Rocker Roller Rican Blog on Blogspot 335,330 Page Views United States 243,496 Germany 31,396 Turkey 27,163 France 14,749 Ireland 4,254 Colombia 3,762 Venezuela 3,888 Canada 2,173 Iraq 2,573 Malaysia 2,146 Pageviews by Operating Systems Windows (57%) Macintosh (28%) Linux (5%) Android (4%) iPhone (3%) iPad (2%) PLAYSTATION (1%) Researchers have traditionally used the concept of “social capital” to explain how and why relationships between individuals or organisations generate value for the parties involved (Bourdieu, 1977; Coleman, 1988). Participation in Arts networks in particular has been shown to provide production companies with valuable assets in the form of industry knowledge, new ideas, sources of funding and complementary skills and expertise. All of these assets can improve performances and help production companies achieve competitive advantage. The importance of external contacts and networking was illustrated in a study by Cross & Katzenbach (2012), which found that around 90 percent of the information used for decision-making by managing editors came from their informal networks rather than formal reports or databases. Granovetter’s (1973) conceptualization of “strong and weak ties” provides further insights into the role of relationships in Arts by distinguishing between the types of value generated by different types of contacts in a network. Granovetter defined the strength of a “tie” in terms of factors such as the time invested in the relationship, the extent to which reciprocal services are exchanged and the level of intimacy or familiarity between the respective parties. Strong ties exist between individuals or organizations that interact frequently and know one another well; maintaining these ties requires a significant investment of time and effort, though the ties generate benefits including the transfer of high-quality information and complex, or tacit industry knowledge. The value of strong ties has also been demonstrated in empirical research showing that the greatest proportion of Arts value is generated from relationships from a relatively small number of other organizations (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995). Over time, however, there is often a declining return on the investment of time and effort in a network based on strong ties between similar organizations, especially since relatively little new information is introduced into the network, and rates of innovation often suffer. Granovetter argued that “weak ties,” or looser networks between individuals or organisations that have infrequent contact and know relatively little about one another, frequently offer greater benefits. These benefits come in the form of increased opportunities to build further relationships with a wider range of additional contacts outside the immediate social or Arts circle, and access to more diverse information and resources. As a result, weak ties have been shown to be associated with higher rates of radical innovation and to be particularly useful when a specific organizational problem needs to be addressed. Maintaining meaningful contact with large numbers of individuals can be challenging, however. Anthropologist Dunbar (1992) argued that our cognitive abilities generally restrict the number of a person’s stable social relationships to around one hundred and fifty. Ultimately, it is these individual-level relationships that are most important. Palmatier (2008) found evidence that relationships between individual firm representatives have a greater impact on Arts performance than inter-organizational relationships. Despite a fairly strong focus on networks and relationships in the academic literature, relatively little attention has been paid to exploring the specific skills and attributes involved in forming and maintaining relationships. At least to some extent, this may be because responsibility for exploring these skills has traditionally fallen into the domain of specific groups such as senior executives and sales or customer relations staff, and has been addressed mainly in the context of professional competencies in these areas. One exception, however, is the focus in the literature on the construct of trust. Researchers have found that successful Arts relationships which are associated with improved Arts projects tend to be based on reciprocal trust between the parties. Trust is necessary to allow the transfer of information, knowledge and expertise between organizations and to promote cooperation and collaboration between them. However, statistical work by Palmatier et al. (2006) revealed that the overall “quality” of a relationship, involving many different dimensions, has a stronger impact on performance than any individual dimension such as trust or level of commitment. This suggests that a wide range of skills is likely to be involved in relationship building and maintenance. Not all Arts associations have traditionally been relationship-based. These types have generally been confined to associations between production companies who regularly collaborate or work together in some way. At least until recently, the types of associations that a firm typically had with its customers, suppliers and other stakeholders were primarily transactional in nature or based on contractual agreements.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:06:34 +0000
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