Judges' Comments and Results

Debate 3:  TBD vs Awesomely Inefficient

Affirmative Constructive:  Well-structured and well-written. Starts right in by defining terms, then immediately lists the three main points you intend to make, and do.   Well-chosen examples and good use of sources, a mix of ones I suggested and your own. I won’t bother to comment on the many good arguments you made, but your discussion of technology, social media, and the Egyptian resistance was an excellent, well-balanced account that argued strongly and not in the typical hyped-up fashion we often see. And it made the key distinction between social media and social networks. The only problem we found was with the UAW example.  Unions are all about hierarchy.  Is the Facebook presence changing the union's internal power relationships, or is it just a way to let the rank-and-file blow off steam?

Negative Constructive:  Someone on your team has either debated at Oxford or elsewhere where the Oxford rules are in place (“the Government”) At the beginning, you say the opposition should limit itself to the more “narrow definitions of social networks,” yet you don’t say what these are. Your arguments would have been a lot stronger if you had provided some detail here. Yes, there is an explosion of FB use and texting right now, but more and more organizations (the smarter ones one might argue) are trying to harness this to their benefit, and the 2025 horizon provides a long time to get it right, especially with a generation of users who will have grown up with it as the dominant communications source. Your citation of Centola on clusters also misrepresents him a bit, and it also leaves out the arguments from equally-competent sources on the other side. And a cluster is just as much a network, social or otherwise, as a weak-tie one. While weak ties may not “drive activism,” as you contend, there is a body of literature that would say that weak ties make it possible in the first place. 

But note that Nicholas Christakis & James Fowler, sifting through a half-century of Framingham Heart Study data, found that behavioral changes by your friends' friends' friends can affect your behavior, even if you have only a 3-step connection to them.  That is, if your 3^rd degree connection stops smoking, you are more likely to stop smoking, too.  Ditto for several other health-related behaviors.  (Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, 2009) 

Where you score some points is in your refutation of the Rob Cross argument, but it also could be argued (as Cross himself does) that is not management alone that makes business successful but well-managed networks.    After the football map you leave us with a number of good questions that your opponents need to refute, however we still are missing your definition of what SNs are.

Affirmative Rebuttal:  Quite rightly, this starts with a refined definition of SNs, and organizations as groups of collaborative networks.  This sets up their lengthy rebuttal quite well.  Aside from the small quibble here and there, this is an excellent exposition of the art of rebuttal.

On the opposition's argument that dense social networks create too much information flow: They are perhaps referring to the observation by Herb Simon that an excess of one commodity can create a dearth of another.  Simon had in mind this: an excess of information creates a shortage of attention.  Your response to this charge undermines the lengthy discussion in their negative constructive.  If you had 48 hours per day, you could read the whole NYT & WSJ & Washington Post, or you could check out which articles your friends have linked to on Facebook.  It seems like you've done that on occasion…

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Negative Rebuttal:  Why limit it to social movements just because your opponents do?  It’s a valid, but limiting tactic.  Others debated the relative success of Egypt vs Iran, but it is arguable that in Iran’s much more closed society, the opposition had much further to go.  And most of the Twitter users were outside the country (as they were in Egypt.) Hard to argue that it was only click-button activism. And the use of Barnard to discuss incentives for the OWS members argues more into the hands of the pro-SN team, as incentives (and motivation) are often best communicated through informal social networks (see my Unwritten Rules of the Game paper.”

The final rebuttal seems to go back a few steps, with its insistence on the primacy of effective leadership & individual talent, without taking into account teamwork.  At least some recognition of the value of communications and social networks in an organization would make sense at this point in the debate.  Pfeffer & Veiga are right to consider people as assets, but people are also people.  And humans are a social animal.  No employee is an unlinked node.  (OK, it's not as poetic as "No man is an island," but you get the point.)

The Result:  The pros start with a well supported affirmative constructive.  The contras make a spirited challenge, but the pros' rebuttal is, again, well argued.  The final rebuttal by the contras is not as strong as their initial opposition constructive.  The pros take it. 

