Activity 3

For this task we had to research a mixture of books, journals, and websites relating to our topic. My topic was relationships, in particular in the working and learning environments so i decided to look into social networking and how this has an affect on relationships within these environments. My research involved using cross search for the first time which proved to be fairly simple. I started by inserting words such as relationship, effective, business, social networking, brain etc into various different categories including psychology, humanities and social sciences. On first glance there seemed to be loads of relevant journals but after looking through my basket and reading through the journals there were less than expected. I then decided to try and find some books and requested a couple from the library but unfortunately they didn't come in time so i used the internet to read the blurbs of the requested books and a few others which i thought were of relevance and then found a couple of sites and stated all my findings within the bibliography below:

Bacon, T, R (2006) What people want: A managers guide to building relationships that work

United states: Davies-Black Publishing

This book explores relationships at work and the affect gender has on these relationships. Bacon reveals “What people want” from their relationships at work along with a number of tips and tricks and some real life examples to help managers build better relationships within the workplace.

Cook, K, S (2005) Networks, Norms, and Trust: The social Psychology of Social Capital 2004

Cook explores networks of trust relations and how they come about. He explores the conditions in which they occur and how the social capital can be affected by this .

Foulger, T, S, Kay, A, Ewbank, A, D, Popp, S, O, Carter, H, L (2009) Moral Spaces in Myspace: Presevice Teachers' Perspectives about Ethical issues in Social Networking

Is about how social networks are an innovative method of communicating but can lead to issues of privacy as there is no teacher conduct on the online world. Also states what advantages can come from it.

Fraser, M & Dutta, S (2008) Throwing sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and world West sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Fraser & Dutta explore the rise of social networks and how this is altering the world around us, businesses in particular. It talks a lot about Enterprise 2.0, and how people mistake it for a new software and therefore goes on to explain all about it and what can be achieved from it. The book illustrates its points through the use of illustrations.

Heap, N (2001), Available:http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nick.heap/Effectiverelatwork.html 11/11/09

Heap has been interested in relationships for over 30 years, and expresses this by talking about relationships and how to build effective relationships at work. He also talks about what makes effective relationships and things which can get in the way. Although he states that he has attended a course where he had to look at behaviour it is hard to know whether what he states is reliable material.

Newman, M, E, J (2003) The structure and Function of Complex Networks

Newman looks at a variety of social networks and how they work. Including the developments of these systems, he presents his findings using graphs models, etc.

Phillips, S, D (1991) Meaning and Structure in Social Movements: Mapping the Network of National Canadian Women's Organizations

Phillips talks about social movements and how people within organizations form collective identities. His research focusses mainly on the networks of 33 national Canadian women's organisations. The results show that their ambitious nature creates a network which is bound by a collective identity of liberalized feminism. Showing the possibility's for this type of thing to happen within other group or organisations creating stronger knit groups and therefore better relationships.

Rheingold, H & Kimball, L (2000) Rheingold Associates,

Available:http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/onlinenetworks.html 11/11/09

Kimball & Rheingold talk about the advantages of social networks within the work place, and how it allows people of different time zones and slightly different professions to easily communicate with one an other at a time that suits them. It permits the the exchange of knowledge and experience between people within the company and they believe that it can enable an organisation to achieve many things. These include: “Provide an ongoing context for knowledge and exchange that can be far more effective than memoranda, Attune everyone in the organisation to each other's needs – more people will know who knows who, who know what, and will know it faster...Amplify innovation – when groups get turned on by what they can do online, they go beyond problem solving and start inventing together, create a community memory for group deliberation and brainstorming that stimulates the capture of idea and facilitates finding information when it is needed...Attract and retain the best employees by providing access to social capital that is only available within the organisation and many other things. Although this source seems to know its stuff on relationships within the work place and social network it doesn't state any solid facts only opinions and experience and therefore might not be fully reliables.

Scott, A, M (1977) The logic of International Interaction

This journal investigates how interaction is affected by the increase in international systems and how the system becomes complicated and more difficult at an increased capacity.

Uehara, E (1990) Dual Exchange Theory, Social Networks, and Informal Social Support

This journal looks into the relationships between social structure, interaction and perceptions of support in the event of crisis. Dual exchange theory in particular is focussed on within this journal and data is taken from ethnographic studies of social network mobilization among low income black women in the event of job loss. Although this doesn't hit specifically on relationships of all genders and race within the business the data collected for the ethnographic studies could be used to give an indication of how colleagues would act in the event of need or crisis from another colleague.