Category: Uncategorized

Organization Social Structure

The Journal of Social Structure (JoSS) is an electronic journal of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA). It is designed to facilitate timely dissemination of state-of-the-art results in the interdisciplinary research tempat of the network representation of social structure. It publishes empirical, theoretical plus methodological articles focused on social networks plus their analysis.

JoSS is especially interested in manuscripts that are focused on social structure in network terms, that is, in terms of the patterning of social linkages among actors. These actors could be comprised of different types or levels of analysis, such as animals, humans, artificial agents, groups or organizations.

Articles are accepted only after peer review. Comments, rejoinders plus extensions on already published articles will be peer-reviewed plus if accepted will be attached via a hyperlink to the previously published piece.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license users are free to sharing (copy plus redistribute the material in any medium or format) plus adapt the work (remix, transform, plus build upon the material for any purpose) if the contribution was properly attributed plus plus used for non-commercial purposes.

ABOUT SOCIETY

International Network for Social Network Analysis is the professional association for researchers interested in social network analysis. The association is a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Delaware plus founded by Barry Wellman in 1977.
INSNA was founded on the premise that the behavior plus lives of social entities are affected by their position in the overall social structure. Network analysts believe that how an individual lives depends in large part on how that individual is tied into the larger website of social connections. Many believe, moreover, that the success or failure of societies plus organizations often depends on the patterning of their internal structure. Social network analysis has found important applications in organizational behavior, inter-organizational relations, the spread of contagious diseases, mental health, social support, the diffusion of information plus animal social organization.
Today it has become an global effort with its own professional organizations, textbooks, journals, research centers, training centers plus komputer programs designed specifically to facilitate the analysis of social network structural data.

Archiving

Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico – digital long-term preservation pelayanan of scholarly books, journals plus collections.

Plagiarism Policy

The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System’s users in order to ensure that the content published is original plus trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism plus provide a high standard plus quality peer-review process.

The Social Organization

Abstract
The major outlines of enregisterment as a metasemiotic process are well understood in linguistic anthropology, so we can turn to its further systematic implications. The article explores three “moments” in enregisterment, positing that practices and value projects create registers that act as clasps, relays, and graftings, each producing interdiscursivity and thus circulation. They connect arenas of social action in different ways. The connections are rightly called social organizations of interdiscursivity, since they link and organize not only discourses and registers but also the societal arrangements—NGOs, nonprofits, welfare offices, political platforms, academic circles—that are constituted around registers and through which registers have their powerful effects of connection (and separation) in specific historical moments. The examples, mostly from the politics of Hungary, surely have parallels elsewhere.

Early linguistic anthropology focused on meaning making in face-to-face speech events. But the larger aim was to understand how society is communicatively constituted. That goal motivated questions about how speech events themselves were constructed and has led to the study of linkages among events. In parallel, and at roughly the same time, sociocultural anthropology switched decisively from studying the practices of delimited social groups to wider interconnections. Both moves were in part responses to the increasing salience of international exchange, not least because the end of state socialism meant the end of major obstacles to a single, worldwide capitalist market in labor, goods and texts. For analyzing the processes that organize the spread of people, commodities, values, linguistic forms, and cultural practices, “circulation” has been the most powerful image proposed in sociocultural studies. Critics of “circulation” as an analytic have charged that it falsely presumes free “flow,” ignoring opposition, “friction,” and obstacles, or that it merely echoes the interests of a international corporate order.Footnote Linguistic anthropology has taken a different critical tack. I bergabung the research of the last few decades in asking instead how circulation happens, with what effects. What are the communicative processes that result in what is seen as circulation, and how do they shape the political and economic organization of social life?