Opposition - REBUTTAL

We reject our opponent's assertion that social networks currently are the primary drivers of organizational success, and further will demonstrate through our refutation of our opponent's previous points that social networks will not be the main drivers of organizational success by 2025. We note here that since our opponent's rebuttal was limited exclusively to examples of the social movement variety, with no discussion of other types of "organizations" per our opponent's definition, we will likewise limit our rebuttal to the social movement sphere.

First, our opponent points to the Arab Spring movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests to argue that the mere presence of a network will create success, thereby rejecting our assertion that the use of social networks in organized social movements discourages full-fledged participation and merely encourages "click-button" activism. However, it goes without saying that the Occupy Wall Street protests have yet to demonstrate any measurable success. As for our opponent's reliance on the Arab Spring movement, we argue that it does not prove conclusively that social networks are always the drivers of success in such movements. Our opponent points to our reliance on the Malcolm Gladwell article and rightly observes that it was written before the Arab Spring. What our opponent fails to recognize or address, however, is that the Gladwell article was written well after the 2009 Iran Green Movement, which shared many similarities with the Arab Spring and yet failed. First, it was a popular-level, bottoms-up, grassroots movement that intended to engage people physically; second, it sought to effect political change at the highest levels of government; and third, it relied both on traditional social networks and on technological social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to organize, coordinate and record events.

However, where the Arab Spring succeeded, the Green Movement failed, as its primary objective in effecting regime change in Iran was not realized. Furthermore, the number of supporters in Iran who attended the February 11, 2009 protests (a national day of significance in Iran) in the streets of Tehran was only a fraction of the number of supporters who expressed their solidarity online. These facts reinforce our initial argument that social networks as a tool merely facilitate "click-button" activism, rather than encourage individuals to join worthy causes in person.

Second, while our opponent claims that social networks are the primary drivers behind organizational success, we reassert that those social networks are merely tools, or at best tangential drivers, that would be ineffective and even counterproductive without the more fundamental drivers of success, which are, as previously stated, effective leadership and individual talent. By way of evidence, a 1999 article by Pfeffer and Veiga in the Academy of Management Executive explains that an organization's success is directly driven by "management practices that treat people as assets."

To illustrate these claims, we return to the Green Movement protests discussed above, along with the Occupy Wall Street protests, which now have gone global. These movements demonstrate that it is in fact effective leadership in organizations and the use by leaders of social networks -- not the presence of social networks themselves -- that drive success. On the causes of failure of the Green Movement, a Telegraph article from June 2010 observes that, despite the most sincere intentions of those who participated in the movement, its leaders "never had any real intention of campaigning for the kind of changes those who took to the streets last year were demanding."

Additionally, as the current Occupy Wall Street protests in all of its global manifestations have demonstrated, poor leadership and an ill-defined mission statement have prevented the creation of a coordinated global solidarity movement. Instead, the movement overall has disintegrated into riots and violence around the globe with no cohesive strategy -- the most vivid example of which is in Italy.

Lastly, in addition to the two main drivers stated above, adequate incentives to induce cooperation form an additional main driver of organizational success. Chester I. Barnard argues in The Economy of Incentives (published in Shafritz's Classics of Organizational Theory) that "the individual is always the basic strategic factor within an organization," and that a driver of inducing individual cooperation (and thereby organizational success) is the ability of leadership/management to effectively provide inducements for cooperation. Barnard goes on to state that "in all sorts of organizations the affording of adequate incentives becomes the most definitely emphasized task in their existence" -- that is, adequate incentives and the leadership’s ability to identify and provide them are the main drivers of any organization's success. While at this point in time we cannot say with certainty what will become of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the parallels to date between that movement and the Iran Green Movement indicate that like the Green Movement, which failed to incentivize the support base, the Occupy protests may go the same way. Ultimately, it is not the existence of traditional and technological social networks in these examples that determines success or failure, but rather the use by leadership of these networks to mobilize, incentivize, organize and coordinate network members into action.

In sum, social networks without proper leadership, objectives/goals and effective means of encouraging actual participation become largely worthless in and of themselves. They are shown to be tools that are effective only when married to the primary drivers of organizational success.

