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Seeing Workplaces from a Social Network Analysis (SNA) Approach
Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to introduce Social Network Analysis (SNA) in the context of work organisations. The examples and terms are expected to show how SNA contributes to workplace learning research by helping us understand what happens, under the surface of the workplaces, in the formal or hidden informal structures. A social network is defined as a set of interacting social entities, such as individuals or groups, and the relationships among them. From a methodological point of view, this chapter targets basic-level concepts and quantitative analysis, not a qualitative approach or the newest or most advanced techniques. The framework focuses on terms of cohesion, structural equivalence, and personal (egocentric) networks. The emphasis is on the cohesion approach, which refers to measures of connectedness and togetherness within a network. Often, it means emphasising the number of relationships among colleagues and how these relationships are distributed to create structures and borders within workplaces. Some empirical examples from a work organisation are presented at the community, organisational, and individual levels.KeywordsWorkplace learningWork organisationsSocial network analysis
... We used the name generator technique, which provided a checklist of staff members' names. Respondents were directed to select those from whom they seek advice (Palonen, 2022). Participants reported advice-seeking frequency on a scale with 5 indicating "weekly" and 1 signifying "not at all". ...
Purpose
This study addresses a gap in the knowledge on how longitudinal engagement in a school improvement initiative influences change in middle leaders’ (MLs') interactions and assesses how school–university partnerships around school improvement can support teachers with formal leadership roles (i.e. MLs’) leadership development.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a two-year longitudinal research design, university staff facilitated middle leadership training in a school-defined improvement initiative on lesson study. Results from a pre-test followed by two post-tests administered at one-year intervals were collected on social networks. Analyses examined changes in indegree and brokerage patterns among groupings of senior leaders (SL), subject leaders, cross-school specialists and teachers.
Findings
Accounting for staffing changes, 27 of 67 staff members participated in each survey, yielding 1,623 distinct ties connecting school members. Over the first year, advice-seeking increased by 225%. SLs’ initial propensity to consult peers shifted towards MLs and teachers. Subject leaders advising other leaders and teachers increased tenfold. Teachers’ peer-to-peer consultation increased by 2,000%. Specialists with school-wide responsibilities became the dominant group for advising other leaders, such as SLs and subject leaders. These shifts were sustained over the second year.
Originality/value
The study demonstrates that engagement in the school–university partnership support and the corresponding structural changes stimulated robust cross-school dialogue among teachers and various leaders. Brokerage patterns indicated an enhanced role for MLs in driving the school-defined improvement initiative which corresponded to university-designed development activities.
Workplace learning takes place in conditions that are, in many respects, different from that occurring in on educational institution. Due to this, essential workplace learning may not always be apparent and may therefore be difficult to capture with conventional methods of learning research. The present book discusses methodological issues from the standpoint of research design, data collection and data analysis. There is a rich and inspiring collection of established and emerging approaches, all of which attempt to tackle the challenge of research on workplace learning in its complexity. Professional competences and the processes of learning that support the development of them are multi-layered. There is no possibility to collect data about them in a uniform way using a single methodology. The book presents multimodal approaches to the collection of data. The implication of this challenge call for novel approaches to data analysis and particularly well-developed theoretical frameworks for interpreting and combining the findings from different data sources. In this discussion, I conclude that the chapters in this book provide powerful approaches for future research on workplace learning, but also new challenges relating to a deeper theoretical understanding of the affordances provided by the methods.KeywordsWorkplace learningResearchComplexityDiscussion
Research in the area of professional learning and development is faced with particular empirical and methodological challenges due to its nature and contexts. This chapter introduces and briefly describes these challenges. It then gives an overview of each of the methods/approaches (i.e., chapters) in this book in relation to the identified challenges. The chapter ends with a presentation of the overall structure of the book.KeywordsProfessional learning and developmentWorkplace learningVETResearch methods
Gephi is an open source software for graph and network analysis. It uses a 3D render engine to display large networks in real-time and to speed up the exploration. A flexible and multi-task architecture brings new possibilities to work with complex data sets and produce valuable visual results. We present several key features of Gephi in the context of interactive exploration and interpretation of networks. It provides easy and broad access to network data and allows for spatializing, filtering, navigating, manipulating and clustering. Finally, by presenting dynamic features of Gephi, we highlight key aspects of dynamic network visualization.
