Organizing and Governance in Online Communities (UW COM597 Winter 2025)/Additional topics

Networks and embeddedness

• Simmel, George. 1964. “The Triad.” In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by Kurt H. Wolff. Free Press. [Forthcoming]
• Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” The American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–80. [Available from UW libraries]
• Burt, Ronald 1991. “The Social Structure of Competition.” In Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. [Forthcoming]
• Uzzi, Brian. 1997. “Social Structure and Competition in Interfirm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness.” Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (1): 35–67. [Forthcoming]
• Podolny, Joel M., and Karen L. Page. 1998. “Network Forms of Organization.” Annual Review of Sociology 24:57–76. [Forthcoming]

• Faraj, Samer, Srinivas Kudaravalli, and Molly Wasko. 2015. “Leading Collaboration in Online Communities.” MIS Quarterly 39 (2): 393–412. [Available from UW libraries]
• Monge, Peter R., and Noshir S. Contractor. 2003. Theories of Communication Networks. Oxford University Press.
• Shen, Cuihua, Peter Monge, and Dmitri Williams. 2014. “Virtual Brokerage and Closure: Network Structure and Social Capital in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game.” Communication Research 41 (4): 459–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650212455197. [Available from UW libraries]

Optional:

• Simmel, Georg. 1964. Conflict & the Web of Group Affiliations. New York: Free Press. [Forthcoming]
• Burt, Ronald. 1991. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. [Forthcoming]
• Granovetter, Mark. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” The American Journal of Sociology 91 (3): 481–510. [Forthcoming]

Learning and Sensemaking

Required readings

• March, James G. 1991. “Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning.” Organization Science 2 (1): 71–87. [Forthcoming]
• Levitt, Barbara, and James G. March. 1988. “Organizational Learning.” Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1): 319–38. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.14.080188.001535. [Available from UW libraries]
• Kane, Gerald C., and Maryam Alavi. 2007. “Information Technology and Organizational Learning: An Investigation of Exploration and Exploitation Processes.” Organization Science 18 (5): 796–812. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1070.0286. [Available from UW libraries]

• Weick, Karl E. 1993. “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster.” Administrative Science Quarterly 38 (4): 628–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393339. [Available from UW libraries]
• Weick, Karl E., Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld. 2005. “Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking.” Organization Science 16 (4): 409–21. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0133. [Available from UW libraries]
• Mamykina, Lena, Drashko Nakikj, and Noemie Elhadad. 2015. “Collective Sensemaking in Online Health Forums.” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15), 3217–26. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702566. [Available from UW libraries]
• Krafft, Peter, Kaitlyn Zhou, Isabelle Edwards, Kate Starbird, and Emma S. Spiro. 2017. “Centralized, Parallel, and Distributed Information Processing during Collective Sensemaking.” In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17), 2976–87. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3026012.

Optional readings

• Weick, Karl E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. 1st ed. Sage Publications, Inc. [Selections] [Forthcoming]
• Russo, Renato, Paulo Blikstein, and Ioana Literat. 2024. “Twisted Knowledge Construction on X/Twitter: An Analysis of Constructivist Sensemaking on Social Media Leading to Political Radicalization.” Information and Learning Sciences 125 (9): 693–719. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-12-2023-0210. [Available from UW libraries]