FATALITY

Constructive Argument - REBUTTAL

Constructivist REBUTTAL:

While it is unclear to us how we came to be called ‘the Government’, it is clear that our opponent (perhaps the Libertarian Ron Paul?) has unjustifiably critiqued our definition of social networks. To clarify, the definition we ascribe to is commonly accepted and is pulled from Session 2 of our course (and also Wikipedia, a massive social network itself). To reiterate, we are using a definition close to Professor Tunnard’s definition: “a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade. (after Wikipedia)” While the definition is indeed broad, this does not make it invalid. In fact, the power of social networks is in part derived from their broad and expandable nature. Similarly, collaboration between individuals does form a network, and Ron Paul is correct to assert that we define organizations as groups of collaborative networks.

It is important to note that throughout their argument, Ron Paul conflates social media and social networking, while the actual substance of our resolution is specifically about social networks, as they apply to organizational success. To this end, we have chosen to focus our rebuttal only on those arguments which are relevant to the resolution at hand, (and not spend our Saturday night refuting the number of text messages that teenagers send, as we find this irrelevant to organizational success. In addition, we don’t find societal concern about teenagers to be very convincing; society is always concerned about what teenagers are doing).

Within the confines of this resolution, we find several gaps in the arguments offered. A plethora of evidence leads us to reject the claim that over-exposure to information is counter-productive or that it is necessarily a consequence of social networks. Further, recent movements such as Occupy Wall Street, as well as the larger political phenomenon of the Arab Spring, have used social media to inspire people to physically join protests, effectively disproving our opponents’ claim that social networks facilitate the proliferation of less effective networks. Finally, our opponents claim the social networks are not the most important driver of organizational success because networks rely on effective leaders. We agree that leaders are crucial to the utility of networks, however, this argument is critically flawed, given that leaders cannot be effective without taking advantage of social networks.

We disagree that social networks lead to a counter-productive over-exposure to information and create redundant, harmful ties that impede the success of organizations. In the age of information-overload, networks act as a filter for information that is reputable and relevant to individuals and therefore organizations. Networks sift through the shifting sands of information to tease out the golden coins of knowledge. While Google provides a large number of search results, it often provides too many results of unknown reputation. Websites that create platforms for networks of people committed to valuing services and products such as Yelp! offer a filter for such information. Personal social networks - whether through social media or more traditional ties - provide even more reputable recommendations of entertainment, services, and news. Since individuals are connected to multiple networks and can freely search for information on their own as well, variety of information available is not compromised. When an individual knows where to go for reputable information within the network they can then make more effective use of their time. This act of filtering is also present in networks within organizations when people need information or skills to accomplish their goals. The networks as filters thereby contribute to organizational success. Further, Mozilla VP Jay Sullivan explained how reputation starts to develop within networks to create groups whose recommendations can be considered reliable, and mentions that the thrill of discovery through others, which makes the information more meaningful, is another positive aspect of filtering information through networks.

In reference to concerns about teenagers’ activities, this is nothing new to the history books. Each generation frets over the ability of the next to take the reigns of command and continue to propagate their success - just ask a Baby Boomer how their elders reacted to them. As a social dance historian at Stanford pointed out, “The older generations were especially worried about ‘juvenile delinquency.’ In the 1950s, this didn't mean dealing in street drugs or drive-by shootings, but rather chewing gum in class, souping up a hot rod and talking back to parents.” Teen activities now considered tame were credited with causing a host of social ills similar to those cited by Ron Paul, including sleeplessness, failing grades, distraction in school, (dance-related) repetitive stress injuries, etc. It is impossible to predict the effect of teenagers’ high-frequency use of social media on their future success in organizations that are and will continue to be based on social networks.

Similarly, they claim that organizations are losing 1.5% productivity due to Facebook. We ask: are we losing more productivity because of Facebook or is it just a new enabler for people who would be inclined to lose 1.5% productivity one way or another? Regardless, this loss of productivity they cite is due to social media, not social networks which, again, are the focus of this debate.

