Learning and Leading Across Networks: Styles and Sensibilities

Abstract

This chapter addresses two sets of issues that are concerned with the processes and capabilities within organisations by which they can support the strategies of, first, management in, and second, external management of, networks that were discussed in Chapter 6. To operate effectively in networks, organisations must be able to recognise and to make intelligent use of information from other organisations, whether that information is taskspecific, structured and concerned with specific operational matters or is more general intelligence about the conditions in their field. That is to say, organisational learning is key to achieving effective influence in networks. This chapter draws on studies of capacities for learning in organisations to enrich the theory already developed. Here, we are concerned principally with management in and of networks rather than their external governance.