The purpose of this paper is to examine social network analysis from the perspective of expertise studies and workplace learning. While research on expertise has traditionally been individually oriented, the present paper explores its socially distributed dimensions. Expertise relies on transactive processes involving pursuit of a network of mutually supporting projects where earlier achievements are used to manage more demanding intellectual environments. The paper includes theoretical introduction, methodological considerations, and a minor review of SNA studies that are related to workplaces. The research of social networks stresses the importance of cross-boundary analyses of workplaces’ networks and even experts’ past relations in their former networks. Previous studies have indicated some relevance to study the significance of the worker’s network positions. SNA studies have indicated evidence especially as regards the importance of cohesive network positions, mediator and boundary crossing roles, and the relationship between informal and formal power positions. Particularly, previous research has demonstrated a relationship between network structure and instrumental outcomes. As regards for network profits, individual-level results appear to be easier to evaluate than group- or organizational-level gains.
The objective of the paper is to show the benefits of the use of mixed methods methodology in order to account for the complex and multidimensional nature of social networks. Through an empirical research on the gendered evolution of migrants' personal networks over their settlement process, the article illustrates the depth and explanatory strength of a methodology that combines the algebraic and formalised reasoning of the analysis of networks' matrixes with a comprehensive approach of the actors' narratives. The paper identifies theoretical foundations and methodological approaches that enable to analyse social networks with deep sociological lens. It advocates for a " strong " integration in combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies that helps to abandon the realist premises of the classical tradition of SNA in order to integrate the interpretative tradition of social sciences. This approach enables taking into account the content of relationships and the situated interactions that create and maintain the networks; and to comprise the social and institutional context where they are produced in order to overcome implicit rational thinking about the behaviour of the individuals embedded in relational structures.
Although many international students experience transitional issues, most research assumes that these issues will disappear over time with increased interaction. Using principles of social network theory, this study addressed why some students become bridge builders between international and host students, while others primarily interact with co-national students. In this innovative mixed method study of 81 students from 28 nationalities using dynamic social network analyses combined with embedded case studies of five (potential) bridge builders, the results indicate that students use a range of complex strategies to cope with mixed group work. After 11 weeks, two students stayed as strong bridge builders across groups, two had some bridge building characteristics, and one focussed more on her friends rather than on her assigned group. These findings indicate that even after 3 years of study, international and host students carry on using complex and dynamic social network strategies based on their particular characteristics as well as adaptation to their unique experiences.
In this paper, we review and analyze the emerging network paradigm in organizational research. We begin with a conventional review of recent research organized around recognized research streams. Next, we analyze this research, developing a set of dimensions along which network studies vary, including direction of causality, levels of analysis, explanatory goals, and explanatory mechanisms. We use the latter two dimensions to construct a 2-by-2 table cross-classifying studies of network consequences into four canonical types: structural social capital, social access to resources, contagion, and environmental shaping. We note the rise in popularity of studies with a greater sense of agency than was traditional in network research.
This edited volume demonstrates the potential of mixed-methods designs for the research of social networks and the utilization of social networks for other research. Mixing methods applies to the combination and integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. In social network research, mixing methods also applies to the combination of structural and actor-oriented approaches. The volume provides readers with methodological concepts to guide mixed-method network studies with precise research designs and methods to investigate social networks of various sorts. Each chapter describes the research design used and discusses the strengths of the methods for that particular field and for specific outcomes.
Represents various fields of network research, such as organizational and innovation research, life-course, family and migration research, research on social capital, and on intercultural relations
Focuses on different kinds of social networks, such as ego-centered and whole networks, social networks within and between organizations, informal and formal networks, and personal networks
Provides fresh views on mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative methods
Most network research in organizations assumes away the dissociative forces instantiated in negative ties, instead pursuing ties that reflect only associative forces, to the detriment of understanding organizational networks. This essay provides a brief history of negative tie research in organizations; discusses different definitions of negative ties, situating them within the tripartite model of interpersonal attitudes; suggests alternative paths to network dynamics when considering negative ties; covers existing and suggested paths to studying personality antecedents of negative ties; and briefly reviews the research on the consequences of negative ties in organizations and suggestions for future work.
