Networks and National Security

Dynamics, Effectiveness and Organisation

Chad Whelan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409431237
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317088868
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Networks as sets of autonomous organisations working together to achieve individual and shared goals are becoming increasingly important across many areas of public administration. The importance of networks is well known but most analysts would agree that we do not know enough about the dynamics and effectiveness of networks in relation to their internal operations. This is a significant problem as security, intelligence, law enforcement and many other agencies are increasingly required to organise in and through networks to provide national security. In this comprehensive analysis, Chad Whelan presents a highly innovative, qualitative study of networks in the field of national security. Developing our understanding of 'organisational networks' in organisational theory, management and public administration, and 'security networks' in criminology and international relations, he presents a multi-disciplinary analysis of network forms of organisation. Whelan puts forward a methodological framework involving five levels of analysis - structural, cultural, policy, technological and relational - with which we can better analyse and understand the dynamics and effectiveness of networks. This framework is applied to public sector networks operating in the field of counter-terrorism in Australia in a way that is highly relevant to researchers and practitioners in many contexts where government departments and agencies, and the private sector, need to work together. Networks and National Security: Dynamics, Effectiveness and Organisation not only advances our knowledge of networks and national security but also assists with the essential tasks of evaluating and managing networks. Written in a clear and accessible style and featuring a wealth of first-hand accounts concerning the inside operations of networks, this book deals with the crucial subject of inter-agency coordination in the important field of national security.

Chapter 1 Understanding Networks: Network Analysis, Network Organisations and Security Networks

DOI: 10.4324/9781315597829-2

Introduction

The term ‘network’ refers to an analytical technique used in the social and behavioural sciences, or to an organisational form studied in disciplines such as economics, organisational theory, management and public administration. In the fields of criminological and security studies, networks are presented as a leading organisational paradigm from which to understand security. Security, it is argued, is increasingly pursued through networks comprising many different actors. Nonetheless, there have been limited studies of networks across the field of security, as most analysts have used the concept of ‘network’ to understand security and not attempted to understand security networks. To better understand ‘security networks’, I argue that a multi-disciplinary perspective is needed that aims to address organisational networks and security networks. This chapter introduces such a multi-disciplinary perspective through reviewing the main approaches with which one can study networks and the ways in which these apply in the field of security.

Organisational Networks

‘Network’ is now one of the most frequently used terms in the contemporary social sciences. As indicated in the Introduction to this book, a network can be defined as a set of actors (or ‘nodes’) that are linked by various relationships (or ‘ties’). Actors can be individuals, units within organisations, or organisations. Relationships can be personal relationships between individuals, functional relationships between units within an organisation, or strategic relationships between organisations. In this context, however, the term ‘network’ can still be used as both a method to study a set of actors and the relationships between them, and as a unit of analysis or a distinct mode of organisation or governance. It is, as such, necessary for an analyst to recognise the different concepts associated with the network perspective and the relationship between them. ¹

1 Thompson (2003: 6, emphasis in original) provides a more detailed account of the methodological problems associated with the term ‘network’, noting that as ‘[n]etworks are both a conceptual category or tool of analysis and an object of analysis in the form of an actual mode of coordination and governance’, the question becomes one of ‘how are these levels to be kept apart or, more importantly perhaps, what is the relationship between them?’

This section has two objectives. First, it maps the different uses of the network concept and the implications of each for studying networks. Second, it reviews the organisational literature on networks in such disciplines as organisational theory, management and public administration. Drawing on what has been termed the ‘network paradigm’ in the field of organisational research (see Borgatti and Foster 2003), the literature on organisational networks can be loosely divided into two categories: ‘network analysis’ and ‘network organisations’ (see Grabher and Powell 2004, Porter and Powell 2006, Provan and Kenis 2008). ² The section provides an introduction to the network analysis and network organisations perspectives to establish the foundations in which networks can be understood and analysed. I argue in this section that the network analysis perspective is limited when it comes to a study of organisational forms and that the network organisations perspective can be advanced through a detailed study of security networks.

2 The terms used to describe these two categories differ. As noted in the Introduction to this book, ‘network forms of organisation’ are also referred to in the literature as ‘network forms of governance’. The term ‘network organisation’ is used over ‘network governance’ because this book focuses more on the dynamics of networks rather than on the functions they perform. This will be made clear later in this chapter.

Network Analysis

The network analysis perspective mostly uses the methods of social network analysis to study what are essentially ‘defined’ social networks. Social network analysis is a distinct research perspective or analytical technique in the social and behavioural sciences (see Galaskiewicz and Wasserman 1994). The social network perspective focuses on the relationships between actors, the patterns of these relationships and the implications of these relationships for particular outcomes. Social networks are defined by the selection of actors. The objective of the analyst is to study the relationships between this set of actors or the ways in which they are ‘networked’. Thus, a ‘social network’ is defined as any set of actors that may or may not have relationships.

Social networks are studied through the use of complex statistical techniques and applications developed in graph theory. This enables the analyst to ‘map’ the pattern of relationships between actors and to analyse the implications of these relationships for the network and, more particularly, for the actors in the network (see Wasserman and Faust 1994). Examples of such measures include the ‘density’ ³ of the network and the ‘centrality’ ⁴ of actors. These measures have a number of implications such as the flow of resources (e.g. the exchange of information) in a network and the importance (e.g. the level of influence) of each actor in a network. The objective of network analysis is to identify a set of actors in a ‘structure’ of relationships and the implications of such relationships for outcomes that are specified by the researcher.

