By viewing organizations as networks, alongside our conventional views of them as hierarchies and bureaucracies, we have a natural language for mapping onto technology configurations. Or, more importantly, a way of understanding human organization so that technology can be configured to support people. For a decade the Networking Institute, Inc. has been studying people networks, from volunteer groups and social movements to distributed businesses and high-tech teams. Networks are nodes linked together.in order to do something, to achieve a purpose. Nodes are the things, the centers of activity.
Links are the relationships, the connections between nodes.
While vendors might be selling wires, boxes, and software separately, their customers are trying to run the result as an integrated whole. When a user sits down and logs on, it is how the network works as a whole that matters. In organization networks, people and groups are the nodes. People individually are linked in networks, both in small groups and in large-scale associations. And, organizational networks may span multiple levels, where small groups are linked together into a larger project or businesses join associations of their peers.