During the past 10-15 years, various forms of network organization have been tested in a variety of ways in many countries and in different areas of society. However, the phenomenon has only been slightly described in the literature.
It has been asserted that the term network was created by the social anthropologist J.A. Barnes, when he in 1954 visited a small fishing community in Lofoten, Norway, to study the relations between the people living there. While trying to describe his experiences, he caught sight of the fishermens gillnets hanging on drying racks. There and in that very moment he is supposed to have created the "network" term, inspired by the form and structure of the nets (Fyrand and Stave, 1984).
In general, we divide "human networks" into two main groups: social networks and professional networks. A social network can in its simpliest form consist of people who live together in small settlements; friends who share common fields of interest (e.g. playing bridge), or a group of people who in some way or another have common challenges and needs and therefore find benefits in collaboration. A professional network are a group or groups of people with common technical needs and interests. A professional network will necessarily not have commercial goals or objectives. The individual membership in a non-commercial professional network is normally motivated by the wish to share and exchange knowledge and thus improve and keep up to date the member’s skills. The members will also have a strong identity to their own profession and to their fellow professionals.
In a wider context we may say that professional networks refer to groups of people who share one or more of the following:
intellectual/professional ideas
business interests
work activities
needs for actions (e.g. research efforts)
In such a context, professional networks can be directly or indirectly related to companies and industry, often business competitors, just like the members of the described Norwegian "fishing industry networks". When the members also are or represent business competitors, collaboration by mean of traditional co-organization will normally be impossible, or at least impracticable. "Networking" will under such conditions be an appropriate way to exercise collaboration.
The special characteristic of the Norwegian "fishing industry networks" is that the network members, i.e. the networks themselves, consist of the ground level in a structure, in this case, of basic producers in a sector of the fishing industry. The responsibility for the network’s operation and form of work is therefore "at the bottom" of the industry- and decision structure, or the stream, if you prefer. One could say that the network triggers "upstream" idea generation and orders, and "downstream" deliveries. Correspondingly, any successes which may result from the network’s efforts would presumably first and foremost be useful at the bottom of the structure, i.e. at the bottom of the stream.
Within the research sector and in different forms of development and assistance activities, collaboration and task solution through networks is very common. The European Commission has in its general programmes for research defined a separate type of network project - Concerted Action - which requires that researchers or research groups from several countries join together to perform a task. In the Nordic research collaboration with financial support from the Nordic Industrial Fund, network collaboration has included work on new technologies and methods in food production, with participation both by research groups and food producers (Bengtson, 2002). Common to these networks is that they are simultaneously defined as a project, i.e. relatively specific goals have been set that they will attempt to attain within a pre-determined fixed deadline. In addition, "the paths of action" are opposite to those of the producer-operated networks in the Norwegian fishing industry, with "downstream" orders (from authorities) and "upstream" deliveries (from businesses and research groups).
International or multinational collaboration at government and institution level often has the character of network collaboration when the work takes place over a long and indefinite period. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) can, for example, be regarded as a network organization with a large number of researchers from the member countries and a relatively small permanent Secretariat in Copenhagen.
A very interesting multinational network at the government level is the Network for Women and Gender in the Mekong Region and the Philippines (Matics, 1998; Matics, Poeu and Siason, 2001). This is collaboration at government level between Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Thailand, Viet Nam and the Philippines to develop and implement a policy for women’s participation in the fishing industry in the region. This network was established between the four first-mentioned countries in 2000, following establishment of national networks at high level. The Philippines has subsequently joined the network collaboration.
In the work and the battle for women’s rights and equal opportunity network organizations, geographically and/or thematically, has been a much-used instrument. On the whole, women have been good at developing and using new forms and models of action to promote issues of common interest. In the Nordic countries a number of local and regional women’s networks have been established. The goal of these is to provide with knowledge and initiatives that can stimulate women to establish and develop their own business activity. Some government financial support for such initiatives may also be granted.
The extremely difficult resource situation for northeast Atlantic cod during 1989-90, when the Minister of Fisheries declared a full stop in the cod fisheries from 18 April 1989 - "the cod moratorium" - caused severe problems for the fisheries in North Norway in general and in the small fishing communities in particular. In this situation, women in the fishing districts "went to the barricades" to defend their and their families’ interests and to fight for a future in the fishing villages (Gerrard, 1995). The women themselves called their organization(s) "action group(s)" with no formal listing of memberships. The groups, therefore, can hardly be defined as "networks", but the actions obviously could be characterized as upstream initiatives demanding downstream deliveries. As expected and intended, the actions were terminated and the groups dissolved when the resource situation improved and the processing plants started production again.
The author of this article has not succeeded in finding good examples of networks in fishing industries elsewhere in the world similar to those of Norwegian seafood producers. Some of the Norwegian networks have now been in operation for ten years and there are no indications of an early forthcoming termination. The reasons for the networks’ viability and vitality must obviously be that the network members have drawn professional and commercial benefits from their membership. In addition, the members have had full influence and final power of decision relating to the priorities set and the tasks adopted by the networks.