Throughout the world, educational policy makers, practitioners, and scholars have acknowledged the importance of principal leadership in the generation and implementation of innovations. In many studies, transformational leadership has emerged as a promising approach in response to increasing demands to develop and implement innovations in schools. Although research has suggested that having access to leaders with expertise can significantly stimulate innovation, the link between transformational leadership and principals’ social network position has not yet been extensively studied. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between principals’ positions in their schools’ social networks in combination with transformational leadership and schools’ innovative climate. It was conducted among 702 teachers and 51 principals in 51 elementary schools in a large educational system in the Netherlands. Using social network analysis and multilevel analysis, the authors analyzed a quantitative questionnaire with social network questions on work-related and personal advice and Likert-type scales for transformational leadership and innovative climate. Findings indicated that transformational leadership was positively associated with schools’ innovative climate. Principals’ social network position, in terms of centrality, was also related to schools’ innovative climate. The more principals were sought for professional and personal advice, and the more closely connected they were to their teachers, the more willing teachers were to invest in change and the creation of new knowledge and practices. Moreover, work-related closeness centrality was found to mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and innovative climate. Implications of the study are discussed.
This article examines how different personality types create and benefit from social networks in organizations. Using data from a 116-member high-technology firm, we tested how self-monitoring orientation and network position related to work performance. First, chameleon-like high self-monitors were more likely than true-to-themselves low self-monitors to occupy central positions in social networks. Second, for high (but not for low) self-monitors, longer service in the organization related to the occupancy of strategically advantageous network positions. Third, self-monitoring and centrality in social networks independently predicted individuals' workplace performance. The results paint a picture of people shaping the networks that constrain and enable performance.
Abstract With efforts to de-layer organizations and reduce functional boundaries, coordination and work of importance increasingly occur through networks of informal relations rather than channels tightly prescribed by formal ,reporting structures or detailed ,work ,processes. However, while organizations are moving to network forms through joint ventures, alliances and other collaborative relationships executives,generally pay little attention to assessing and supporting informal networks ,within their own ,organizations. Working with a consortium,of 23 companies,over the past eighteen months,we have,found social
Background:
Bridges, brokers and boundary spanners facilitate transactions and the flow of information between people or groups who either have no physical or cognitive access to one another, or alternatively, who have no basis on which to trust each other. The health care sector is a context that is rich in isolated clusters, such as silos and professional "tribes," in need of connectivity. It is a key challenge in health service management to understand, analyse and exploit the role of key agents who have the capacity to connect disparate groupings in larger systems.
Methods:
The empirical, peer reviewed, network theory literature on brokerage roles was reviewed for the years 1994 to 2011 following PRISMA guidelines.
Results:
The 24 articles that made up the final literature set were from a wide range of settings and contexts not just healthcare. Methods of data collection, analysis, and the ways in which brokers were identified varied greatly. We found four main themes addressed in the literature: identifying brokers and brokerage opportunities, generation and integration of innovation, knowledge brokerage, and trust. The benefits as well as the costs of brokerage roles were examined.
Conclusions:
Collaborative networks by definition, seek to bring disparate groups together so that they can work effectively and synergistically together. Brokers can support the controlled transfer of specialised knowledge between groups, increase cooperation by liaising with people from both sides of the gap, and improve efficiency by introducing "good ideas" from one isolated setting into another.There are significant costs to brokerage. Densely linked networks are more efficient at diffusing information to all their members when compared to sparsely linked groups. This means that while a bridge across a structural hole allows information to reach actors that were previously isolated, it is not the most efficient way to transfer information. Brokers who become the holders of, or the gatekeepers to, specialised knowledge or resources can become overwhelmed by the role and so need support in order to function optimally.
