A network consists of nodes which can be attached to other networks and form an internet. Without routers and gateways interoperability of different networks is impossible.
One can imagine that routers are the guys in an organization (network) who regulate communications between different part of an organization (different nodes). A router consists of both static and dynamic routing tables. The guy mentioned uses the static tables to decide where a specific report should go, while - for instance - in case of illness of a particular boss, he has to dynamically route specific data to a another node who knows what to do with it. Everything in communication is just a matter of routing data. One has to know where en how to communicate. An organization is a pool of nodes which communicate. The routers in an organizations are the guys that keep an organization together an manage the cooperation of different people doing operational work. On the lower levels there are subnets; every department in an organizations has his own network which has one router (the boss of the department) which communicates with higher level bosses. This guy loadbalances questions from the superboss by seperating tasks. The super super boss or top manager is the highes node in the network and this node routes data to other companies which use other protocols.
Suppose we can describe an organization like this, we can easily apply other networking related techniques to organizational problems and in my opinion that is the key to a lot of problems.
We can use VPNs (virtual private networks) to achieve more direct communication between different departments in other buildings or countries. We can even set up VPNs covering different organizations in the same branch! The only thing we have to do is tunneling data through the existing carriers.
It's also possible to use firewalls to avoid quarrel between departments in an organization.
Maybe these are quite idealistic and practically impossible solutions, but using technological knowledge - which is almost always based on strict rules and therefore easy to understand - is a good starting point for finding solutions to organizational problems.

For those who want to know more, here are two interesting links about the book:

hyperlink <a href=http://www.nd.edu/~networks/linked/index.html target="_blank">Linked</a>
hyperlink <a href=http://www.nd.edu/~alb/ target="_blank">Albert-László Barabási</a>

Coert Visser, www.m-cc.nl

For those who want to know more about hownetworking works in the real world I suggest the following books:

* "Open Systems Networking",
D.Piscitello/A.Chapin
Addison-Wesley, 1993
* "TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1 & 2"
R.Stevens,
Adison-Wesley, 1994

Both books cover the fundamentals of all network communication which make you can read this text. Using Stevens' books you can even create your own applications.