SOCIAL NETWORKING

Social Networking in Business Today

Social Networking in Business Today

Introduction

This assignment will set a conceptual framework to define the notion of net-working and will then lead the discussion on how airlines' alliances can be considered as an extension of organizational networking. NetworkTo start with, one can look into how English Dictionary defines 'network'. The primary entrance in Random House Webster's Dictionary suggests that network is 'any netlike combination of filaments, lines, veins, passages, or the like'. The wording appeared in English language as early as 16th century, yet got into regular usage in its present meaning about a century ago. Judging on the dictionary definition, network may be seen as a model or as a reconstruc-tion of matter, reality, etc. in a way that resembles a net - a system of inter-connected knots (entities).

Discussion

Such knots and links between them may represent various types of matter: physical matter (for instance landscapes and architectural designs); biological matter (for instance, the model of cardio-vascular systems in living beings); social matter (for instance models of economical systems, etc), and semiotic matter (for instance the systems of language and the way they can be modelled into networks). (M.A.K. Halliday and Matthiessen 2006 'Construing Experi-ence as Meaning' p. 508).

In other words, drawing a network, as a method, is used by scholars to model the processes and relations that they observe in various types of data. For ex-ample, to a physicist, a network would be a way to represent the relations and processes in physical matter, and so on. Network, can thus be defined as a way to visualize processes and relations between entities in the form of a diagram, a rather simplistic representation of what the interconnectivity of subjects and objects in real time and space may look like.

At the same time, despite its simplistic character, 'network' has become very popular in various scientific and non-scientific circles, which led to an in-creased usage of the term. Today 'network' is used in its metaphorical sense and does not only mean the way to model, but actually stands for the mod-elled phenomena themselves. For example, network is generally perceived not only as a way to represent communications that take place in a group of peo-ple, but also as the communications themselves, and even as the group of people itself. Moreover, 'a network' can be realised as 'to network' which is a grammatical metaphor that extends the meaning of the term. In the similar metaphorical manner, people are seen as networks, they network, they study networking, etc.

To avoid the abovementioned complexity, it would be better to conceptualize network as a system of relations between interconnected entities that share symbolic space and information within common context. In the case of this assignment, a group/system means a group/system of people or with human presence. In such anthropological perspective, a network may refer to eco-nomic networks, social networks, value networks and other.

Economic networks, for example, aim at distributing and sharing economic space and design their relations to become significant players in market ...