something a little different

After a holiday break, it's time to get posting again ;-) I found this article while browsing through my new content alerts for CIO magazine. While it is not directly related to the main topics I normally talk about, it is an interesting thought piece on how we can improve our organizations by being more appreciative at work. In many work environments, we have no problem expressing displeasure or talking about everything that's wrong, but in the end that really isn't very productive if we want to work in a place that we enjoy. Whether we feel inhibited by organizational norms or personal issues about what is appropriate behavior in the workplace, we'd all probably be better off if we just said "Thanks" more often.

trust and its potential effect on innovation

While catching up on some reading, I came across an interesting interview with one of the authors of an article in the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. In the original article about plumbers and their trust relationships, the authors found that while trust makes existing relationships more productive, it also has a negative effect. In this environment, strong trust relationships acted as a barrier to investigation of new possibilities that existed outside the domain of the trusted relationships. This is why it is so important for our social networks to be broad and widely encompassing. When they are limited, both personally and organizationally, they can act as an inherently limiting force in exploring new ideas and possibilities. Ultimately this has a negative effect on our own growth as well as that of our organizations.

introduction

Hello and welcome to complexity and information organizations. The origin of this blog comes from my dissertation work on academic librarians and the influence their professional social networks have on their receptivity to innovation. In my study, I found that there is a clear relationship between the size of a librarian's professional social network and their receptivity to innovation. However, not surprisingly, there were other factors that influenced their receptivity to innovation as well.

This blog is designed to be a catalyst for thought and discussion on the environmental forces, and the interactions of those forces, that are driving change in our world and how that affects libraries and information organizations. And hopefully, we'll have some fun along the way as well.