Informal Structures

This was brought up already, but in specific manners. I wanted to talk about the broader sense of informal structures. This concept caught my eye because of the 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' idea. I had no idea that this was originally an idea by Milgram- I was only familiar with the experiment Milgram created with the fake shocking of people. Its amazing how common it is to know a friend of a friend. It became more evident as I grew older and switched organizations. My first day at my current work (five years ago) one of the managers had told me that they were related to a former coworker of mine at the previous company I worked for. It really is a small world as the book infers. To get back on the topic of the informal structures--- these relationships we create with friends started off as casual and even awkward at times. The same goes for our professional relationships. We tend to make relationships with our coworkers and eventually things start to get more casual at work. We then take advantage of these relationships to converse with each other in a casual manner. It is a more comfortable method of communication since we feel we can ease our fears with coworkers by gaining their insight and opinions about what's going on at work. You don't get the same kind of uncensored communication with your superiors.