Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society

Networking

A network is a formation of individual agents or nodes where each is connected to one or more other nodes by a link. The individual nodes may be businesses, individuals, computers, or other units, and the links may be based on infrastructure, beneficial relationships, or collaboration. The term was first applied to social networks by J. A. Barnes in the 1950s. Networks can bring efficiency through the sharing of assets and pooling of competencies, and in the second half of the 20th century, networking became established as the preferred form of organization in many ...

—Howard Harris