Twenty-first International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

The answer is: “it depends”. Research published by Woolcock & Narayan (2000) on the topic of social capital concluded that both bonding and bridging ties are required to improve relations within and among other organizational entities such as community groups and firms. This paper seeks to combine that concept with the theory of Structural Holes (Burt, 2000) to determine how contemporary project teams operating in hyper-connected environments can best leverage their networks to fill gaps in expertise. Project teams can become introspective ‘Patriotic Gangs’ and adopt ‘satisficing’ solutions when the project team does not have adequate diversity, exposure, expertise or time to problem-solve effectively. Current research is shared that explores the relevance of and utility of peer networks to contemporary project teams to determine if they are operating as Friendly Villagers or Digital Migrants, and what might the optimal balance be.