This line of research finds that in “circulation,” texts, messages, utterances, ideas, and practices are not physically or spatially displaced, nor do the semiotically relevant aspects of people and things “travel.” Rather, the effect of movement is the metasemiotic achievement of interdiscursivity; it arises from a perceived repetition and hence a seeming linkage (across encounters) of forms that are framed, reflexively, as being the “same thing, again,” or as yet another instantiation of a recognized style in some cultural framework. Formal features signal similarity, but similarity never inheres in the forms themselves. Framing is therefore a necessary aspect of creating the effect of sameness, repetition, and replication—or that of difference. Put another way: “likeness” (iconicity) across encounters and connection (indexicality) between events are recognizable only through metapragmatic presuppositions and entailments. Linguistic ideologies orient participants to criteria of “sameness.” Building on the fundamental insight that metadiscourses (ideologies) regiment the perceived relationships between events in this way, many aspects of interdiscursivity/circulation have been identified: for instance, forms of reported speech, in culturally specific participation frameworks contribute to defining how (and how much) a performance counts as a token of a genre; they shape how speakers’ responsibility or authority for utterances is attributed or distributed. In making links across semiotic events, signs have the capacity to formulate identities, reputations, genres, and publics.Footnote

Organizational Cultures Together for Social Impact

When different organizational cultures—the proverbial “how we do things”—come together, tensions frequently arise. Working effectively with and across cultures is even more challenging when organizations come together to tackle social and environmental challenges.

Research reveals how inter-organizational collaborations for social impact often run into structural or governance issues like power asymmetries or a focus on the wrong metric of success. For example, a coalition of actors seeking to tackle poor water health in Australia’s Great Barrier region locked in to repeatedly producing detailed report cards rather than addressing the underlying issue, due to differing interests. Even when such obstacles are addressed, an important yet often neglected challenge stems from bringing different cultures together to deliver on complex problems that often defy standard solutions.

We know from more common settings, like mergers and acquisitions, that lack of cultural alignment can stymie delivery of intended goals. Beyond bringing different cultures together, however, collaborations for social impact serve to address complex and often novel problems, so they need to evolve ways of working tailored to specific settings, across scales and geographies, in which these problems manifest. This heightens the challenge from mere cultural integration to one of simultaneous adaptation of that culture to meet the needs of the problems and their contexts.

We were surprised, then, in our research with TRANSFORM, an impact accelerator run by Unilever; the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO, the UK’s equivalent to the US State Department); and EY, to discover that these three organizations both respected and leveraged their distinct cultures while also generating an inter-organizational culture to support their collaboration for social impact. TRANSFORM supports social enterprises in low-income countries through grant funding, bespoke technical assistance, and connections into value chains, and has positively impacted more than 15 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia since its inception in 2015.

Digital Communication and Social Organizations

Abstract
The communication of organizations with their audiences has undergone changes thanks to the Internet. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), as influential groups, are no exception, as much of their activism takes place through grassroots digital lobbying. The consolidation of Web 2.0 has not only provided social organizations with a new plus powerful tool for disseminating information but also brought about significant changes in the relationship between nonprofit organizations plus their diverse audiences. This has facilitated plus improved interaction between them. The purpose of this article is to analyze the level of interactivity implemented on the websites of leading NGOs worldwide plus their presence on social networks, with the aim of assessing whether these influential groups are moving towards more dialogic systems in relation to their audience. The results reveal that NGOs have a high degree of interactivity in the tools used to present plus disseminate information on their websites. However, not all maintain the same level of interactivity in the resources available for interaction with Internet users, as very few have high interactivity regarding bidirectional resources. It was concluded that international non-governmental organizations still suffer from certain shortcomings in the strategic management of digital communication on their situs platforms, while, on the other hand, a strong presence can be noted on the most-popular social networks.
Keywords: digital communication; NGO; interactivity; website; social media

