NETWORK ORGANIZATIONS – ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESS 1
Network Organizations – Environmental Process– Week 6 Discussion
Gwendolyn Stewart Spence
Author Note
Gwendolyn Stewart Spence
I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gwendolyn Stewart Spence.
The classroom discussion for Module 6 focuses on the various types of network organizations and their impact on the environmental process. The insights associated with institutional and ecological theoretical perspectives show how network theories contribute to organizations and organizations. Institutionalists and ecologists argued that organizations could easily change basic structural features by underlying contingency and transaction cost. Some questions need to be presented regarding change within organizations regarding new types or why they fail, including political, social, and cultural factors associated with collective organizing toward stability or significant change. The biblical rationale and perspectives concerned with organizational change and social systems incorporate actors and relationships as to the organization of the environment process.
Network Organizations Analysis
Network organizations aim to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration between businesses of various sizes, government agencies, research laboratories, and educational institutions, stimulating economic growth. Network organizations aim to strengthen geographical and organizational proximity relying upon the strengthening of collaboration that leads to various forms of mutualization at multiple levels, according to Belaziz and Makkaoui (2022). A high level of cooperation necessitated investments in terms of time, effort, network traffic, and a feedback loop that would be useful to each network’s participants. In theory, collaborative governance has characteristics such as diversity of the primary, which is necessary for covering a wide range of network organization forms and is conducive to collective decision-making and scenario formulation performance (Belaziz & Makkaoui, 2022).
The Covid-19 health crisis disrupted work habits and had logically impacted our economy. To face this unprecedented situation, organizations had no choice but to react quickly and work in a collaborative model. The health crisis has accelerated the adoption of various work arrangements in many organizations, including collaborative work to facilitate exchanges. They implemented collaborative networks that allowed for more significant cooperation between players, regardless of the department. The goal was to move the organization forward through collective problem-solving and ensure that decisions were shared and implemented effectively (Belaziz & Makkaoui, 2022).
Change is part of the evolution of the local and global business environment. Thus, economic cycles lead to the appearance and disappearance of companies, and the period of the pandemic emphasized this aspect. For this reason, one of the methods through which companies can create resilience when faced with inevitable crises is digitalization, according to Budacia et al. (2021). Kozikojoukian (2021)found that engaging in and implementing new technology provided businesses with a permanent competitive edge through greater access to knowledge, cost savings, a better quality of goods, and supplementing sensitivity and collaboration skills. The network organization comprises several financially, legally, and operationally independent partners but are mutually dependent on achieving common goals (Belaziz & Makkaoui, 2022). Additionally, the network is sustained by external exchanges, which direct expansion while constantly expounding the organization’s limits. However, as the network grows, it becomes more challenging to manage due to numerous interconnected elements. According to Belaziz and Makkaoui (2022), the study of network organizations promotes well-being. It is meaningful for employees who question work relationships but acknowledge that sharing of intelligence improves productivity and generates innovation, meeting business expectations in the environmental process.
Open innovation is defined as using purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of the invention. In open innovation systems, organizational borders are porous so that individuals, firms, and organizations can combine their resources by cooperating with external agents (Scott & Davis, 2015). According to Rasiah (2019), an open innovation system with an institutional framework geared towards stimulating innovations to power economic growth and environmental processes should have enabled the participation of entire societies in knowledge adaptation, creation, and appropriation. However, given that the future is always uncertain and policies fail, the governance of such network organizational systems must be subjected to stringent and accountable appraisal with a view toward recalibration, ensuring the right direction in the environmental process.
Current developments in business practice strongly suggest that to understand business relationships, close attention must be directed to the rooted context within which dyadic business relationships take place today. Anderson et al. (1994) formulated business network constructs from the perspective of a significant firm and its partner in a principal relation that connected with other relationships, which advanced the conceptualization of organizational business networks as sets of connected relationships. The function of business relationships can be characterized by three essential components: (a) activities, (b) actors, and (c) resources, according to Anderson et al. (1994). Network identity captures a firm’s perceived attractiveness (or repulsiveness) as an exchange partner due to its unique set of connected relations with other firms, links to their activities, and ties with their resources.
