Page - (000133) - in Knowledge and Networks

126 process of making decisions to solve problems. Members of organizations see expertise and experience as accumulated by the organization, and they rely con- stantly on advice from others. However, intraorganizational learning through advice-seeking does not simply result from the accumulation of individually and informally acquired information. The process is socially organized in a sophisti- cated way. In organizations examined by researchers, advice-seeking converges toward senior and recognized members and reflects a process of epistemic alignment with (or orientation to) members who have gained epistemic status and the “authority to know,” who give social approval for specific decisions, and who contribute to inte- grating the organization by linking the individual, group, and organizational levels. This alignment may be thought of as a key ingredient of intraorganizational learn- ing. Providing a social incentive for actors to share their knowledge and experience with others, a status hierarchy helps explain the social organization of the learning process. For example, social exchange and status help solve a learning dilemma in which it is rational for individuals to pursue the maximum organizational share of joint learning by taking more knowledge than they give. At the same time, the rela- tive withholding of knowledge reduces the total amount of joint learning from which persons attempt to appropriate their individual share (Larsson, Bengtsson, Henriksson, & Sparks, 1998). Because advice networks are usually shaped by such status ‘games’, they are usually highly centralized. They exhibit a pecking order that often closely follows the hierarchical structure of the organization (Lazega, 2014). Members of formal organizations rarely declare that they seek advice from “people below” in this peck- ing order. In addition to a core set of central advisors, the periphery of the network can be complex and characterized by homophilous (Lazega & van Duijn, 1997) horizontal ties (i.e., ties among peers). Members use such ties to mitigate the nega- tive effects that this strict rule can have on intraorganizational action and learning (e.g., unwillingness to show that one does not know the answer to a question). Advice networks thus tend to be both hierarchical and cohesive (at least within sub- sets of peers), with the hierarchical dimension usually being stronger than the cohe- sive one. In some firms advice ties are crucial in facilitating the flows of other kinds of resources in coworkers’ and friendship ties (Lazega & Pattison, 1999). A “spinning-top model” accounts for the dynamics of advice networks in orga- nizations by furnishing a main metaphor for research on the relationship between formal organization and intraorganizational process. It shows that intraorganiza- tional collective learning depends on the organization’s capacity to generate an elite group of authoritative advisors with epistemic status that remains stable. By con- trast, advice ties among other organizational members undergo rapid turnover (due, say, to rotation policy, career movement, or the need for new knowledge that old advisors cannot offer; Ortega, 2001; Kane, Argote, & Levine, 2005). More gener- ally, the spinning- top model illustrates a new approach to the relationship between formal organization and informal social behavior and processes. As a model for a dynamic process, the spinning-top heuristic brings together at least three components: a rotating body, a rotation axis, and a fragile equilibrium E. Lazega