As for Ron Paul’s claim that social networks primarily serve to encourage ‘slacktivism’, we counter that social networks and the technology that facilitates them actually enhance opportunities for meaningful participation in change-making. Our opponent draws most heavily on Gladwell’s New Yorker article to legitimize their argument; however, it must be remembered that this piece was written before the Arab Spring - events which underscore just how powerful social networks (i.e. informal ‘organizations’) can be in effecting outcomes as dramatic as total regime change. Furthermore, these networks gained enormous momentum via the tools available through social media. A discussion at Friday’s Fares Center Conference at Fletcher spoke directly to this issue. Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American journalist who both followed and participated in the anti-Mubarak movement recounted the fact that there were many smaller issue-based groups that catalyzed the movement in Tahrir Square, including the labor movement, the Egyptian human rights community, groups reacting to the parliamentary election and the Coptic church bombing, and the April 6th Youth Movement, among others. Under Mubarak’s restrictions on rights of assembly, they were isolated and pitted against each other. Eltahawy was adamant that social media and other technological tools were what enabled these disparate groups to merge into a broader network and, ultimately, to effect change collaboratively.

While it may be true that members of social networks (particularly those with roots in social media) have the ‘easy option’ of simply clicking ‘Like’ on a cause they know little about, in reality such networks have made it far easier for those inclined towards involvement to actually stay plugged in and to contribute. Daniel Drezner concurs with this notion, claiming that “networks eliminate neither hierarchical power nor strong ties -- they're simply expressed in different ways...To put it more precisely: social networks lower the transactions costs for creating both weak ties and strong ties, loose collaborations and more tightly integrated social movements.” For example, NPR interviewed a group of four elderly women who joined the Occupy Boston protests this week. They heard about the movement and decided to support it so they coordinated a carpool and spoke directly with the press at the protest to voice their concerns about the status quo. They did not simply click on a link to express their support; once exposed to the movement, they actually organized with each other to drive an hour to the protest, took part, and spread their impact by speaking with the media.

In the same way that we feel Gladwell is inaccurate in his diagnosis of social networks, we argue that Ron Paul is erroneous in their interpretation of Centola’s concept of clusters - a central element of their argument on this point. They claim that ‘the cluster is the dominant factor, not the network between clusters,’ but this is a misreading of the term and a redundancy at that - clusters are themselves networks and it does matter that they are connected to other networks (clusters) in order to transfer behavioral changes between various networks. Claiming that a cluster is the dominant factor is claiming that a dense network is the dominant factor, not the weaker ties between various networks; either way networks are still the dominant factor! In fact, the difference between technology-based social networks and traditional networks has nothing to do with the resolution under debate. If, as Ron Paul says, technology provides links between traditional ties (how they interpret clusters), then it is simply another vehicle with which to transmit the necessary repetitive signals to create change.

Finally, Ron Paul asserts that social networks are simply a tool or vehicle through which leadership can be expressed. We have previously stated that capacity and leadership are important, but without the critical tool of social networks they cannot be effective, meaning that leaders cannot lead in a vacuum, in isolation surrounded by only their skill-sets; therefore the vehicle/tool is of critical importance. As we are discussing drivers for organizational success, naturally we would discuss the utility of social networks, and social media in particular, for groups - entities that must contain both followers and individuals with leadership skills. Morozov and even Gladwell agree with us on this. Morozov cites Gladwell’s statement that grassroots organizations use the internet to achieve successful outcomes in his article in the Guardian. “[Gladwell] explicitly stated (no less than three times) that the internet can be an effective tool for political change when used by grassroots organisations (as opposed to atomised individuals).”

We will reference Ron Paul’s soccer discussion only in passing as it was tangentially relevant at best. Yes! the individuals made brilliant passes to one another. Without a network of players, coaches, team owners, fans, the internet etc, men running around alone in fields, regardless of their ability to swiftly direct a ball, would not be relevant. Individual brilliance without connections between people engaged in collaborative efforts are of limited utility for achieving organizational gains.

In closing, ladies and gentlemen, social networks do not contribute to information overload but in fact act as a filter, easing the individual search for information that is relevant and reputable. In doing so, networks make more effective use of time and streamline the travel of information, which allows organizations to be more effective and successful. Social media may indeed increase the number of slacker networks; however, as we demonstrated, it sometimes acts as a unifier for such networks. And in the case of grassroots networks and those consisting primarily of traditional ties, it acts as an additional tool to spread their message and encourage active participation, sometimes of people who would not have heard their message otherwise. Thus, social media can serve to expand and strengthen ties of social networks. Lastly, while we concede that individual prowess is needed for organizational success, without a well-formed network (perhaps aided by the use of social network analysis technology), the individual will not be successful within the organization nor contribute his or her maximum potential to the success of the organization. Leaders of organizations can not and will not be successful without using the main tool of success: social networks. Therefore, organizations will recognize and utilize social networks - both within and without their organization - as the main driver of success in the future.

