Social Networks Analysis

Introduction

Social Network Analysis is a growing discipline that is interested in the relationships among elements (people, Departments, websites or countries). INSNA is the international association of researchers and consultants that are currently working in this field. In the talk we will discuss some applications for organizational development at three levels: personal network, team and communities of practice. IBM, Microsoft and HP, among other firms, are doing some research on this field.

An example ... if we look at the drawing of Who reports to whom? in a firm (data from Krackhardt 1990, included in Ucinet 6, the package for SNA) we can find the CEO in the center of the graph (shapes are different Departments and colors different hierarchical levels). But if we look at the network Who of those managers are friends? the situation is a bit different ... the red circle is in the up left corner ...

Personal level

At personal level you can obtain (after a little effort!) a proxy of your personal network. See an example of what can you obtain from this perspective (PowerPoint slides). If you are interested in trying the interview click here.

Team or project level

With the aid of questionnaries or through an analysis of email's log it is possible to assess the structure of relationships of the project team. This analysis can be done several times for analyzing the evolution of the network. In HPLabs are some steps ahead ...

Communities of practice at organizational level

Recent research has showed that it is possible to locate through the email's log the communities of practice of an organization, along with experts and "bridges" or influential people. Some related links of interest:

http://emailcommunity.net/ (tools por email visualization)

Guimerà R. Danon, L.; Díaz-Guilera A.; Giralt, F; Arenas, A. et. al. (2002). "The real communication network behind the formal chart: community structure in organizations", 7th Granada Seminaron Computational and Statistical Physics (held in Granada, Spain, 2-7 September).

See you soon!

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José Luis Molina
Departament d'Antropologia social
Coordinador Programa de Doctorat
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Facultat de Lletres-Edifici B
08193- Bellaterra (Spain)
Tf.:+93 581 12 39
Fax:+93 581 11 40
joseluis.molina@uab.es
http://seneca.uab.es/antropologia/jlm/
http://www.uab.es
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