3 The term ‘density’ refers to the number of ties between actors in a network compared with the maximum number of ties that can be present in a network. Thus, it is only when each actor is tied to every other actor that a network has maximum density (this is referred to as an ‘all-channel network’) (Wasserman and Faust 1994). 4 There are three common measures of centrality in social network analysis: ‘degree centrality’ (the number of direct connections each actor has in the network); ‘closeness centrality’ (the distance between each actor and every other actor in the network); ‘betweenness centrality’ (the level of influence each actor has over other actors because of their position in the network) (Wasserman and Faust 1994). The actor with the highest level of betweenness centrality is most likely to be the central actor in the network (this is referred to as a ‘hub network’).

Network analysis is well established in the field of organisational studies. Developments in organisational network research have been the focus of special editions of the Academy of Management Journal (see Brass et al. 2004) and the Academy of Management Review (see Parkhe et al. 2006). Detailed reviews of this literature have concluded that network approaches have developed to account for almost every area of organisational scholarship (see Borgatti and Foster 2003). The network analysis perspective has identified a number of implications of social networks at the interpersonal (Raider and Krackhardt 2002), inter-unit (Gulati et al. 2002) and inter-organisational (Baker and Faulker 2002) levels of analysis. These include, for example, accounts of knowledge sharing, leadership, innovation, learning and performance (see Brass et al. 2004).

The network analysis perspective focuses on particular social networks within or between organisations (Kilduff and Tsai 2003). The concept of ‘network’ is not necessarily viewed as a specific organisational form, as it is in the ‘network organisations’ perspective (Borgatti and Foster 2003). Network analysts have, in fact, argued that research needs to evolve from studying networks in or between organisations to accept ‘the notion that the network is the organization’ (Contractor et al. 2006: 681, emphasis in original). Therefore, organisations are conceptualised as social networks at all levels of analysis – that is, as sets of actors (individuals, units and organisations) which hold many different forms of relationships (interpersonal, functional and strategic, for example) (Contractor et al. 2006). Such a perspective has developed on the basis of two main assumptions: social networks are embedded in all organisations (Nohria 1992) and that all organisations are embedded in social networks (Granovetter 1992). A social network is thus a concept that can relate to networks in organisations and networks of organisations.

The importance of social network research is in its capacity to analyse the implications of networks for individuals and organisations. One of the leading examples of organisational social network research is Burt’s studies of ‘structural holes’ (Burt 1992) and ‘social capital’ (Burt 2000). ⁵ Such concepts respectively refer to an actor’s position in a network and the resources attached to an actor’s set of ties. The term ‘structural hole’ refers to the absence of ties between actors. A structural hole provides actors with ‘brokerage’ opportunities which, for Burt, are understood as positions of power in networks because of their capacity to control the flow of resources. A broker, then, holds more social capital, a concept which is directly contrasted with that of ‘human capital’. Burt (1992: 5) argues that the human capital of actors is less important in networks because ‘people and organizations are not the source of action so much as they are vehicles for structurally induced action’. Network analysts have also studied the importance of social networks between individuals in the development of social networks between organisations (or inter-organisational alliances) as well as the opportunities and constraints for organisations that such networks provide (e.g. Gulati 1998, Gulati and Gargiulo 1999, Gulati et al. 2000). In this context, however, network analysis is mostly used in conjunction with other theories of organisational behaviour (such as institutional theory, resource dependencies and transaction cost economics) in order to provide more informative accounts of the antecedents and consequences of inter-organisational networks (see Brass et al. 2004, Parkhe et al. 2006).

5 Burt’s (1992) structural holes theory draws on Granovetter’s (1982) seminal work on ‘the strength of weak ties’ to define social capital as the capacity for information diffusion in social networks. Structural holes are identified using similar measures to betweenness centrality.

The network analysis perspective has certain limitations in the context of organisational network research. In addition to methodological problems associated with the collection of what is referred to as ‘relational’ data, the social network perspective has been criticised for its limited focus on the characteristics – or human capital – of individual actors in organisational networks. Because a structuralist interpretation of social networks views the behaviour of actors as essentially a product of the network, it ‘risks understating the role of the very actors composing the network’ (Parkhe et al. 2006: 561). Actors of all types are important in networks for reasons that include: ‘actor characteristics, such as resources and capabilities, determine the type of network most useful to an actor and its ability to create such a network’ and ‘are potential moderators of network effects’ (Brass et al. 2004: 808–9). Network analysis can overlook the fact that some networks, such as inter-organisational business networks (see Todeva 2006), are formed as a direct result of the strategic capabilities actors bring to a network. Recent advances have accepted that individual actors are important in networks (Parkhe et al. 2006) but have also argued that the limits of network analysis are best overcome when it is combined with other theories of organisational behaviour (Contractor et al. 2006). More specifically, the network analysis perspective is not conducive to studying networks as organisational forms. The focus of network analysis is on the ‘actors’ and ‘relationships’ that form the network and the implications of an actor’s set of relationships over specified actor-level outcomes (such as structural holes and social capital) (see Provan and Kenis 2008). Networks, then, are not the unit of analysis as they are in the network organisations perspective.

Network Organisations

The network organisations perspective uses the concept of ‘network’ to refer to a unit of analysis. As noted in the Introduction to this book, this unit of analysis is understood as a distinct form of organisation or governance to hierarchies and markets. It is argued that networks have a number of advantages compared with hierarchies and markets such as increased efficiency and flexibility. The public administration and manage...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Networks and National Security
• 1 Understanding Networks: Network Analysis, Network Organisations and Security Networks
• 2 Understanding Network Dynamics and Network Effectiveness: Methodological Framework and Issues
• 3 Networks and Structure
• 4 Networks and Culture
• 5 Networks and Policy
• 6 Networks and Technology
• 7 Networks and Relationships
• Conclusion: Security Networks, Network Dynamics and Network Effectiveness
• References
• Index