Mobilizing Social Networks Beyond Project Team Frontiers: The Case of Polar Expeditions

New movements in project management are pushing project teams to hunt down contacts well outside their regular networks, to tackle problems encountered throughout project rollout. This raises the issue of initiating cooperation with someone unknown—that is, harnessing weak ties to tap into resources well outside the comfort zone. Our investigations into polar expedition projects has led us to develop the notion of a potentially cooperative weak tie converging Granovetter's approach with a synthesis about cooperation differentiating identity-sense and utilitarian mechanisms. We conclude that a weak tie can initiate a cooperation only if it includes one of these two sources of cooperation.

[1]  Mark S. Granovetter.  The Strength of Weak Ties , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[2]  R. Swedberg.  Entrepreneurship : the social science view , 2000 .

[3]  Michel Forsé.  Capital social et emploi , 1997 .

[4]  Stephen P. Mead.  Using Social Network Analysis to Visualize Project Teams , 2001 .

[5]  Sue Newell,et al.  Knowledge integration processes and dynamics within the context of cross-functional projects , 2003 .

[6]  Stéphanie Dameron.  Opportunisme ou besoin d'appartenance ? La dualité coopérative dans le cas d'équipes projet , 2004 .

[7]  Naomi J. Brookes,et al.  Social processes, patterns and practices and project knowledge management: A theoretical framework and an empirical investigation , 2006 .

[8]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage , 1998 .

[9]  Mark S. Granovetter.  Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers , 1974 .

[10]  Sue Newell,et al.  Enhancing Cross-Project Learning , 2004 .

[11]  M. Schultz,et al.  Informal Collaboration in R & D. The formation of Networks Across Organizations , 1993 .

[12]  Eleanor Shaw,et al.  Networks and Their Relevance to the Entrepreneurial/Marketing Interface: A Review of the Evidence , 1999 .

[13]  S. Birley.  The Role of Networks in the Entrepreneurial Process , 1985 .

[14]  Mark S. Granovetter.  T H E S T R E N G T H O F WEAK TIES: A NETWORK THEORY REVISITED , 1983 .

[15]  Isabelle Huault.  Embeddedness et théorie de l'entreprise : autour des travaux de Mark Granovetter , 1998 .

[16]  Steven B. Andrews,et al.  Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition , 1995, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[17]  C. Midler.  L'auto qui n'existait pas : management des projets et transformation de l'entreprise , 1993 .

[18]  R. S. Burt,et al.  Le capital social, les trous structuraux et l'entrepreneur* , 1995 .

[19]  Jerry Julian,et al.  How Project Management Office Leaders Facilitate Cross-Project Learning and Continuous Improvement , 2008 .

[20]  Isabelle Bouty.  Interpersonal and Interaction Influences on Informal Resource Exchanges Between R&D Researchers Across Organizational Boundaries , 2000 .

[21]  P. Adler,et al.  Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept , 2002 .

[22]  Madeleine Akrich,et al.  A quoi tient le succès des innovations ? 1 : L'art de l'intéressement; 2 : Le choix des porte-parole , 1988 .