Lomi, Alessandro and Tasselli, Stefano and Zappa, Paola (2017) The Network Structure of Organizational Vocabularies: Extending Network Thinking. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 53. pp. 65-85. ISSN 0733-558X

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Abstract

We study organizational vocabularies as complex social structures emerging from the association between organizational participants and words they use to describe and make sense of their experiences at work. Using data that we have collected on the association between managers in a multi-unit international company and words they use to describe their organizational units and the overall company, we examine the relational micro-mechanisms underlying the observed network structure of organizational vocabularies. We find that members of the same subsidiary tend to become more similar in terms of the words they use to describe their units. Members of the same subsidiary, however, do not use the same words to describe the corporate group. Consequently, the structure of organizational vocabularies tends to support consistent local interpretations, but reveals the presence of divergent meanings that organizational participants associate with the superordinate corporate group.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Organizational vocabularies; social structure; meanings; multiunit companies; bipartite networks; exponential random graph models;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Business
Item ID:	11294
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20170000053010
Depositing User:	Paola Zappa
Date Deposited:	16 Oct 2019 11:24
Journal or Publication Title:	Research in the Sociology of Organizations
Publisher:	Emerald
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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