Impact Networks

Impact Networks

Author: David Ehrlichman

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2021-10-12

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 152309169X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world. The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect. By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe. David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.


Networks for Social Impact

Networks for Social Impact

Author: Michelle Shumate

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-07

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190091991

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A broad review of how nonprofits, businesses, and governments work together to tackle social problems Networks for Social Impact takes a systems approach to explain how and when networks make a social impact. Michelle Shumate and Katherine R. Cooper argue that network design and management is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, they show that the type of social issue, the mechanism for social impact, environment, and resources available each determine appropriate choices. Drawing on research from public administration, psychology, business, network science, social work, and communication, this book synthesizes what we know about how to best design and manage networks. It includes illustrations from thirty original case studies which describe groups of organizations addressing issues such as gender-based violence, educational outcomes, senior care, veterans' services, mental health and wellness, and climate change. Additionally, the volume examines critical issues that leaders address in creating and managing networks, including social issue analysis, network governance, securing and managing funding, dealing with power and conflict, using data effectively, and managing change. Each chapter includes tools for network leaders to use to handle these issues. This book is neither an overly idealistic, pro-collaboration account of the benefits of network approaches, nor is it a critical view of these efforts. Instead, this clear and concise volume highlights the opportunities and challenges of networks.


Connecting to Change the World

Connecting to Change the World

Author: Peter Plastrik

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2014-09-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781610915328

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Something new and important is afoot. Nonprofit and philanthropic organizations are under increasing pressure to do more and to do better to increase and improve productivity with fewer resources. Social entrepreneurs, community-minded leaders, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropists now recognize that to achieve greater impact they must adopt a network-centric approach to solving difficult problems. Building networks of like-minded organizations and people offers them a way to weave together and create strong alliances that get better leverage, performance, and results than any single organization is able to do. While the advantages of such networks are clear, there are few resources that offer easily understandable, field-tested information on how to form and manage social-impact networks. Drawn from the authors’ deep experience with more than thirty successful network projects, Connecting to Change the World provides the frameworks, practical advice, case studies, and expert knowledge needed to build better performing networks. Readers will gain greater confidence and ability to anticipate challenges and opportunities. Easily understandable and full of actionable advice, Connecting to Change the World is an informative guide to creating collaborative solutions to tackle the most difficult challenges society faces.


Networks of Nations

Networks of Nations

Author: Zeev Maoz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-12-06

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1139492497

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Maoz views the evolution of international relations over the last two centuries as a set of interacting, cooperative and conflicting networks of states. The networks that emerged are the result of national choice processes about forming or breaking ties with other states. States are constantly concerned with their security and survival in an anarchic world. Their security concerns stem from their external environment and their past conflicts. Because many of them cannot ensure their security by their own power, they need allies to balance against a hostile international environment. The alliance choices made by states define the structure of security cooperation networks and spill over into other cooperative networks, including trade and institutions. Maoz tests his theory by applying social networks analysis (SNA) methods to international relations. He offers a novel perspective as a system of interrelated networks that co-evolve and interact with one another.


Open Networks, Closed Regimes

Open Networks, Closed Regimes

Author: Shanthi Kalathil

Publisher: Carnegie Endowment

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 087003331X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As the Internet diffuses across the globe, many have come to believe that the technology poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Grounded in the Internet's early libertarian culture and predicated on anecdotes pulled from diverse political climates, this conventional wisdom has informed the views of policymakers, business leaders, and media pundits alike. Yet few studies have sought to systematically analyze the exact ways in which Internet use may lay the basis for political change. In O pen Networks, Closed Regimes, the authors take a comprehensive look at how a broad range of societal and political actors in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries employ the Internet. Based on methodical assessment of evidence from these cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—the study contends that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.


Global Networks

Global Networks

Author: Linda Marie Harasim

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9780262082228

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Global Networks takes up the host of issues raised by the new networking technology that now links individuals, groups, and organizations in different countries and on different continents. The 21 contributions focus on the implementation, applications and impact of computer-mediated communication in a global context.


The Wealth of Networks

The Wealth of Networks

Author: Yochai Benkler

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780300125771

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing. The author shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront.


Connected

Connected

Author: Nicholas A. Christakis

Publisher: Little, Brown Spark

Published: 2009-09-28

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 031607134X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Celebrated scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler explain the amazing power of social networks and our profound influence on one another's lives. Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Dr. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.


The Hidden Power of Social Networks

The Hidden Power of Social Networks

Author: Robert L. Cross

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2004-06-02

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1633691535

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A powerful, visual framework helps managers discover how employees really communicate and collaborate to get work done - and helps them identify ways they can influence these social networks to improve performance and innovation. In The Hidden Power of Social Networks, Cross and Parker, experts in "social network analysis"—a technique that visually maps relationships between people in large, distributed groups - apply this powerful tool to management for the first time. Based on their in-depth study of sixty informal employee networks in well-known companies around the world, Cross and Parker show managers how to conduct a social network analysis of their organization.