K.O.!

Opposition Constructive:

We reject the assertion, made by the government, that social networks will be the main drivers of organizational success by 2025. We are a bit concerned by the government’s set of definitions, as they seem both incredibly broad and potentially tautological. Our reading of the government’s definition of a social network suggests that anything and everything - as long as there are at least two people involved - could be construed as a social network. Even the lack of ties between individuals could count as a social network. This leads to a potential argument that social networks are important because everything is a social network. We trust the government will seek to advance our collective understanding of the potential importance of social networks rather than fall back to this type of argument in their rebuttal. Furthermore, the government defines social networks as, among other things, exchanges (financial, intellectual, logistical) between individuals - essentially, collaboration. Organizations are then defined as “groups of people attempting to function collaboratively.” By substitution, then, the government might have us attempt to argue the idea that collaboration is a key driver of success for groups of people attempting to function collaboratively. If that is truly how the government seeks to frame this debate, we might be better served to spend our time playing FarmVille on Facebook. We will assume that, for the rebuttal phase of this debate, the government will follow its approach in its constructive argument and limit itself to the more narrow definitions of social networks.

Definitional issues aside, we see three main strands of argument against the above resolution. First, social networks can lead to a counter-productive over-exposure to information. Second, social networks facilitate the proliferation of less-effective mechanisms for action (the “slacktivism” effect) and information-sharing (the weakness of weak ties effect). Third and finally, effective organizational leadership and skill will continue to be hugely important drivers of success – and social networks should simply be viewed as the tool or vehicle through which these traits are expressed.

Drinking from a Firehose and Drowing in a Sea of Information: The Pitfalls of Information Overload in Social Networks
We, like the government, note the explosion in social networking technology – particularly the advent of social media and telecommunications tools that allow for an increase in connections between individuals and the sharing of information along those connections. However, we are much less sanguine about the results of this explosion. As Valente notes in the introduction to Social Networks and Health, “too much density [in a network] creates redundant communications and reduces the ability of people in the network to access outside sources of information and influence.” (Valente, 18) Valente’s empirically-based observation is that networks with too many connections between individuals can make certain productive outcomes less likely. Social networking technology enables an ever-increasing number of ties (some weak, some strong) between individuals – but more connections does not necessarily lead to more successful outcomes. We take this argument one step further to suggest that having too much information flowing along these connections can similarly constrain the opportunities for success. Social networking technologies dramatically increase the amount of information flowing along ties between individuals. As a powerful example, Facebook’s 800 million worldwide users add 2 billion comments and 250 million photos every day. (Zuckerberg’s Unspoken Law) This is information-generation on an almost unimaginable scale – as Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes, humanity is creating as much information every day or two as it did from the dawn of time through 2003. Moore’s law (after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore) – holding that computer processing power doubles every two years – has proven remarkably accurate. Sadly, however, the processing power of the human brain and attention span remains more or less fixed. As our ability to forge more and more connections and share more and more information over those connections continues to increase, there exists the very real possibility of information overload. Perhaps the amount of information available to us is manageable now (though a strong argument could be made that we are already overwhelmed by information flowing through our social networks), but by 2025, it is very likely that we will simply be unable to process it all.

Information overload from increased connectivity and access to information as a result of social networking tools and technologies will have very real consequences for organizations in 2025. The downside effects of social networking on productivity and outcomes are already apparent. For instance, Nucleus Research reports that firms that allow employees to access Facebook face a 1.5% loss in total productivity – a loss that could be unacceptable to companies with thin profit margins. Moreover, according to Nielsen data, in 2008, the average American teenager sent 2,272 text messages per month, which represented a doubling of the previous year’s average. At the time, the phenomenon was already beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who were concerned about “anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury, and sleep deprivation.” (NYTimes) Not surprisingly, the doctors’ concerns did little to constrain the growth in texting – by 2010, teenagers were sending 3,339 texts per month, and a quick stroll through a typical high school cafeteria proves that the trend shows no sign of stopping. It is all well and good for today’s high schoolers (the mid-level employees of 2025) to be doing all this networking – but how will their organizations fare if none of the employees can differentiate between Pythagoras and Plato?

