
( http://meetingmetrics.com/research_papers/White_Papers.htm )

Woot - Constructive Againt

We begin with the statement that all organizations are composed of networks, but not all networks are organizations. While a network can be strong or weak, based on cultural, linguistic, or other affinities, used for disseminating ideas or simply arising out of geographic proximity, an organization is intentionally structured with the aim of achieving a specific goal. A network is a resource that can be used by an organization to accomplish that organization’s goals, but it is not the only - and not the most - important feature of the organization. In this post, we make three related arguments to counter the resolution of this debate:

1. Social networks cannot be the “main driver” of “organizational success” because they lack a key feature of organizations: A unified goal, maintained over time and prioritized over individual desires.
2. Social networks cannot be “recognized as the main drivers of organizational success”, because the recognition required cannot be achieved in the social sciences.
3. While a social network might be extensive and diverse, key decisions that drive the direction and success of an organization are most often made by a small group of leaders connected by strong ties and united around a common goal.

First, social networks cannot be the main driver of “organizational success” because they lack a key feature of organizations: a unified goal maintained over time and prioritized over individual desires. In this regard, social networks are composed of individuals with different priorities who are connected to one another by any number of attributes or modes of communication. But without a common goal, there is no organization, and without an organization, there can be no “organizational success.” As advanced by Herbert A. Simon in The Proverbs of Administration, social networks can play an orienting role by connecting people and sometimes disseminating information, but they are not coherent actors that work for a specific purpose, and thus cannot be considered the “main driver” of an organization’s success.

As a current example, it is helpful to consider the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. There is no denying that OWS represents a network of individuals connected through both strong and weak ties. As a network, it has disseminated ideas and information quite effectively; it has also been able to organize individuals to the extent of bringing them to the same place at the same time, and establishing some systems to make the “occupations” of certain areas last. However, OWS is not an organization in the way that this debate is considering them: the members of the OWS network have dozens of different (and often competing) goals, and have failed to prioritize any one of these goals above the others. As stated in the Huffington post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mohamed-a-elerian/occupy-wall-street-_b_1004222.html

“OWS could (and, hopefully, will) coalesce on a common agenda, helping the current political and institutional setup to course correct. Alternatively, it could fragment, thus failing to make the tricky transition from a protest movement to an effective agent for much needed change.”

Without a cohesive, prioritized set of goals and proper leadership, OWS will never become a “successful” organization. So while their network is a critical factor in their development, the transition into a mature and successful organization will require clearly defined goals and leadership structure. At its current stage, OWS clearly demonstrates that social networks fall far short of being the “main driver” of organizational success since they have thus far failed to coalesce around a coherent set of goals.

Second, social networks cannot be “recognized as the main drivers of organizational success” because the consensus required for recognition is unlikely to emerge. Popular recognition is most often achieved only after an idea receives the stamp of legitimacy from a critical mass of recognized experts in relevant fields. Barring that approval, the idea lacks intellectual credibility, and will not gain significant traction in the general populace. In other words, expert recognition precedes popular recognition.

Achieving expert recognition requires that we have the tools necessary to accurately measure the impact of social networks on organizational success, and to compare that impact to other factors that might contribute to success. Therefore, the lack of reliable instruments and a broader methodology to accurately measure the impact and causal influence of social networks on organizational success is a major impediment to their recognition as the main driver of such success. In this context, the claims by the Pro Team that social networks expand an organization’s access to resources, reduce costs and increase the speed of certain transactions, and improve access to end consumers, is a broad assertion that social networks play some role in organizational success, but offers no way to quantify this contribution, let alone prove the declaration that social networks are the “main driver “of success.

Next, while a social network might be extensive and diverse, key decisions that drive the direction and success of an organization are most often made by a small group of leaders connected by strong ties and united around a common goal. Leaders or key players in an organization may draw from the information created by their network as a starting point for analysis, but final and complicated decisions are made amongst trusted associates and peers. Boards of directors, political committees, and focus groups all point to the necessity of a small, specialized group within a larger whole that is tasked with a given goal. Moreover, as argued by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker in October 2010, “Small Change,” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all), traditional organizational structures are necessary in order to reach a consensus, develop hierarchical lines of authority and responsibilities, set goals, and make difficult choices about strategy, tasks that decentralized social networks are not set up to do.

Obviously, a well networked organization will have advantages over a sprawling bureaucracy; however, a strong network does not equate to deep network of trust, or a well established leadership structure that is far more essential in facilitating organizational success. In looking at some of the most successful modern organizations such as Apple, Teach for America, Dell, Microsoft, Facebook, and others, they were all started and heavily reliant on a single individual who, due to incredible insight and force of will and character, reshaped their world/industry and developed incredibly successful organizations. These companies and movements were not successful because they grew out of some fantastical synergy of people exchanging ideas but on the strength of an idea and the leadership advancing that concept.

Finally, within the political realm, we wish to draw attention to a tendency among social network proponents to misrepresent the extent to which social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter can instigate long-lasting political and social change. An important distinction needs to be made in discussing this topic. As alluded to by Malcolm Gladwell (writing before the Arab Spring) and discussed by Shehab Chowdhury (http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/luc/2011/06/arab-spring-a-not-so-twitvolution/), social media platforms are not providing the foundations for revolution in the Arab world; such an explanation undervalues the true drivers of the uprisings, such as the lack of job opportunity, rampant corruption, failed promises in economic reform, and limited political freedom, among others. It is more accurate to say that social networking tools are playing an enabling role in these revolutions, but not an inspirational one. The main drivers of protest movements are ideology and concrete political concerns; while aided by a broad network, they are not primarily network-driven movements. Facebook and Twitter did not spur these revolutions, but rather helped facilitate the spread of already developed ideas and popular discontent.

Gladwell provides a useful example to this discussion. He examines the development of protests following the disputed presidential elections in Iran in June 2009. In this case, many observers argued that social networking tools, especially Twitter, were key in the organization of demonstrations (though even this assertion has been questioned as the majority of Tweets related to Iran were by Westerners and in English, rather than by Iranians in Farsi). However, the protests led by the reformist-oriented Green Movement were forcefully suppressed by the Iranian regime and failed in part due to a lack of traditional, on-the-ground organization and cohesion on the part of the opposition movement, demonstrating the limitations of social networking tools where an organized strategy and recognized leadership are not in place.

Social networks have always been, and will continue to be, a critical component in the development and success of all kinds of organizations across various sectors. However, a social network in the absence of an organization - itself defined by the prioritization of certain goals and the existence of a leadership structure - is incapable of being the “main driver” of organizational success. Finally, the fact that we are unable and, indeed, have never been able to measure the contribution of social networks to organizational success relative to other factors, means that the recognition required to argue in favor of this debate’s resolution cannot be achieved. The resolution cannot be defended.

+++ 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)