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THE ROLE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND BOUNDARY-SPANNERS 169

Table 8.1 Contrasting views of social networks

Channels Communities
Basic unit Individual Social group
Supports Information fl ows Ways of knowing
Engagement Personal ties Shared identity
Benefi ts from Connectivity (scale & scope) Shared learning
Increasing bandwidth through Trust Shared practices
Growth through Rapid via communications & Slow via shared goals and identity
resources
Structure Open Closed

be better at sharing information but poor at sharing learning. It is likely to be
more open and less exclusive, because it connects individuals rather than groups.
However, social ties remain important because they help to increase bandwidth
(the carrying capacity of the network) by fostering trust. Channel types of net-
work are often favoured by managers and policy-makers because they are easier
to establish – requiring some investments in time and resources to support social
interaction and communications.
In contrast, where the network is best viewed as a community, the struc-
ture is less open because members’ participation is intensive and dependent on
shared identities. The community is also more likely to support distinctive ways
of knowing – for example, certain kinds of specialist and professional expertise –
than the free sharing of information. Such communities are also slower to grow
because they depend to a much greater extent on a feeling of shared goals. On
the other hand, they can also be more robust over time because they are ulti-
mately based on shared social practices rather than more fragile personal ties or
communication links.
As we will see, a focus on communities gives us a number of fresh insights
into the actions of knowledge workers which cannot be explained simply by
their individual characteristics or by the tasks which they undertake. In many
settings, the knowledge which is applied in knowledge work is as much a prod-
uct of a wider community, as it is the individual worker’s own thought processes
(as we discussed in Chapter 3 when we were looking specifically at knowledge
creation). Before we identify this important influence on knowledge work, how-
ever, we need to carefully disentangle the different meanings which have been
applied to the word ‘community’. This is a word which conveys a powerful and
generally positive meaning. It is often used as part of a politician’s or manager’s
discourse to enrol individuals into a shared enterprise. Developing a community
in this self-conscious way can be an important manoeuvre in fostering innova-
tion (Swan et al., 2002).
Setting aside the discursive use of the term itself, there are several different
views of what constitutes a community in existing studies. One view emphasizes

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