Authors: Pete Naude; Stefanos Mouzas; Stephan C. Henneberg
It is commonly argued that networks which include firms and organisations of different types, professional communities and public bodies provide the relevant context for actors? action and that it is important to distinguish between the network context itselfand the representation of that context in actors? cognitive maps. Hence, it has been claimed that the subjective managerial cognition, i.e. the network pictures of organizations are the necessary representations that form the basis for the overallnetworking and the resulting outcomes of organisations. Network pictures are conceptualized as the perceived views of the network held by actors in that network. Thus, network pictures are an actor-centred, task-specific and atomised construct. In contrast, we propose the conceptual construct of network insight, which does not consist of the subjective views of individual players but is grounded in the practice of interorganisational exchange in communities of practice. We argue that developing network insight is a managerial process of integrating dispersed pieces of atomised network pictures through multilateral interactions in communities of practice that leads toorganisational learning and differential knowledge for positioning and acting within a network. Such a managerial activity is inter-subjective and transcends the task-specific knowledge base of managerial cognition. Organisations that develop network insight are able to mobilize other actors and create a competitive advantage that is crucial for their innovation and growth in their surrounding network.
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Publish Year: 2004
Conference: Copenhagen, Denmark (2004)