After a long time, books again - "Developing Business Strategy" by Aaker and "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker. Cross & Parker's book is exciting and an introduction to Social Network Analysis in the Organizational Context. Primarily dealing with the need for appropriate connectivity in the knowledge organization - across verticals and hierarchies, merged entities and across organizations.
Draws attention to two types of entities in a network:
1) the centre comprising one or a few individuals who may become bottlenecks 2)the periphery - often non-networked but sometimes important repositories of knowledge.
In the context of the centre they also discuss the disadvantages of over-centralized decision making - people at the higher levels of hierarchy under such conditions can become bottlenecks.
The first chapter "Across the great divide" describes the need for network connectivities across the 4 divides mentioned above. Chapter 2 deals with the "sense-and-respond' organization - "As new challenges and opportunities arise, employees need to know who has relevant expertise - who knows what in the network".
The first example in Ch 2 discusses a case from the professional services industry. A consulting firm sets up a unit whose objective is to provide thought leadership and support to the firm's KM consultants. A network analysis reveals that the group is actually fragmented into a group of strategists & management experts and a group of technical people specializing on the IT side of KM. The two groups are held together by a single person who has knowledge of both domains and who keeps the two groups apart by discouraging interaction between them. Once the problem is understood - steps are taken for change - shared documentation is created by both groups collaboratively, a mixed-revenue sales goals system is implemented and fora created for communication between the two groups.