To Know or to Be Known, That is the Question:
---understanding the grounding shift of social networking in HRD
By
Dr. Xiaojian Wu
Senior Lecturer in Organisation and HRM
Newcastle Business School
Northumbria University
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 8ST
United Kingdom
Tel:
Email:
+44 191 227 4355
X-jian.wu@northumbria.ac.uk
Paper Abstract
Submit to UF-HRD 2015 Conference
Stream 7: Leadership, Management and Talent Development
As a Refereed Paper
Word count:
1226 (exclude the reference list)
Introduction
Social networking has long being proposed in HRD literature as the right platform for
managers to develop themselves through fitting into certain newly defined roles, or
understanding rules of a particular line of business. However, theoretical elaborations on
managers’ social networking engagements have been equivocal so far on what exactly should
be the focus of social networking activities for managers against their respective personal
situations. This has resulted in much of the debates on whether management individuals
should treat the social network as reservoirs for fishing the needed management insights and
knowledge, or to consider social networking in essence as an image management arena for
professional reputation and reaching out wide.
Based on an adaptation of a popular framework on circle of influences (Covey, 1989) and
guided by a new epistemological paradigm proposed by Reinstam and Ashcroft (2014), we
suggest that management individuals, in social networking with people from wide circles of
influences, should pay more attention to the act of knowing in light of the very work practice
that they are implicated, rather than any specific knowledge that could be uncovered in their
situational networking engagement. This proposition represents the ground shift for
management social networking as an HRD practice, and a re-conceptualisation on
management knowledge against individual circumstances as well.
Development for management knowledge or learning?
There is currently abundant management development and organisational learning literature,
contributed by HRD professionals or management practitioners alike, highlighting the
process and pitfalls of developing managers to fit into specific job roles, or to understand
rules in a particular line of business, especially when the managers are newly promoted or
simply novel to the business and industry. (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011; Alldredge et al,
2004; Burgoyne, 1988; Han et al, 2005; Lindgren and Wahlin, 2001; Watson, 2006; Xin and
Pearce, 1996 ), One of the mechanism in HRD is to facilitate managers concerned to engage
actively in the social networking activities with people from the right circles at the right time
point. This type of personal or professional development was based on the assumption that
management knowledge to be developed can be viewed as properties possessed by particular
individuals, or located within and appropriated by relevant business institutes (Blacker,
1995). Hence research on social networking activities of such business managers are mostly
evolved around themes of knowledge management, organisational learning, individual
agency and network theories (Adler and Kwon, 2002; Coleman, 1988; Covey, 1989; Dalton,
2010).
Yet it has to be noticed that the influences of one’s contacts in social networking are by
definition conditioned and restrained to particular situations only. Neither of the conventional
knowledge types ( Blackler, 1995) could capture adequately the very knowledge that such
new managers need most in their daily work practice, i.e. to get on with work and get things
going as it should be in his or her own way. This is precisely what HRD professional and
management practitioners shall focus on and facilitate those managers undertaking personal
development initiatives.
Social networking for knowing in practice
Reinstamm and Ashcroft (2014) suggest that the very thing that those managers need and
should target for in their networking activities is communicative knowledge, rather than any
of the conventionally categorised types as commonly articulated. Communicative knowledge
is defined as “ a distinct form of knowing, accomplished and housed in interaction, about
interaction itself, and how to interact persuasively and effectively in one’s practice
( Renstamm and Ashcroft 2014:10). It is generally accepted that the day to day work of a
manager calls for him or her to interact with a variety of parties to sort out disparate elements,
problems and issues that can be hardly foreseeable (Watson, 2004). To communicate
effectively with the parties implicated in the very work practice of the manager concerned is
knowledge in itself, and the practice of knowing is the practice of management itself . This
shift of cognitive attention outlines the very grounding that prospective business managers
and seasoned managers alike need to attend in their daily work practice, and their social
networking engagement as well.
To know the right people, procedures, problems and potentials implicated in their
management job, and to be known for his or her expertise, interests, ambitions and visions by
the people around, should therefore always be the expectations for management individuals’
relevant networking engagement and endeavours. Nonetheless, at any single time point the
management individual can only attend a particular networking dimension, and make specific
effort in that regard. We borrowed the much promoted Covey's (1989) popular diagram of
circle of influences in this regard but adapted it to the specific situations of social networking,
with the view to highlight the locus of influences for such management individuals
concerned. For managers intended to develop more influences out of the networking
development practices, there are two sets of relational engagements or endeavours that they
need to acknowledge and accommodate. According to the direction of projecting influences
within the existing circle of social contacts, those who want to push their respective
influences outwardly and targeting at reputation amongst or respect of the others networking
partners, will naturally be focusing on the self at centre, and emphasize on the subjects that
can be challenged or changed (figure 1). In contrast, those who want to push the influences of
the other partners implicated in the network inwardly on what one could take from such
engagement activities, much more attention will be placed on people around, and on those
objects or tasks that can be called on for examination or to be consulted with (figure 2).
Following an ethnomethodological approach in studying social networking practices, and
consider knowing in practice as more important than either knowledge itself or knowledge
workers, we suggest that social networking for HRD purpose should place managers knowing
practice rightly in the centre, not any of the knowledge management scheme or organisational
learning programme. Tsui (2012) argued in this regard that contextualisation is essential for
managers’ development efforts. It calls for identifying and incorporating various elements
within the very context whereby managers are implicated in applying or achieving theoretical
understanding for job fulfilment. Communicative knowledge will subsequently be shore up to
show its undeniable contributions to the running of all necessary business activities, which
under the prevailing epistemological structure, has been downgraded as part of a personal
skill so far rather than important knowledge in its own right.
Conclusion
In conclusion, knowing as a management practice is not just another learning activity of
interest to the pedagogical research only. It is about management, and it is indeed
management in practice. Communicative knowledge derived from, or resided in knowing in
practices, is about what makes management possible and effective for particular individuals
concerned. Business managers' social networking activities therefore should always be
focusing on knowing others as an on-going practice, not to have known others as an outcome,
or have been known by others either. The grounding shift of social networking for business
managers, guided by such an epistemological proposition, will be revealed in terms of the
ways of engaging people from all walks of life, all different lines of business. The necessary
knowledge or learning activities demanded by the situations are to be drawn together by the
managers concerned in the social network(s), as the very activities for his management
development.
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