Management and Organization Review Special Issue ‘Social Networks ‒ The Dark and Bright Sides of Informal Networks’

In recent times, microfinance has emerged as a major innovation in the rural financial marketplace. Microfinance largely addresses the issue of access to financial services. In trying to understand the innovation of microfinance and how it has proved to be effective, the author looks at certain design features of microfinance. He first starts by identifying the need for financial service institutions which is basically to bridge the gap between the need for financial services across time, geographies, and risk profiles. In providing services that bridge this gap, formal institutions have limited access to authentic information both in terms of transaction history and expected behaviour and, therefore, resort to seeking excessive information thereby adding to the transaction costs. The innovation in microfinance has been largely to bridge this gap through a series of trustbased surrogates that take the transaction-related risks to the people who have the information — the community through measures of social collateral. In this paper, the author attempts to examine the trajectory of institutional intermediation in the rural areas, particularly with the poor and how it has evolved over a period of time. It identifies a systematic breach of trust as one of the major problems with the institutional interventions in the area of providing financial services to the poor and argues that microfinance uses trust as an effective mechanism to address one of the issues of imperfect information in financial transactions. The paper also distinguishes between the different models of microfinance and identifies which of these models use trust in a positivist frame and as a coercive mechanism. The specific objectives of the paper are to: Superimpose the role of trust in various types of exchanges and see how it impacts the effectiveness of repeated transactions. While greater access to information fosters trust and thus helps social networks to reduce transaction costs, there could be limits to which exchanges could solely depend on networks and trust. Look at the frontiers where mutual trust cannot work as a surrogate for lower appraisal costs. Use an example in the Canadian context and see how an entity that started on the basis of social networks and trust had to morph into using the techniques used by other formal nonneighbourhood institutions as it grew in size and went beyond a threshold. Using the Canadian example, the author argues that as the transactions get sophisticated, it is possible to achieve what informal networks have achieved through the creative use of information technology. While we find that the role of trust both in the positivist and the coercive frame does provide some interesting insights into how exchanges with the poor could be managed, there still could be breaches in the assumptions. This paper identifies the conditions under which the breaches could possibly happen and also speculates on the effect of such breaches.

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Management and Organization Review Special Issue ‘Social Networks ‒ The Dark and Bright Sides of Informal Networks’

Management and Organization Review ◽

10.1017/mor.2018.21 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 439-444

Author(s):

Sven Horak ◽

Fida Afiouni ◽

Yanjie Bian ◽

Alena Ledeneva ◽

Maral Muratbekova-Touron ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Interpersonal Relations ◽

Arab World ◽

Current Theory ◽

Social Structures ◽

Special Issue ◽

Informal Networks ◽

International Context ◽

Transitioning Countries ◽

Research Stream ◽

Rich History

Research on the mechanisms of organizing and managing via interpersonal relations has a rich history in the management and organization-oriented literature. So far, however, the informal dimension of managing and organizing by drawing on informal networks in an international context has received comparably less attention. Recent research has pointed out that social capital and network theories have largely been developed by Western scholars based on circumstances and social structures that are typical of Western societies. Thus, current theory takes into account to a lesser extent their character and nature and the way in which informal ties and networks are formed in other parts of the world (Ledeneva, 2018; Li, 2007b; Qi, 2013; Sato, 2010). Besides the growing body of literature concerned with informal ties and networks in emerging and transitioning countries, for example guanxi (China), blat/ svyazi (Russia), and wasta (Arab World), a trend for analyzing pervasive informal networks in advanced and industrialized economies, such as yongo (Korea), has arisen. While insights from the latter research stream indicate that informal networks persist, the results generated in both research streams will help in developing the extant informal network theories further.

