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In this essay, we argue that understanding of meaning in relation to organizational networks warrants a more prominent place in organizational theorizing, because it fulfils a distinct role in the emergence and evolution of networks. Whereas prior studies have tended to address network structures or narrative structures, we suggest that organizational processes might be better understood when addressing the role of meaning and network structures simultaneously. We explain the implications of our argument in an online context, given the growing significance of digitally enabled networks on organizational sociality, and draw on examples in the context of organizational knowledge sharing to support our argument. We conclude by introducing a communication flow model to support the further development of research on organizational meaning networks.

Online communities form a challenging and still-evolving field for social network research. We highlight two themes that are at the core of social network literature: formative processes and structures, and discuss how these might be relevant in the context of online communities. Processes of tie formation might evolve differently in online communities. Second, we discuss how network structures emerge in different ways than previously studied, and should therefore be interpreted differently.

Organizations from the same industry or field often tend to become more similar over time, despite being different in terms of for example strategies, goals, or performance. However, recently scholars pointed out that organizational fields are dynamic entities with permeable boundaries, thus indicating that prior literature may have oversimplified the phenomenon. Indeed, in this paper we draw attention to an organizational field that centers on text, and revolves around shared (or debated) meaning stemming from that text. The guiding research question is, “To what extent do organizations converge or diverge from meaning embedded in interconnected text?” We investigate party manifestos and press releases of organizations from the field of politics, focusing on the topic of immigration. We extract meaning from these texts, using document scaling and similarity analysis. Our results show that while most parties become more similar in their framing of immigration, the anti-immigrant PVV actually radicalizes further and as a result takes an isolated position in the policy space. Thus, Dutch political organizations became similar (converge) as well as different (diverge) over time through interaction, in terms of their shared meaning systems. This paper substantiates findings of isomorphic tendencies of organizations within a shared organizational field. At the same time, we find that Dutch politics constitute an issue field, where parties compete about meanings and framings on controversial issues. Our analysis shows that meaning embedded in texts changes over time; this indicates that change mechanisms in organizational fields may be brought about through changes in meaning systems.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

In 2010, the Canadian government introduced the National Action Plan for the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security. Approximately 24 countries have developed national action plans to evaluate and monitor the implementation of UNSCR 1325 that calls for the inclusion of all women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding and the protection of women. Refugee women were not included in the Action Plan as partners in peacemaking, mentioned only in sections referring to protection and post-conflict reconstruction. As such, refugee women are not considered key players in plans to bring about peace despite evidence that refugee women's organizations can participate in and even lead peacebuilding efforts.

This chapter analyzes the activities of three refugee women's organizations from Tibet, the Sudan, and Burma/Myanmar concluding that it is strategically important to support women's transnational networks and facilitate contact between diaspora, refugee, and local women's organizations interested in conflict transformation. A gendered analysis of refugee peacebuilding capacity reveals gaps in peacebuilding capacity approaches that become evident when female diasporas are the focus of the research. The women's refugee organizations show the capacity for transnational bridge building, that is, the capacity to build and sustain networks across geographical, social and political boundaries with the aim of bringing about nonviolent social change.