5 Stakeholders and Social Network Mapping: Why ‘weak ties’ are important.
Stakeholders and Social Network Mapping: Why ‘weak ties’ are important.
An important element of the stakeholder landscape is the nature and scope of the relationships within the landscape. The image above comes from a workshop where a natural resources senior leader groups physically explored as a team, the relationships with the group, the relationships with the various functions in the organisation, and the wider context in which the group operated.
The cards named the various stakeholders, along with their various functions. The dots were the outcomes of a diagnosis of the relationships. The coding was built around the strength of the relationship, the nature of the relationship, the importance of the relationship and the ‘noes and links’ of the relationships.
As a final piece of the activity, the team plotted the stakeholders that were crucial to success with whom those in the senior leadership team had no relationships at all, neither positive or negative.
There is software that can plot the direction and frequency of relationships within a social network. However, there are very few ssytems that can provide insights into the nature and value of those relationships.
A study that has resonated for many years has recently been given additional credence by studies of links and relationships within systems such as LinkedIn and SalesForce.com, highlighting the importance and nature of relationships in organisations. The study has been cited 68210 times as of March 2023. It must have something going for it!
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American journal of sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.
A later paper adds to the insights.
Granovetter, M. (1983). The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited. Sociological Theory, 1, 201–233. https://doi.org/10.2307/202051
Here is a link to a story about how and why ‘weak ties’ are important.