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The Social Environment’s Relationship With Frailty: Evidence From Existing Studies

Journal of Applied Gerontology ◽

10.1177/0733464816688310 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 3-26 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Daan Duppen ◽

Michaël C. J. Van der Elst ◽

Sarah Dury ◽

Deborah Lambotte ◽

Liesbeth De Donder ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Support ◽

Social Networks ◽

Social Environment ◽

Social Participation ◽

Later Life ◽

Informal Networks ◽

Five Dimensions ◽

The Social ◽

The Family

Increasingly, policymakers assume that informal networks will provide care for frail older people. While the literature has mainly discussed the role of the family, broader social networks are also considered to be important. However, these social networks can diminish in later life. This systematic review investigates whether the social environment increases the risk of frailty or helps to prevent it. Findings from 15 original studies were classified using five different factors, which denoted five dimensions of the social environment: (a) social networks, (b) social support, (c) social participation, (d) subjective neighborhood experience, and (e) socioeconomic neighborhood characteristics. The discussion highlights that the social environment and frailty are indeed related, and how the neighborhood dimensions and social participation had more consistent results than social support and social networks. Conclusively, recommendations are formulated to contemplate all dimensions of the social environment for further research examining frailty and community care.

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Call for papers-Special Issue-Social Networks and the Organization of R;D

Journal of Engineering and Technology Management ◽

10.1016/s0923-4748(04)00011-6 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 21 (1-2) ◽

pp. 145-146

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Special Issue

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Tacit networks, crucial care: Informal networks and disaster response in Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/0042098018810606 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 56 (3) ◽

pp. 561-577 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Rocio Carrero ◽

Michele Acuto ◽

Asaf Tzachor ◽

Niraj Subedi ◽

Ben Campbell ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Disaster Response ◽

Informal Networks ◽

Gorkha Earthquake ◽

Local Networks ◽

Human Needs ◽

2015 Gorkha Earthquake ◽

Informal Social Networks

It is often reiterated that a better understanding of local networks and needs is key to risk reduction. Nevertheless, the crucial role of informal social networks and actors in the catering for human needs in disaster circumstances remains largely under-explored. If we have to rethink the ‘work’ that informality does for our understanding of urban areas, its contribution to resilience, and take it seriously in the ‘full spectrum of risk’ in urban and peri-urban centres, better and more balanced methods are needed. This paper attends to this gap. Examining the mechanisms of aid provision in the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake in Nepal, it details an experimental set of quantitative research methods to explore the role of informal social networks in the provision of critical human needs in natural disasters. Relying on a sample of 160 households across four districts and 16 villages in the built environment affected by the Gorkha earthquake, the paper reveals that, overall, a wide disparity exists in the comparative importance of organisations in the provision of aid and resources. Much crucial after-disaster care is catered for by a mix of relatives, temples, friends, neighbours and local clubs. It highlights the importance of informal networks in understanding, and theorising, governance (of disaster and of the ‘urban’ more in general), and calls for greater attention to its role. It is time, it argues, to revalue informal disaster governance networks as a crucial, not tacit, component of disaster response.

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Introduction to the special issue on multilayer networks

Network Science ◽

10.1017/nws.2017.15 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 141-143 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

MATTEO MAGNANI ◽

STANLEY WASSERMAN

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Social Systems ◽

Information Networks ◽

Special Issue ◽

Heterogeneous Information ◽

Heterogeneous Information Networks ◽

Wide Range ◽

Different Types ◽

Interconnected Networks ◽

Multi Level

During the last century, networks of several types have been used to model a wide range of physical, biological and social systems. For example, Moreno (1934) studied social networks with multiple types of ties, later called multiplex networks (Verbrugge, 1979; Minor, 1983; Lazega & Pattison, 1999) as well as networks with multiple types of actors. Networks with multiple types of actors and relational ties have often been used together: relevant examples are the extensions of two-mode networks studied by Wasserman & Iacobucci (1991), multi-level networks (Lazega & Snijders, 2016), and heterogeneous information networks (Sun et al., 2012). More recently, researchers in physics and computer science have developed models for different types of interconnected networks known as networks of networks (Buldyrev et al., 2010; D'Agostino & Scala, 2014), multilayer social networks (Magnani & Rossi, 2011), and interconnected networks (Dickison et al., 2012).

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