Coevolution of knowledge netowrks and 21st century forms of organizing

Presentation by Dr. Noshir Contractor Monday May 2nd 2005.

Abstract: Recent advances in digital technologies invite consideration of organizing as a process that is accomplished by global, flexible, adaptive, and ad hoc networks that can be created, maintained, dissolved, and reconstituted with remarkable alacrity. This presentation describes a multi-theoretical multilevel (MTML) model of the socio-technical motivations for creating, maintaining, dissolving, and reconstituting knowledge and social networks. Using examples from his research in emergency response networks, transnational immigrant networks, food safety networks, public health networks, and environmental engineering networks and other networks in the public interest, Contractor develops a framework to understand how the discovery, diagnosis, and design of social and knowledge networks enable novel forms of organizing.