Understanding the relationship between change in internal organizational structure and change in inter-organizational networks involves specifying the multilevel mechanisms linking two subsystems of administrative decisions (Scott & Davis, 2015). Amati et al. (2021) examined through quantitative methodology the decisions about creation and maintenance of portfolios of internal resources through activities that organizations accumulated with investments in production capacity and composition of portfolios of partners that organizations constructed by investments in networks reconfiguring internal structures and external dependence relations.
Environmental Areas in Organization Consideration
One critical specification in all approaches developed to analyze managerial problems involves the interface between the firm and its environment. This conceptualization of the environment has been examined in economics and organizational theory. Resource dependence theory argued by Anderson et al. (1994) stated that a firm’s environments were primarily socially constructed, and the boundary between organizations and their environments dissolved when the perspective changed to one of a firm interacting with its perceived environment. A dyadic business relationship gives each firm a particular influence over the other, which means that gaining control of at least one part of its environment gave away some of its internal control, according to Scott and Davis (2015).
Network organizations face increasing complexity in their external and internal environment, making them more prepared to embark on different types of changes. Managers’ and especially leaders’ mission is to ensure that their organization, both in the complex and software areas, can cope with the current range of challenges. COVID-19 pandemic created a disruptive change at the level of society, environment, and economy, making the organizations fight for survival and development. Mascu (2021) found that the economic climate was a factor with a significant influence on the construction and evolution of an organization’s culture. The favorable conditions, reflected in the number of existing and potential customers, and the access to economic resources in advantageous situations, support the development of a healthy, competitive organizational culture. Additionally, the mechanisms for organizational changes have been prompted by the COVID -19 pandemic, putting organizations in a hostile environment, difficult to anticipate in evolution, and making dramatic changes in technological and ecological processes within networks and environmental processes (Mascu, 2021). It is relevant to notice that the changes did not occur only at the organizational level but in all the ecosystems where the company operated. The worldwide lockdown, problems with the supply chain, and the extreme sanitary conditions placed many pressures on modern network organizations to adapt to the environment and continue to make process changes.
In a world with a motivational drive to compete for advantage, it becomes apparent that success highly depends on the leadership, inspiration, and commitment of managers, leaders, and social change participants. It takes both the rational and the emotional sides of the organization’s members to cope with the wide range of changes brought by the new context and the impact on the environmental process. Renu and Miah (2021) explored organizational factors such as resource adjustment, environmental acceptance, and organizational management related to implementing its data analysis capability and enhancing its benefits through technologies associated with the examination of thematic analysis. Specific performance measures must be established that rely on several organizational contextual factors as to goals, the external environment of the organization, and the organization itself (Renu & Miah, 2021). Also, organizational agility depends on its members’ facts, experience, and inventiveness, according to Kozikojoukian (2021), filtering activity, speed, mobility, and skill. In comparison, organizational resilience remains innovative where opportunities for networking with an organization are generated through technical development, including outsourcing non-value operations utilizing equipment and sharing software, enabling the adaptation of organizations to trends and process environmental changes (Kozikojoukian, 2021).
Ensuring an organization’s continuous innovation has become one of the core tasks of a firm’s dominant coalition, for example, the group of individuals at the top of the company that has the most significant influence on the selection of an organization’s goals and strategy. Waldkirch et al. (2021). innovations were often challenging in established organizations, as firms focused firmly on their core capabilities, internal control mechanisms, and processes in place, which were conducive to short-term profitability rather than innovation. Consequently, organizations frequently set up corporate ventures to investigate innovative approaches outside the established organization. In contrast to independent experiences, corporate ventures were connected to the parent firm through resource and knowledge flows. They were under the parent firm’s strategic and operational control (Waldkirch et al., 2021). Scott and Davis (2015) found that corporate ventures facilitated boundary and technology research and often provided a context for experimentation and support innovation. As such, dominant coalitions were a means for organizations to learn and explore new technologies, new markets, and new ways to operate, showing how organizations utilize corporate ventures to build new capabilities profitable to parent firms’ innovation over time.
