From Survey on Networking & Collaboration

In a previous post we launched a preliminary survey with the help of the Boler School of Business at John Carroll University. The objective was to understand attitudes and behaviors regarding Jesuit Networking and Collaboration. Here we present initial feedback from the research group that suggests a strong interest in networking and collaboration within the community of Jesuit friends and alumni.
This survey was clearly linked with the first steps towards next meeting of WUJA (World Union Jesuit Alumni) that will take place in Cleveland on 2017. The research group, led by Dr. Tina Facca-Miess, is looking to understand expectations and possibilites around networking in order to help in the arrangement of the meeting and previous work. In the report they make a clear difference between networking and collaboration, considering networking as more social, whereas collaboration implies working together.
Following the results of the survey, the interest in networking is primarily driven by the extent to which one would like to better understand the Society of Jesus’ perspectives on complex issues. In that sense, the results indicate that perhaps we can work on better promotion of the positions taken by the Society’s apostolates when such guidance on complex issues is available.
Additionally, those interested in Jesuit collaboration hope to use our collective resources for mutual benefit, and tend to have a greater focus on growing their impact and influence. Generally, early respondents show an interest in generating new ideas and learning how international counterparts perform similar services. Further, network weavers would like to address problems and challenges that cannot be solved alone. Perhaps most importantly, potential collaborators are driven by their interest in growing spiritually. This is a very specific expectation of our Jesuit Networking as far as it points precisely to our biggest differential advantage.
For more detail on the initial results of our Jesuit Networking and Collaboration Research, you can download the report here.