  1. Introduction
    NGOs, as organizations situated in the so-called third sector, i.e., organizations not belonging to either the public or private sectors, are entities whose comprehensive definition is complex due to the variety in their objectives, formats, structures, plus roles they play. To clarify the term, the United Nations defines an NGO as follows: any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ grup which is organized on a local, national, or international level. Task-oriented plus driven by people with a common interest, perform a variety of services plus humanitarian functions, bring citizens’ concerns to Governments, monitor policies, plus encourage political participation at the community level. Provide analysis plus expertise, serve as early warning mechanisms, plus help monitor plus implement international agreements, including Agenda 2030 plus the Sustainable Development Goals. Typically, they are organized around specific issues, such as the UN pillars of peace plus security, human rights, plus development.
    Considering various guidelines plus definitions gathered in the literature, Tarazona (p. 28) summarizes the following characteristics that NGOs must fulfill to be considered as such: NGOs must be voluntary resmi organizations; have institutional, political, plus financial independence from public or private powers; engage in activity focused on social, political, economic, or development welfare; be non-profit, not seeking personal benefit; plus carry out operations at the local, national, or international level.
    For decades, NGOs have been the primary means of realizing humanitarian projects for the aid plus protection of the most disadvantaged groups. However, it was not until the 1970s, partly due to the circumstances generated by the welfare state crisis, that a true increase in these organizations’ numbers at the international level began to be noticed. However, it was in 1982 that they gained an influential role internationally thanks to the World Bank integrating them into its working structures as tools for aid to alleviate the social crisis caused by economic regulations.
    Initially, NGOs’ raison d’être lay in taking on a greater number of functions, neglected by the state, to try to alleviate social problems. Additionally, on the international stage, they assumed mediation functions in conflicts. As suggested by Castillo et al. , they began their journey in social environments wherein public authorities did not engage optimally for various reasons related to the deficient management of social situations.
    Currently, one of the existing plus most exhaustive official records on NGOs worldwide is offered by the UN . According to the information presented, as of May 2023, they have identified 14,955 civil society organizations, with the majority constituting NGOs (12,516), plus nearly half of them operating in Africa (48.51%). Among these organizations, those dedicated to economic plus social activities, sustainable plus social development, plus gender-related issues stand out.
    These social organizations need effective communication strategies to achieve their main objectives: highlighting social injustices, raising awareness about unmet humanitarian needs, mobilizing citizens for engagement, plus building strong connections with their social projects, as well as conveying the benefits of their activities . NGOs, usually due to their needs, are already influential strategic communicators using international public relations strategies plus tactics. However, it is also crucial for them to have a solid image that fosters trust in society so that support for their activities is desired. In this sense, the digital landscape has significantly contributed to shaping the image of NGOs, allowing this communicative space to enrich connections with diverse audiences plus keep them properly informed, increase acts of citizen mobilization, plus facilitate fundraising. In relation to this last aspect, authors like Carbajo et al. point out that the fundraising sector has been increasing in Europe in recent decades to carry funds for third sector organizations, thanks in part to the use of new information plus communication technologies (ICT).

Key to Becoming a Social Organization

The masa when companies had at least partial control over what was publicly said about them is long over. Instead, the power has shifted to the customer, who has the tools at his fingertips to tell the masses about his experience with various organizations. And he uses those tools frequently. According to The Realtime Report, there are currently about 250 million tweets per day, with 25 percent of Tweets mentioning brands. Facebook reports that it has more than 800 million users, plus that “more than 50 percent of its active users log in on any given day.”

As more customers increasingly interact with each other in the social sphere, often the topic of those conversations is the companies they do business with, the experiences they have with those organizations, plus the pros plus cons of using their products plus services. Whether their comments are positive or negative, companies have no choice but to interact with their customers online, or risk appearing indifferent.

This new phenomenon is making it all the more important for companies to become social organizations, engaging with their customers plus prospects in the space where they are already interacting, reaching out to them over the channels that they prefer, plus making sure that no query goes unanswered. So, what is a “social organization”? From a business perspective a social organization is one that embraces social sarana plus the associated costumer interactions as part of its overall costumer plus marketing strategy.

