Understanding Organisations: Social networks and communities of interest

The following module concerning social networks and communities of interest
is divided into three discrete parts:

1. Definitions
2. Policy Links and Development
3. Application

Definitions

Social network: is a social
structure made of individuals or organizations that are tied by one or more
specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial
exchange, friendship, and also dislike, conflict
or trade. In its
simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant relationships
and actors being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social
capital of individual actors.

Social network analysis views social
relationships in terms of the individual actors within the networks, and the
relationships between the actors.

The connections within and between social
networks is refered to as social capital which is a social science concept
used in business, economics,
organizational
behaviour, political
science, public
health and sociology.

Community: a specific group of people who all hold
something in common. Community has tended to be associated with two key
aspects: firstly people who share locality or geographical place; secondly
people who are communities of interest.

Community capacity building: activities, resources and
support that strengthen the skills and abilities of people and community groups
to take effective action and leading roles in the development of their
communities and to engage with public bodies.

Community engagement: the process of working
collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic
proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting
the well being of those people.

Communities of interest: groups of people who share an
identity, for example the Afro-Caribbean community, or those who share an
experience, for example the homeless community.

Communities of Practice (CoP) These are groups of people who share a
concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they
interact regularly. The difference between a ‘community of interest’ and a
’community of practice’ is that members of a community of practice are
practitioners. 

Community organisation or group: a community
organisation or group differs from a voluntary organisation in that the control
lies in the hands of the beneficiaries as individual users, members or residents

Community sector: the web of personal relationships,
groups, networks, traditions and patterns of behaviour that exist amongst those
who share physical neighbourhoods, socio-economic conditions or common
understandings and interests.

Development

Social Networks

Social networking has encouraged new ways to communicate and share
information. And are beginning to be adopted by healthcare professionals. They
are a means to:

• manage institutional knowledge
• disseminate peer to peer knowledge
• highlight individual physicians and institutions.

Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks
operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a
critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run,
and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals. They tend
to share the core idea "that social
networks have value.
Just as a screwdriver (physical
capital) or a college education (human
capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so do
social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups".

In terms of public health policy, social networking sites are providing a new
avenue by which to get a message across. While commercial advertising has
traditionally been used to influence the thoughts and actions of teenagers, many
companies and public health initiatives now realize that social networking
programs may prove far more effective. In fact, public health initiatives that
encourage a reduction in smoking, tobacco use and even a reduction in alcohol
consumptions are beginning to post their messages on MySpace, Facebook and other
social networking programs. (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/697175/).

The health sector has also started to experiment with web 2.0 technologies,
see the National Library for Health (NLH) website (http://www.library.nhs.uk/Default.aspx).
Blogs are also being used, the NLH blog (http://nlhnews.blogspot.com/)
provides updates on NLH activities as well as information on forthcoming
events. The libarary for the School of health and Related Research at the
University of Sheffield is piloting a blog (http://scharrlibrary.blogspot.com/).

Communities of Interest

Recent work on community cohesion and integration has also emphasised the
complexity of individual identity. People can identify with each other by
experiences they have in common, based on values, life-style, consumption,
social class, gender – a whole range of interlocking and fluid drivers of
identity.

For councils and other service providers at the local level to really engage
with their residents and customers, they need to understand how complex personal
identities can influence the way in which individuals want to engage in civic
life and in shaping local decisions. Communications or engagement based solely
on areas or neighbourhoods may not be meaningful for everybody. Thinking about
people not only in terms of where they live but through their “communities of
interest” can provide a richer vein of engagement and encourage greater
participation in local life.

Such approaches can be especially relevant for communities who might
otherwise find it difficult to influence decisions, including ethnic minority
groups, people with disabilities and the lesbian and gay community. The point
here is not about reinforcing divisions but about encouraging greater active
participation in local decisions and community life as a first step to broader
‘bridging’ between different communities (DCLG 2008). Part of building trust
at the local level is also about linking empowerment to a wider process of
learning and accepting the complex and the long term nature of the task at hand.
Community development workers can also be a source of local knowledge and assist
in understanding community needs, demands and interests. It is also worth
mentioning here the development of communities of practice (DCLG 2009).

Communities of Practice

The concept of community of practice is influencing theory and practice in
many domains. From humble beginnings in apprenticeship studies, the concept was
grabbed by businesses interested in knowledge management and has progressively
found its way into other sectors. It has now become the foundation of a
perspective on knowing and learning that informs efforts to create learning
systems in various sectors and at various levels of scale, from local
communities, to single organizations, partnerships, cities, regions, and the
entire world.

The importance of the CoP is the accumulation and sharing of knowledge. Thus
the practice of a community is perceived as dynamic and involves learning on the
part of everyone. Social scientists have used versions of this developing
concept of community of practice for a variety of analytical purposes, but the
origin and primary use of the concept has been in learning theory. For
orientations of learning check out this website:  http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm

Andrée le May draws on the complexity of Wenger’s social theory of
learning, reflected in the figure below and uses this the framework to consider
what structures of the CoPs are, how they direct or not the behaviour of the CoP’s
members, how power is dealt with and what meaning is created and what the
collective function is (see le May 2009).

