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Groups vs. networks -- organizations vs. markets

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Brian Kerr's picture

The relationship between between a group versus a network resembles that between an organization and a market in Simon's "Economic Rationality" chapter. (This parallel is probably very well-understood, but that book is where I came across it. I have no training in economics, so please excuse me if the following is way out in the weeds.)

Contrasting schemes

One of the things that Simon had to say about organizations and markets is that, as contrasting schemes for coordination, they act in concert: e.g. many actors in a given marketplace are going to be organizations which do not rely on internal marketplaces to keep themselves in working order.

Wellman: How do people work together in large, sprawling, networked organizations where they are simultaneously members of multiple, transitory, physically dispersed teams?

Within such a situation, some of an individual's connections are going to networked; others are going to be part of other kinds of group membership (physical proximity being the obvious example). How do these different kinds of connections interact?

In his entry, Trek alludes to the difficulty of distinguishing between connections of these types (and preferring "real" connections). This is an example of a situation wherein the group/network distinction is helpful.

Knowledge

One of the pluses of a market is that buyers and sellers don't really need a bunch of knowledge to clear the market. The system is supposed to be able to be smarter than its individual actors; also implying that participation in an organization is more complex than than participation in a market. To what extent does this distinction hold for group connections vs. networked connections?