Transforming from a company that simply responds to the occasional tweet from an irate costumer or posts the occasional coupon on Facebook to a truly social organization requires a multipronged approach that will ingrain social elements within the company’s overall business strategy. There are five steps to getting there, as well as several pitfalls to avoid. It begins with defining objectives plus metrics, adds gaining organizational buy-in plus building social into the company structure, plus continues with staying relevant. It’s an ongoing process that must evolve as social sarana itself evolves.

The Social Organization

This defense of nonviolent resistance appeared in Liberation as a response to an essay by North Carolina NAACP leader Robert F. Williams that challenged the strategy of “turn-the-other-cheekism” in the face of racist terror. In his September article, Williams had argued that “nonviolence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilized, but nonviolence is no match or repellent for a sadist.”

Though King points out that the principle of self-defense “has never been condemned, even by Gandhi,” he rejects Williams’s suggestion that black people take up arms: “There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men.

Paradoxically, the struggle for civil rights has reached a stage of profound crisis, although its outward aspect is distinctly less turbulent and victories of token integration have been won in the hard-resistance areas of Virginia and Arkansas.

The crisis has its origin in a decision rendered by the Supreme Court more than a year ago which upheld the pupil placement law. Though little noticed then, this decision fundamentally weakened the historic 1954 ruling of the Court. It is imperceptibly becoming the basis of a de facto compromise between the powerful contending forces.

The 1954 decision required for effective implementation resolute Federal action supported by mass action to undergird all necessary changes. It is obvious that Federal action by the legislative and executive branches was half-hearted and inadequate. The activity of Negro forces, while heroic in some instances, and impressive in other sporadic situations, lacked consistency and militancy sufficient to fill the void left by government default. The segregationists were swift to seize these advantages, and unrestrained by ethical or social conscience, defied the law boldly and brazenly.

The net effect of this social equation has led to the present situation, which is without clearcut victory for either side. Token integration is a developing pattern. This model of integration is merely an affirmation of a principle without the substance of change.

Community Social Organization

Abstract: The concept of social organization provides an important framework for understanding families in the
context of communities and focuses our attention on norms, networks, and associated processes that typify community life. We discuss the significance of community for understanding family outcomes, discuss challenges in defining community context, define social organization and feature several of its associated components and their
linkages, and assess research designs that inform the study of social organization. We conclude by suggesting implications for theory (elaborating social organization community processes), research (incorporating designs and measures that reflect collective processes), and practice (maximizing effects generated by informal and resmi networks
in communities).

Community context factors, including transactions
with other families and institutions, are significant
elements in understanding and strengthening families. The work of family science scholars increasingly
recognizes that families are surrounded by community forces that influence both their everyday life
experiences and their individual and collective life trajectories. Teachman and Crowder (2002) evidence
a central aim of exploiting rather than simply trying
to control contextual noise in family functioning
models. Sprey (2000) notes that layered approaches
to human sociability provide a level of understanding
otherwise unattained, and Scanzoni (2001) calls
for a ‘‘reconnection’’—linking households and communities via small household social support networks
at the neighborhood level.
Family life practitioners are finding increasing
leverage in strengthening families through communitycentered interventions. These interventions range
from the community-building efforts of Family
Service America to strengthen families (Sviridoff &
Ryan, 1997) to the promotion of community capacity
in the U.S. Air Force as a strategy for preventing
family violence (Bowen, Martin, & Nelson, 2002).
Family program professionals increasingly are working with community members as allies in support
of families and are mobilizing families to exert
greater control over their own lives (Chaskin, Brown,
Venkatesh, & Vidal, 2001; Doherty & Carroll,
2002). Turner (1998) contends that practitioners are
rediscovering the ‘‘Holy Grail’’ of community,
and Sampson (2002) uses the term elixir when describing the promise some see in community-oriented
interventions.
Community context should have a more prominent place in thinking about families. However,
greater elaboration is needed in the conceptualization and measurement of community-level processes
as independent variables in family research.

