From networks to rhizomes
- Business Science Institute
- Sep 10
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 11
Jean-Philippe DENIS*
Professor
Paris-Saclay University
RITM, IQSOG
*Director of the Executive DBA Paris-Saclay / Business Science Institute
The concept of “network” has flourished in scientific management literature because it is reassuring. It promises a picture of the world made up of nodes and links, a map where we can identify centralities, count connections, and believe we can measure strength in terms of visibility. This image is suited to fluid organizational charts and intermediation platforms: it speaks of circulation, suggests cooperation, and can ultimately be thought of in terms of governance (Castells, 2010).
But by making connections visible, the network exposes those who are part of it. It presupposes mutual recognition and declared loyalties. It creates reciprocal dependencies and showcase effects. We end up confusing the map with the territory, the density of lines with actual power. This is where Deleuze and Guattari's (1972, 1980) opposition to the figure of the tree regains its significance: another logic is available for thinking about collective action.
Why the network has dominated
The network has prevailed because it is measurable. It converts relationships into data, proximities into metrics, interactions into indicators. The social sciences have found in it an operational grammar; businesses, a common language between researchers, decision-makers, and engineers. The promise was simple: describe structures, optimize flows, identify transition points. In the era of computable graphs, visualization served as proof, and proof as protocol.
The network also prevailed because it is governable. It allows for hub, brokerage, and networking policies. It values bridges between worlds, access to structural holes, and the strength of weak ties. It gives management tools to act without rewriting institutions: we reorganize traffic, reward brokers, and stimulate communities. Mapping becomes a technique for intervention.
Finally, the network has flourished because it tells a compelling story. Neither pure hierarchy nor pure anarchy: an intermediate form that promises fluidity without disruption. On the surface, everyone wins: more connections, more ideas, more opportunities. The narrative is powerful, and all the more so because it resonated with digital imaginaries.
The limits of network mapping
The first limitation has to do with the performativity of images. By striving for centrality, we overexpose what should remain discreet. Hubs become points of attack as much as resources. Real robustness depends less on the number of links than on the quality of the connections, interfaces, and thresholds. However, these elements exceed the metric.
The second limitation stems from the confusion between circulation and power. Connecting does not exhaust the art of composition. The obsession with links obscures the arrangement: what allows heterogeneous elements to hold together without absorbing each other. A connection is not a use; a graph is not a practice. Without interface work, links accumulate without transforming.
The third limitation is the political cost of visibility. A well-mapped network is a governable network, and therefore a captureable one. As the architecture becomes legible, it becomes appropriable by actors capable of imposing their interests. The requirement for exposure then turns against freedom of action.
Thinking and acting in rhizome
The rhizome is not added to the network: it shifts the plane. It has no single root, no summit, no center. It is a multiplicity composed of neighborhoods and repetitions. Here, what matters is not the size of the nodes, but the quality of the connections. Arrangement becomes the decisive notion: a heterogeneous whole that “works” because it functions. We map as we go along; we connect what was not connected; we draw lines of flight and then stabilize them in use. Strength comes through interfaces that convert production into reception, memory into action, intention into effect.
Thinking in rhizomes means preferring passages to positions. We enter at one point, exit at another, and return in a different way. Nothing is fixed, everything is reversible, not by whim but by method. Deterritorialize and reterritorialize: leave one form, invent another, accept that it too will become temporary. Strategy ceases to be an art of place and becomes a practice of composition. The calculation is based on thresholds and tempos, on connections rather than ranks.
Thinking in rhizomes ultimately requires discipline. Discretion is not indeterminacy. A lasting arrangement is maintained not by invocation, but by care. Indexing a memory, specifying a format, opening a threshold, closing a door: these are all maintenance gestures that escape graphs but determine effects. We know that an arrangement has been successful when it continues to operate without needing to be named.
References
Castells, M. (2010). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444319514
Deleuze, G., & Guattari F. (1972). L’Anti-Œdipe (Capitalisme et schizophrénie). Paris: Les éditions de Minuit. URL: https://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/livre-Capitalisme_et_schizophrénie_1___L’Anti_oedipe-2013-1-1-0-1.html
Deleuze, G., & Guattari F. (1980). Mille Plateaux (Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2). Paris: Les éditions de Minuit. URL: https://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/livre-Capitalisme_et_schizophrénie_2___Mille_plateaux-2015-1-1-0-1.html
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