In theory dominant coalition, according to Bowler (2006), the goals of an organization flowed from the chief executive officer, board of directors, or top management team. However, the dominant coalition maintained influence on goals through informal rather than formal channels allowing individuals other than leadership to manipulate the organization’s purposes (Bowler, 2006). Top management members were typically members of the dominant coalition. Control of critical organizational resources allowed the dominant coalition to leverage resources to achieve individual or group goals rather than organizational ones (Bowler, 2006). Scott and Davis (2015) added that some of the resources included were access to physical resources or capital, possession of implicit knowledge, or position in a network providing individual exclusive access to other participants and vital information. Also, the dominant coalitions may include individuals whose principal association is outside the firm of interest. As environments become more complex and chaotic, the dominant alliance grows, and its shape changes to incorporate more specialists capable of managing boundary problems. As the composition of the membership changes, so does the dominant coalition, where the organization’s goals also change, reflecting shifts in power (Scott & Davis, 2015). It is worth noting that while it may appear harmless or even beneficial to the organization in fulfilling its mission, the dominant coalition has its own goals that may, or may not, coincide with those of the organization. Managers that recognize the organizational behaviors of these groups maintain an edge in preventing unproductive and provocative actions on the part of coalitional members and influencers.
Biblical Overview with Concluding Comments
Societies can be analyzed in terms of their economics and political network structures. Alliances take many forms and have grown prevalent in recent years. Organizations form partnerships for a variety of strategic reasons where in most cases, they can be beneficial to the network systems, but keeping a watchful eye on the dominant coalition and the networks in and around organizations could prove to be immeasurable being aware that from an institutional perspective nonlocal, historical, relational and cultural forces are factors that shape organizations. When looking to a biblical example of such organizing works in discussing various types of network organizations and how they impact the environmental process, consider how goals, power, and control should be viewed as written in Romans 13: 1-7:
13 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience’s sake. 6 For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour (King James Bible, 1769/2017, Romans 13:1-7).
References
Amati, V., Lomi, A., Mascia, D., & Pallotti, F. (2021). The Co-evolution of organizational and network structure: The role of multilevel mixing and closure mechanisms. Organizational Research Methods, 24(2), 285–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428119857469
Anderson, J. C., Hakansson, H., & Johanson, J. (1994). Dyadic business relationships within a business network context. Journal of Marketing, 58(4), 1. http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=httpswww.proquest.comscholarly-journalsdyadic-business-relationships-withing-networkdocview227795066se-2accountid12085
Belaziz, H., & Makkaoui, M. (2022). The governance of territorialized networks of organization (gtno) and collaborative work: The case of the large industrial Port Tangier med. Varazdin Development and Entrepreneurship Agency (VADEA).
Bowler, W. M. (2006). Organizational goals versus the dominant coalition: A critical view of the value of organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 7(3), 258-273. http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=httpswww.proquest.comscholarly-journalsorganizational-goals-versus-dominant-coalitiondocview196683635se-2accountid12085
Budacia, E. A., Budacia, L. C. -. G., & Busuioc, M. F. (2021). The information system in the light of the decision-making process at the level of the organization in the context of digitalization. Romanian Economic and Business Review, 16(4), 7-14. http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=httpswww.proquest.comscholarly-journalsinformation-system-light-decision-making-processdocview2644442741se-2accountid12085
King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible online.
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)
Kozikojoukian, T. (2021). Retail 4.0 and adoption of performance of SMEs in Malaysia. Revista De Management Comparat International, 22(5), 700-720. https://doi.org/10.24818/RMCI.2021.5.700
Mascu, S. (2021). Factors that trigger changes in modern organizations. Revista De Management Comparat International, 22(5), 729-737. https://doi.org/10.24818/RMCI.2021.5.729
Rasiah, R. (2019). Building networks to harness innovation synergies: Towards an open systems approach to sustainable development. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 5(3), 70. https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.3390/joitmc5030070
Renu, S., & Miah, S. J. (2021). A new theoretical understanding of big data analytics capabilities in organizations: a thematic analysis. Journal of Big Data, 8(1)https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00543-6
Scott, W. R., & Davis, G. F. (2015). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural, and open systems perspectives. Routledge.
Waldkirch, M., Kammerlander, N., & Wiedeler, C. (2021). Configurations for corporate venture innovation: Investigating the role of the dominant coalition. Journal of Business Venturing, 36(5), 106137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2021.106137