Social Organization

Humans operate in groups that are oftentimes nested in multilayered collectives such as work units within departments plus companies, neighborhoods within cities, plus regions within nation states. With psychological science mostly focusing on proximate reasons for individuals to bergabung existing groups plus how existing groups function, we still poorly understand why groups form ex nihilo, how groups evolve into complex multilayered social structures, plus what explains fission–fusion dynamics. Here we address kelompok formation plus the evolution of social organization at both the proximate plus ultimate level of analysis. Building on models of fitness interdependence plus cooperation, we propose that socioecologies can create positive interdependencies among strangers plus pave the way for the formation of stable coalitions plus groups through reciprocity plus reputation-based partner selection. Such groups are marked by in-group bounded, parochial cooperation together with an array of social institutions for managing the commons, allowing groups to scale in size plus complexity while avoiding the breakdown of cooperation. Our analysis reveals how distinct kelompok cultures can endogenously emerge from reciprocal cooperation, shows that social identification plus kelompok commitment are likely consequences rather than causes of kelompok cooperation, plus explains when intergroup relations gravitate toward peaceful coexistence, integration, or conflict.
As for many other social species, kelompok living provides Homo sapiens with levels of safety plus prosperity that individuals can hardly achieve in isolation (Ostrom, 1998). Groups may contain as few as three individuals or as many as hundreds, can exist for a few hours or bind its members for most of their lifetime, plus can be simpel or exceedingly complex in their social organization. Regardless of their form plus raison d’etre, individuals benefit from well-functioning groups plus can be hurt—both mentally plus physically—when their groups function poorly plus disintegrate. Accordingly, psychological science has extensively addressed (a) what motivates individuals to bergabung existing groups plus prevents them from being excluded (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Williams, 2000), (b) what allows existing groups to work plus perform (De Dreu et al., 2008; Faber et al., 2017; Ilgen et al., 2005), plus (c) what makes kelompok members cooperate plus resist the temptation to free ride on the public goods provided by others (Van Dijk & De Dreu, 2021; Van Lange et al., 2013).
What remains largely unaddressed in psychological science is how groups emerge plus self-organize their internal dynamics plus external relations: How do groups form ex nihilo, plus how do groups evolve from simpel to sometimes complex plus multilayered collectives, such as fraternities within student societies, work units within companies, plus neighborhoods within cities? Here we fill this gap plus trace the evolution of human social organization to a succinct set of psychologically plausible behavioral mechanisms. Doing so scaffolds theory plus research on existing groups plus collectives, sheds new light on the origins plus functions of well-documented phenomena such as homophily plus kelompok identification, plus reveals parochial prosociality as a cause of kelompok disintegration plus intergroup conflict.

Social organization

Qualitative accounts of anthropologists indicate that social structure plays an important role in how resources are shared in society. But quantitative evidence measuring the impacts of social organization on financial ties plus transfers has been lacking.

In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Jacob Moscona plus Awa Ambra Seck helped to fill that gap. They found that in East Africa, cash transfer policies had very different effects in cultures organized by kinship ties compared to cultures organized around age groups.

The findings suggest that social organization has a deep impact on how resources spread through economies plus ultimately shape inequality.

Jacob Moscona recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the difference between kin-based societies plus age-based societies plus how they affect development policies.

The edited highlights of that conversation are below, plus the full interview can be heard using the podcast player. Tyler Smith: What are age sets, plus how are age-based societies organized?

Jacob Moscona: Let me say a word about kin-based societies, because I think that’s useful to establish before thinking about how age-based societies differ. What we call kin-based societies in the paper are societies that I think most people are more used to. They are groups where individual family relationships are really important in life, such as your relationships with your parents, your siblings, or your grandparents. When you need support because you’ve had a bad year, you need a loan, or something else happens, you tend to turn to people in that family or in that extended family. Now that’s really different from groups with age sets where the most important social groupings are members of what they call the same age set or age group, which are people of the same age who are often initiated into adulthood at the same time plus form really strong bonds together over the course of their lives. In these societies that are organized in this way, it’s often the members of your age cohort that you might turn to for support, perhaps instead of members of your own family. By our own estimates, hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa alone are members of societies that could be characterized as age-based societies where these age-based groupings are actually the main social grup that individuals belong to.

