Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

189Claussen 2001) , the few bigger ones – such as Nordvestforum (Hanssen Bauer 2001) with about50 owner enterprises employing approximately 10 000 people – generally tend to form sub groupswhen running specific development projects. These limitations notwithstanding they still posechallenges <strong>of</strong> organisation and a substantial number <strong>of</strong> new actors with legitimacy to organisehave actually appeared over the recent years. Interesting to note is also that practically all thelarger networks have emerged upon private initiatives rather than public and have received verylittle public support. What is lacking in mass in each network, is, however, made up in number <strong>of</strong>networks.The public support apparatus faces, in this kind <strong>of</strong> terrain, the challenge <strong>of</strong> having to deal –even within each region – with a substantial number <strong>of</strong> networks, each showing its own specialcharacteristics. Each initiative poses its own demands in terms <strong>of</strong> support and services. To meetthese demands the support apparatus has to differentiate and contextualise itself but it still needsto keep itself together as “one apparatus”. The support apparatus can no longer perform its tasksthrough giving out money to pre-specified projects or implementing one single strategy but hasto undertake much more differentiated tasks. The support apparatus consists, furthermore, notonly <strong>of</strong> one organisation but <strong>of</strong> several: some state-level, some regional, some local. They needto co-ordinate their efforts, giving rise to a new set <strong>of</strong> complex tasks in “the terrain betweenorganisations”.Programs like “Enterprise Development 2000” and “Value Creation 2010” are not the only networkoperators. Rather, they are one type <strong>of</strong> initiative in a field with a growing number <strong>of</strong> initiatives.However, programs with research involvement have the potential <strong>of</strong> filling some special functions,in particular the function <strong>of</strong> developing knowledge concerning network organisation. In the sameway as “internal organisation” has been a main theme also in terms <strong>of</strong> research since Max Weber,the shift to networking does not mean to renounce on reflections and analyses. In network societythere occurs, however, a major shift in the platforms from which reflections are taking place.Whereas Max Weber developed a research role based on distance from real events and practicalprocesses, and on the idea <strong>of</strong> identifying universal characteristics <strong>of</strong> organisation (although with anumber <strong>of</strong> modifications as seen from his critique <strong>of</strong> the economic historians Roscher and Knies(Weber 1976)), the notion <strong>of</strong> network prohibits, in itself, this kind <strong>of</strong> research role. In the sameway as a network does, by definition, not lend itself to steering from one single point it does notlend itself to understanding from one single point either. Being a horizontal organisation a networkmust respect the autonomy <strong>of</strong> each member and autonomy is not only the right to represent oneselfbut also the right to understand oneself. Ultimately, the insights in the hows and whys <strong>of</strong> eachnetwork participant has to rest with the participant. In a network context the task <strong>of</strong> researchis not to “understand the actors” but the network. The network is, furthermore, not only a kind<strong>of</strong> structure; it is, above all, a way <strong>of</strong> performing work and as such it is a process. Within theframework <strong>of</strong> a process the knowledge demands do not pertain to “who we are” but to “what wedo”: what action is, at each and every time, most suited to improve on the links between the actors,on their responsiveness towards each other, on their ability to mix impulses to create new hybrids,and so on. There are few general answers to questions <strong>of</strong> this kind: in networking the questionsemerge all the time, in continuously new forms and settings and are never given any ultimateanswer. Research has to be present within the network rather than observe from outside. Only bybeing an inside member is it possible for research to see and grasp the challenges as they emergeat each and every time and help create not only the right response in some generalised form butthe response that is right because <strong>of</strong> its context and timing. This is the kind <strong>of</strong> research role thatcan be seen emerging within the programs but also in many other contexts, such as the context <strong>of</strong>