Washington D.C. Luncheon Featuring Commerce Faculty Member Robert L. Cross
Photos from this Event

Commerce faculty member Robert L. Cross presented at a Women in Leadership & Philanthropy luncheon on July 13, 2004, at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City. Cross's area of expertise is "social network analysis," whereby organizational behavior and interaction are analyzed from the point of who the "movers and shakers" are and where they are located within an organization. In today's flatter organizations, work of significance demands effective collaboration within and across functional, physical, and hierarchical boundaries. However, while often concerned with external relationships, executives generally pay little attention to assessing and supporting linkages among employees within their own organizations. Cross's presentation demonstrated why and how executives must pay attention to the health of networks within their organizations based on in-depth experience with over 60 organizations in the last five years.

Specifically, the session:

• Demonstrated the importance of networks in terms of performance (organizational and individual), learning, innovation and quality of work life.
• Provided case examples of strategic problems organizations uncover when conducting a social network analysis and means of correcting them.
• Characterized networks of high performing individuals and provide diagnostic questions that people can apply to assess their own networks.
• Described new work assessing energy in networks, both how it is created and transferred as well as its impact on performance and innovation.

You can read more about Cross's work at http://www.robcross.org. In addition, the McIntire School of Commerce is hosting a conference in September whose goal is "to enable leaders to promote organizational performance and innovation using a network perspective." You can learn more about the conference by visiting http://www.leadinginaconnectedworld.org/.