Value added identification and implementation of the Web 2.0 in metal mechanic sector companies in Spain: The Metal 2.0 Research Project

Communication mediated by various technologies (from ordinary mail to today´s Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)) provides important evidence for the study of social networks. Given that networks generate the possibility of interpersonal communication, data on technology use can provide important information on sociability. However, it is also true that personal networks not only shape, but also are shaped by technological means for communication, since these entail the re-constituting of social ties and the re-drawing of social boundaries.We use material from empirical studies (Metal 2.0 Research Project) carried out over the last 2 years to develop our hypothesis of the way forms of business relationship change with technology. In particular, we try to understand the relationship between social networks (a set of social ties possessing one or more relational dimensions), exchanges between business actors (made up of a succession of embodied gestures and language acts) and the various technical means for communication available today, which enable an exchange to be completed. Each of these three poles poses constraints on interaction, and provides resources for it, and thus all three shape the form relational practices take. Empirical data show how technological means of communication allow people to re-negotiate the constraints of individual time rhythms, and of who one communicates with. They also illustrate how the relational economy (and power) is affected by the deployment of communication technologies. Tools of communication provide new resources to negotiate individual timetables and social exchanges, making it possible to adjust roles, hierarchies and forms of power in relational economies. The traditional communication model, where tele-communication is used to connect people who are physically separated from each other, is gradually being supplanted with a new pattern of ldquoconnected presencerdquo. In this new mode other people are teleph- oned, ldquoSMSedrdquo, seen and mailed in alternated way and small gestures or signs of attention are at least as important as the message content itself.