Click-Button Activism and the Weakness of Weak Ties: The Pitfalls of Shallow Engagement in Social Networks
When it comes to organizational success, social networks take a back seat to internal unity and clarity of focus. As Malcom Gladwell points out in his succinct New Yorker article “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be tweeted,” past successful revolutions have been rooted in the strength of the ideological connection of members to the movement as well as trust between those members. The civil rights movement in the US during the 1950s and ‘60s exhibits this type of devotion and trust. Furthermore, the movement was military-like in its organizational strategy, with a clear leadership, structure, and focus. Its success was achieved through effective organization of its network of supporters, not the network’s mere presence or size. Gladwell contrasts this movement to more recent ones. Contemporary political movements have been effective at attracting participation through Twitter and Facebook, but those mediums have not, he argues, supplanted strong ties, formed and maintained offline, in achieving the sort of devotion needed for true activism. Gladwell notes the success of social media and its preponderance of weak ties in finding bone marrow donors and retrieving cell phones; both low-risk endeavors which require a low level of participation. True political activism requires a great deal of risk and participation - or at the very least, some actual expenditure of effort. As Evgeny Morozov argues, the type of activities that social networks often enable, such as simply adding one’s name to a petition or sending a form-letter email to a Congressman, do very little to create change. Communications and demonstrations that involve more of a personal sacrifice (be it of time, money, or security) matter much more, and are often discouraged by click-button activism. These are sacrifices which only strong ties can help create, and which some social networks actually may discourage.

Damon Centola’s work analyzing the ability of social networks to motivate behavioral changes supports Gladwell’s view. In his study, “The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Expirement,” published in Science Magazine, he found that individuals do not exhibit changes in behavior through the influence of weak ties alone. Rather, only after repeated signals within the network, from various members therein, do individuals consider changing their behavior. Unlike some contagions, where weak ties across groups are effective transmitters, clustered ties are more effective at spreading long-lasting behavioral changes. If the behavioral change needs a cluster, then our logical conclusion is the cluster is the dominant factor, not the network between clusters. Clusters have existed for centuries, in our families and in our communities. Thus, technology-based social networks, which provide links between traditional ties, are less powerful than the traditional ties themselves.

Social media and social networking are best at helping individuals and organizations form and maintain weak ties. Certainly, there is strength in weak ties, as the oft-cited Mark Granovetter has taught us. Weak ties, however, have limits. They do not drive activism or behavioral change. If organizations are to achieve success, they will need to base that success on more than weak ties and the social networking which helps to form them.


Skilled Leadership and Individual Talent: The True Key Drivers of Organizational Success
Following our explanation of the two main pitfalls of an over-reliance on social networks for organizational success (namely, the potential for information overload and the slacktivism/weak tie effect), we propose a counterthetical argument: that leadership and individual skill are the most important drivers of organizational success, and that they will continue to be through 2025. In fact, effective leadership and superlative skill can shape, tweak, and guide social networks toward organizational success in a way that those networks could not achieve on their own. As such, we argue that social networks could best be understood as vehicles rather than drivers of organizational success.

In their opening constructive, the government reminded us of Robert Cross’s argument from The Hidden Power of Social Networks: “there is dependable evidence that well-managed network connectivity is critical to performance, learning and innovation in organizations.” (Emphasis Added) We agree with the government, and with Cross, that networks can be critical to achieving organizational objectives - but without high-quality management of those networks, their value to the organization is severely diminished. Without talented managers clearly defining a vision, creating incentives for success, elaborating intermediate goals - and even optimizing their organization to reflect the insights gained by social network analysis - organizations will have great difficulty achieving success. Gladwell’s discussion of the civil rights movement is a particularly illustrative example of this idea, as he finds that clearly defined organizational goals and a singularity of focus within the movement were key drivers of success. Even in the government’s example of the UAW contract negotiations, leadership that set clear goals and tactics for meeting those goals was a key component of the success of the negotiation. One could even argue that the UAW’s use of Facebook was as much a negotiating ploy to demonstrate the resolve and engagement of its members as it was a pure use of a social network. Social networks and social network analysis are valuable tools to help organizations and leaders move toward successful outcomes, but networks by themselves do not produce results. Rather, skilled management is essential for generating the conditions that lead to success.

