Weird.

certainly worth a read re: network boundary issues!

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Taking the line that ‘everything is a network’ (which I know Tim set up as straw man, but bear with me), suppose we said “everything is a map” could we work back by analogy – bearing in mind Marco’s comments – from maps to networks (could ague that all networks are maps but not all maps are networks so is this really a proper analogy if we are dealing with a phenomenon that is just a subset? Again, good point Batman, but have to walk the dog in half an hour, so will move on).

Suppose we want to develop a map with Brisbane as a focus (a) what it looks like depends on purpose – purpose-built map should be different for businesses, tourists, vehicles, cyclists etc (general purpose maps can show more than one purpose – and network) (b) what it looks like depends on scale – detailed scale would show cycle routes but not aircraft routes; zooming up with Brisbane reduced to a point, aircraft routes would appear and cycle routes disappear.

Implications for networks? The network you see is not independent of purpose and what the observer puts into its construction. Example: work flow and value chain (or value network) in organizations can both/all be interpreted as networks but they are different in nature and in terms of their elements and relationships. And if pursuing Tim’s point about possibly going to use network as the basic principle for distinguishing different forms of economic governance (which I think is an interesting and promising approach) then it will depend on what constituents and principles are used to analyse networks here. Trick is to develop a network description fit for purpose not just to explain what the network is but, crucially, where and why its boundaries are, which I think is Sam’s point.

Some clues to construction of the network for the purposes of discriminating between forms may lie in the nature of control and ties as Tim says, though if my analogy holds we might ask what kind of control and what kind of ties. Though of course the absolutely crucial thing to bear in mind is – sod it, got to walk the dog ….

Neil

I think you’re right on the issue of boundaries. I also think that in looking at these fuzzy concepts, the other useful thing is to think about what testable propositions come from whatever angle you’re taking (I’m not always such a Popperian, but I think that this part is at least useful). That goes a long way towards making the work useful…

I tend to think that most interesting concepts are fuzzy. I remember having a similar discussion to the one you had about meso-rules with Lars about epistemic communities. i.e. everything’s a bloody epistemic community! Oh and, for good measure, everything’s also a bloody network!

I don’t think this means that we should cease working with these concepts, because they’ve got significant potential as descriptive and explanatory devices (I think Markus Becker’s work on routines is a good example of this). My thoughts on this issue has led me to the conclusion that what is crucial (and not done nearly often enough) is clearly specifying the boundary of the system you’re hoping to say something useful about, why you’ve chosen to limit the boundaries to this area, and the potential implications for explanation and prediction. The first example that spring to mind here is Gay and Doussets (2005, 1459-1460):

Gay, B., & Dousset, B. 2005. Innovation and Network Structural Dynamics: Study of the Alliance Network of a Major Sector of the Biotechnology Industry. Research Policy. Vol. 34. Iss. 10; p. 1457.