Figure 1: The conceptual underpinnings of Wenger’s theory of social
learning in Communities of Practice (le May 2009:7)

Application

Social Networks

Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people.
The main types of social networking services are those which contain category
divisions (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with
friends (usually with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked
to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with Facebook
widely used worldwide; MySpace,
Twitter and LinkedIn
being the most widely used in North America.

A new trend is emerging with social networks created to help its members with
various physical and mental ailments e.g. for people suffering from life
altering diseases, particular sites offer its members the chance to connect with
others dealing with similar issues and research patient data related to their
condition.

Despite the many successes of modern medicine, there are a number of health
issues including chronic low back pain, depression and obesity that are poorly
understood resulting in a lack of consensus on how they should be tackled.
Although biological causal mechanisms certainly contribute to these conditions,
there is substantial evidence that psychological, social and environmental
aspects of these health issues are also important. Established models of
clinical practice include taking account of biological, psychological and social
aspects of health. However, there is little understanding of how poor health
emerges from interaction between these different aspects of life over time and
so how best to intervene. Social science research indicates the importance of
social relationships for health. However, analysing the influences of such
networks on health poses a number of challenges of a data access, computational
and statistical nature. (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/med/research/)

Example: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network (http://christakis.med.harvard.edu/pdfs/078.pdf)

The prevelance of obesity has increased substantially over the past 30.
Research into a social network of 12,067 people assesed repeatedly from 1971 to
2003, as part of the Framingham Heart Study, demonstrated that network phenomena
appeared to be relevant to the biologic and behavioural trait of obesity, with
obesity appearing to spread through social ties. (See Christakis N (2007):

Communities of Interest (http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm)
and Andree le May   (2009) Communities of Practice in Health
and Social Care

When groups of people from different areas and backgrounds get together to
solve problems that affect them all they are termed “community of interest”. 
They work together to learn from each other and help each other think of
solutions everybody can use to make things better in their own areas.

The value in this form of community is in their ability to help each other to
do things better or quicker or cheaper than they could do if each person worked
on their own. The more energy and excitement they have the more quickly their
problems get solved. People get to know each other and talk to each other,
although they might not even meet face to face or work together every day. Some
might be at every single event, some might only come to one. Some might already
know a lot about the problem, others might know nothing, but these people can
still help the rest of the group by saying what they think about ideas or
passing on what they have learned to other people they know.

Example 1: Networking through communities of interest (http://www.ncvys.org.uk/index.php?page=572)

As part of the National Council for Voluntary Youth (NCVYS)
network, staff and volunteers of member organisations can sign up to communities
of interest that represent the diverse work of all NCVYS members. The
communities of interest that currently exist are:

• Infrastructure development
• Work with young people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds
• Work on active citizenship or volunteering
• Work with disabled young people
• Work specialising with disaffected young people
• Sport and physical activity
• Social enterprise
• Faith-based youth work
• Young people’s participation and children’s rights issues
• Cultural, creative and arts work
• Environmental youth work

As a member of a community of interest individuals may:

• receive targeted information on topics relevant to that interest group;
• act as a body of individuals with specific interests and skills with
  whom NCVYS may consult with from time to time;
• act as a virtual network that can discuss and share ideas and good
  practice;
• come together to discuss issues relevant to a particular interest
  group.

Example 2:
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Bristol

City Council - Equalities Forums

Bristol

City

Council has set up a number of Equalities Forums with representatives of
relevant communities of interest. People are co-opted onto overview and
scrutiny Commissions and Select Committees and help ensure that equalities are
properly addressed:

"…Several of the Council’s Scrutiny Commissions make provisions for
co-opted members. In this way they can involve people with particular interests
and skills. The council’s equalities forums are represented on certain
Commissions and are able to directly engage with the work of the Commission….
As a consequence of this engagement, we have seen progression from equalities
forums and co-opteeship, to people getting engaged in other forms of civic
engagement, including becoming councillors or school governors or using this
experience to become employees in the public sector”.

Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are not called that in all organizations. They are
known under various names, such as learning networks, thematic groups, or tech
clubs. In fact, communities of practice are everywhere. They are a familiar
experience, so familiar perhaps that it often escapes our attention and they
come in a variety of forms. The concept of community of practice has found a
number of practical applications in business, organizational design, government,
education, professional associations, development projects, and civic life.
Table 2 provides some examples of where Communities of Practice is applied.

Le May’s commentary on the recent interest in researching CoPs can also be
considered in relation to communities of interest in focusing upon how knowledge
is shared, how learning occurs and how this learning impacts on the development
of those involved (2009:118).

Table 2: The application of Communities of Practice (adapted from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm)

References:

• Christakis N (2007) The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network Over
  32 Years New England Journal of Medicine (9) 357-370
• DCLG (2008) Disability Equality Report by the Secretary of State
  for Communities and Local Government
• DCLG (2009) Empowering communities to influence local decision making
  Communities and Local Government
• Le May, A (2009) Communities of Practice in Health and Social Care
  
  Oxford
  
  : Blackwell Publishing
• Merriam, S. and Caffarella (1991, 1998) Learning in Adulthood. A
  comprehensive guide,
  
  San Francisco
  
  : Jossey-Bass
• Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, William Snyder 2002 Cultivating
  communities of practice A guide to managing knowledge Harvard Business
  School Press

© S Markwell 2009