Smith: You are studying these structures in developing countries where there might be some differences. Are there any special considerations for these kin-based societies that you think our listeners should keep in mind?

Moscona: The example of a grandparent helping a grandchild is the kind of relationship that we study directly in this paper. Among these kin-based societies, there are these really strong intergenerational links where different generations are helping each other out. On average, I would say there’s probably more of a role in these kin-based groups that we study of the more extended family of people being closer to first cousins plus second cousins, plus members of the extended family living closer together plus those relationships being more a part of everyday life.

Smith: You studied several different policy experiments in Kenya plus Uganda. Can you give an overview of the policies you’re looking at here plus why you chose them?

Moscona: The distinction between kin-based plus age-based societies is not common in economics. The idea that these age-based structures really matter isn’t something that economists are comfortable with or familiar with. We really wanted to provide concrete plus convincing evidence that this mattered. To do that, we turn to the first experiment in the paper, which is a reanalysis of a randomized cash transfer program that took place in northern Kenya that was a component of a larger cash transfer program called the Hunger Safety Net Program. They decided to do a randomized controlled trial for part of this program. What was useful to us is that this randomized controlled trial took place in a region where there were both groups organized around kin plus groups where age sets were really prominent. So we could understand the relative importance of these two forms of social structure in the context of the same experiment.

Social Organization

We present a new approach to the investigation of human influences on environmental change that explicitly adds consideration of social organization. This approach identifies social organization as an influence on the environment that is mandiri of population size, affluence, plus technology. The framework we present also identifies population events, such as births, that are likely to influence environmental outcomes beyond the consequences of population size. The theoretical framework we construct explains that explicit attention to social organization is necessary for micro-level investigation of the population-environment relationship because social organization influences both. We use newly available longitudinal, multilevel, mixed-method measures of local land use changes, local population dynamics, plus social organization from the Nepalese Himalayas to provide empirical tests of this new framework. These tests reveal that measures of change in social organization are strongly associated with measures of change in land use, plus that the association is mandiri of common measures of population size, affluence, plus technology. Also, local birth events shape local land use changes plus key proximate determinants of land use change. Together the empirical results demonstrate key new scientific opportunities arising from the approach we present.

Because degradation of the natural environment is believed to have potentially broad consequences for humanity, ranging from international warming to depletion of key resources to reduced quality of life, it has become the subject of increasingly intense research over recent decades. This is just as true in the social sciences as in the natural, biological plus physical sciences. The social sciences have been particularly concerned with the consequences of social organization plus social actions on levels of environmental degradation – areas in which sociology has a great deal to offer in terms of both theory plus method (Foster 1999; Stern, Dietz, Ruttan, Socolow plus Sweeney 1997; York, Rosa, plus Dietz 2002)1. The central objective of this paper is to identify the areas in which sociological theories plus methods are likely to produce advances in research on the environment plus illustrate this potential with a specific case study. Our illustration links together social organization of the local context, population dynamics, consumption behaviors, plus land use/land cover dynamics.

Theoretically, five key principles now common in many areas of sociological reasoning are likely to prove particularly fruitful for research on the environment. These principles begin with a focus on the investigation of micro-level associations to inform our understanding of macro-level trends. Building on this principle, four other key principles can be used to guide reasoning regarding micro-level associations with environmental change. One of these is the construction of context-specific hypotheses regarding micro-level associations. A second is attention to the proximate determinants of specific environmental outcomes through which other more theoretically-interesting or policy-relevant factors affect these outcomes. A third is the explicit consideration of reciprocal causation, in which an environmental outcome of interest may also influence the factors (such as population) that we believe shape that environmental outcome. The last principle is direct attention to the social organization of human groups in addition to the simple size plus affluence of those groups. Our theoretical aim is to combine these five principles into a framework for the study of land use change to illustrate their potential to advance research on the environment.