While management can help set the conditions for success, successful organizations are also driven forward by skilled individuals. Perhaps the best analogy for this point is contained in the graphic below. The graphic shows a network of connections (passes, in this case) between players in the 2010 World Cup final during the 26th minute of overtime. While somewhat helpful and informative, this network map fails to capture the creativity, imagination, and skill that the individual players exhibited in creating the game-winning goal.

Overall, then, leadership and individual skill are absolutely essential to organizational success. Social networks, like any other tool, can be used for good or for evil, for progress or to constrain progress - the tool in and of itself does not generate an outcome. Thus, social networks are best viewed as a vehicle, while leadership and skill are the actual drivers that can use the vehicle to achieve organizational success. When this insight is combined with the very real possibility that social networks will lead to information overload (and a resultant decrease in productivity) by 2025 and the pitfalls of the slacktivism/weak tie effect as described earlier, we believe that there is a compelling case to reject the resolution at hand.

Constructive Argument - FOR the Resolution

RESOLUTION: By 2025 social networks will be recognized as the main drivers of organizational success.

We agree that by 2025 social networks will indeed be recognized as the main drivers of organizational success, and we further argue that this recognition has already happened and will continue to increase over the next fifteen years.

We subscribe to the definition of social networks as a structure of ties between individuals connected by interdependency, exchanges (financial, intellectual, logistical), relationships, beliefs, friendships, kinships and shared interests. Further, we consider that to be ‘recognized’, the organizations themselves must embrace social networks as the main drivers of organizational success. In this argument we define an organization as being any group of people attempting to function collaboratively. Finally, we define organizational success as meeting objectives in a sustainable manner, which encompasses making a profit and/or adhering to a sustainable organizational process - this process may include planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting (Gulick’s POSDCORB in Shafritz).

Three factors in particular support our conviction that social networks are, and will continue to be, recognized as the main drivers of organizational success. First, abundant research confirms the importance of valuing social networks in order to improve efficiency, performance and innovation within organizations. Second, improving technology and ever-increasing venues for social media are making networks more robust and increasing their utility to organizations of all kinds. Finally, as more and more organizations begin to focus on social networks and maximize them for success, organizations that do not harness the power of social networks will be left behind, becoming obsolete.

There is consistent evidence that emphasis on social networks improves organizational effectiveness. As Robert Cross points out in his book The Hidden Power of Social Networks, there is dependable evidence that well-managed network connectivity is critical to performance, learning and innovation in organizations. Cross argues that by using network analysis, organizations can move beyond largely ineffective general collaboration to targeting strategic individuals and capabilities to improve organizational efficiency and increase opportunities for innovation, both being keys to organizational success. Supporting Cross is Ross Dawson, a leading strategy advisor who wrote Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution. Dawson focuses on the change in organizational data management, namely how instead of going to files for information, organizations need to use their own networks to learn and therefore be successful. Using network analysis, people within organizations can know who to go to for information and to develop the capabilities they need to be successful in their assignments. Such networking is already being utilized in large, successful companies such as IBM, Cisco, and Cerner as a way of leading their organizations in to the future. With viable data on the importance of social networks to organizational performance, the practice will continue to spread. Even the US Army, traditionally a strictly hierarchical organization, has recognized the need to use networks in combating terrorism. General Stanley McChrystal created a network in Afghanistan in order to decrease the time it took for critical information to be communicated and swiftly translated into effective action by small, geographically disparate teams. General McChrystal took his cue from the terrorist network, for it is not only traditionally structured organizations that have realized that the network is the main driver of organizational success.

