Social Interaction and Organisational Change : Aston Perspectives on Innovation Networks

This book provides a detailed, multi-disciplinary analysis of innovation networks in a variety of organisational settings. All the contributors are employed at Aston Business School, which is one of the UK's foremost institutions in terms of both teaching and research. The book illustrates the way in which innovation networks are formed and sustained in a variety of organisational settings: the public sector, public-private collaboration, national policy level, inter-organisational credit links, as well as the more traditional focus on manufacturing firms. The strength of the network approach is that it encourages detailed analyses of the dyadic links which must be mobilised in the innovation process. At the same time, networks provide a framework for exploring the multiple sources and pluralistic patterns of communication typical of innovatory activity. Therefore, in contrast to much of the innovation network research undertaken in recent years, the focus of this book is as much on notions of "network as method" as on "network as phenomenon". Contents: Introduction: Social Interaction and Organisational Change; Micropolitics and Network Mapping: Innovation Management in a Mature Firm; Employing Social Network Mapping to Reveal Tensions Between Informal and Formal Organisation; Organisation; An Economic Perspective on Innovation Networks; Patterns of Networking in the Innovation Process: A Comparative Study of the UK, Germany and Ireland; Shaping Technological Trajectories Through Innovation Networks and Risk Networks: Investigating the Food Sector; Techno-Economic Networks: Technological Transfer via the Teaching Company Scheme; Organisations, Networks, and Learning: A Sociological View; The Innovative Capacity of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organisations: Networks and the External Environment; Innovation Through Postmodern Networks: The Case of