Not only does emphasis on social networks facilitate greater organizational efficiency, but the technology and social media used as tools for maintaining and expanding these networks are constantly improving and are making networks more robust and more useful. Advancements in internet and mobile phone-based technologies now enable masses of people to coordinate, educate and alert each other in order to enact social change. In other words, technology and social media facilitate the process of creating, building on and sustaining a movement. Media technologist Deanna Zandt commented in a CNN article on the effects that technology innovations are having on protests in the United States: “‘The tools we had [in 2004] were great for mobile communication among protesters and organizers…. But you could go to another part of the city … and people there would have no idea that anything was going on,’ … That situation has completely flipped. Today, communicating from and about the Occupy Wall Street protests is primarily a social phenomenon.” Individuals participating in and reacting to the campaign can share information about the movement with others, vastly increasing the campaign’s reach.

As much as a movements’ success depends on the capacity of its participants to implement a change-making strategy, success depends also on the relationships between the participants and their broader environments. Technology, and social media in particular, enable movements to build relationships – to attract, engage and activate members – efficiently and powerfully by enabling mass “access to conversation” (Shirky). Facebook, Twitter and other social media played an important role in galvanizing citizens’ support for and participation in the Arab Spring. As an Egyptian activist recounted to Fletcher PhD student Patrick Meier, “We use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” By publicly scheduling protests, participants overcame the obstacle of fear by demonstrating that large numbers of people were planning to participate – each “like” click contributed to reach the tipping point at which individuals felt safe participating. Twitter provided a convenient, fast and accessible platform through computers and mobile phones to incorporate the views of many. As with the current Occupy Wall Street outreach strategies (planned and spontaneous), YouTube and broader citizen journalism platforms were key ingredients in the process that enabled the Egyptian activists to reach a critical mass and overthrow their dictator.

Thus, social networks not only improve organizational effectiveness, but are becoming increasingly powerful and relevant in their ability to do so. In fact, we believe that organizations in virtually all sectors will be left behind if they do not embrace these realities. By way of illustration, the consulting firm used as an in-class example provided evidence that despite being a hierarchical company, the reality of day-to-day communications and information-sharing looked quite different than the official organizational map. Far from being centralized with executives at the center, the network was actually highly decentralized with the primary connectors being younger associates. While many of the ties these connectors have may be fairly superficial, they are savvy enough to know how strategically useful these relationships can be in keeping the organization innovative - a fact which was eventually equally valued and appreciated by decision-makers in the company. Had these executives not realized this enormous untapped advantage, the company might have lost a potent opportunity to gain a competitive edge in its operations.

The experience of this firm is certainly not an anomaly. Another surprising trend in how social networks are modernizing and strengthening organizational competitiveness has been in how labor unions conduct negotiations. This process used to take place largely behind closed doors, and workers often complained that this sort of bargaining did not make them feel like an adequate part of the process. However, United Auto Workers’ recent negotiations radically changed that process by using Facebook as a forum for workers to post questions and concerns answered directly by those at the table, as well as a host site for members to access iterations of contracts more quickly. As Kristen Dzicek off the Center for Automotive Research concluded, “There is unprecedented openness about this process...in communicating with their members and with the public, who, quite frankly, made a major investment in saving these companies.” Thus, such transparency has been extremely well-received and has only served to bolster the reputations of the Big Three auto companies. In an entirely different vein, the prioritization of alumni-based social networks has also contributed to university sustainability, in terms of recruitment, endowment-building and overall reputation. Not only is a thriving alumni base a key draw for many prospective students (consider the “Fletcher Mafia”) as a resource for professional networking, but it is also a critical base from which to garner funding. In fact, the importance of alumni loyalty makes such a difference to a school’s reputation that U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings use it as one of only seven categories of evaluation for American institutions, “as a proxy for how satisfied students are with the school,” which is yet another reason modern colleges and universities direct so many resources to maintaining those alumni networks. They are acutely aware that without such emphasis they could easily be downgraded in the fierce competition with other schools.

Given the ever-growing presence and recognized utility of social networks today, it is indeed difficult to imagine a future in which these networks would not be the main driver of organizational success. As heads of organizations continue to recognize the benefits of emphasizing social networks, and as technology creates new, innovative ways to capitalize on these networks, those organizations that do not consider social networks a main driver of success are sure to become less competitive and influential. On the other hand, those organizations that embrace social networks will enter the next decade well-prepared to expand their reach and maximize chances of success.