The purpose of this work is to develop a systematic understanding of embeddedness and organization networks. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at 23 entrepreneurial firms, I identify the components of embedded relationships and explicate the devices by which embeddedness shapes organizational and economic outcomes. The findings suggest that embeddedness is a logic of exchange that promotes economies of time, integrative agreements, Pareto improvements in allocative efficiency, and complex adaptation. These positive effects rise up to a threshold, however, after which embeddedness can derail economic performance by making firms vulnerable to exogenous shocks or insulating them from information that exists beyond their network. A framework is proposed that explains how these properties vary with the quality of social ties, the structure of the organization network, and an organization's structural position in the network.
We develop and test a model of the relational antecedents of members' influence in organizations that is based on an integration of leader-member exchange (LMX) and social network perspectives on individuals in organizations. We focus on how the relationships between LMX and members' centrality in the advice network and influence depend on two factors: the extent to which members share ties with their leaders in the organization's trust network, which we define as sponsorship, and the centrality of their leaders in the advice network. Our model seeks to explain how sponsorship and leaders' centrality shape the influence members gain by virtue of their LMX relationships and their centrality in advice networks. Longitudinal data gathered from two organizations, using survey and network measures, offer strong support for a nuanced model of the relational antecedents of influence. Both LMX and members' advice centrality are related to influence, but those relationships in turn depend on sponsorship and leaders' centrality. When leaders are high in centrality, sharing ties in the trust network is beneficial: the relationship between members' own advice centrality and influence is positive among members who are high in sponsorship. But when leaders are low in centrality, sharing trust ties is detrimental: the relationship between advice centrality and influence is negative among members who are high in sponsorship and positive among members who are low in sponsorship.
A study investigated the relationship between interpersonal relationships among members of different departments and individuals' perceptions of intergroup conflict within an organization. Although friendships across groups were not significantly related to perceptions of intergroup conflict, negative relationships were associated with higher perceived intergroup conflict. Perceptions of intergroup conflict were also significantly related to indirect relationships through friends, and an amplification effect was uncovered. Low intragroup cohesiveness was significantly related to higher perceptions of intergroup conflict.
This paper argues that an accurate cognition of informal networks can itself be a base of power, above and beyond power attributable to informal and formal structural positions. To explore this claim, a small entrepreneurial firm was studied. Perceptions of the friendship and advice networks were compared to "actual" networks. Those who had more accurate cognitions of the advice network were rated as more powerful by others in the organization, although accuracy of the friendship network was not related to reputational power.
The role of individual action in the enactment of structures of constraint and opportunity has proved to be particularly elusive for network researchers. We propose three frontiers for future network research that zoom back and forth between individual and collective levels of analysis. First, we consider how dilemmas concerning social capital can be reconciled. Actors striving to reap maximal network advantages may benefit or detract from the collective good; investigating these trade-offs, we argue, will advance our understanding of learning and knowledge processes in organizations. Second, we explore identity emergence and change from a social network perspective. Insights about how networks mold and signal identity are a critical foundation for future work on career dynamics and the workplace experiences of members of diverse groups. Third, we consider how individual cognitions about shifting network connections affect, and are affected by, larger social structures. As scholarly interest in status and reputational signaling grows, articulating more clearly the cognitive foundations of organizational networks becomes imperative.
This research examined the relationships between structural positions and influence at the individual level of analysis. The structure of the organization was conceptualized from a social network perspective. Measures of the relative positions of employees within workflow, communication, and friendship networks were strongly related to perceptions of influence by both supervisors and non-supervisors and to promotions to the supervisory level. Measures included criticality, transaction alternatives, and centrality (access and control) in the networks and in such reference groups as the dominant coalition. A comparison of boundary-spanning and technical-core personnel indicated that contacts beyond the normal work requirements are particularly important for technical core personnel to acquire influence. Overall, the results provide support for a structural perspective on intraorganizational influence.
Given the growing popularity of the social network perspective across diverse organizational subject areas, this review examines the coherence of the research tradition (in terms of leading ideas from which the diversity of new research derives) and appraises current directions and controversies. The leading ideas at the heart of the organizational social network research program include: an emphasis on relations between actors; the embeddedness of exchange in social relations; the assumption that dyadic relationships do not occur in isolation, but rather form a complex structural pattern of connectivity and cleavage beyond the dyad; and the belief that social network connections matter in terms of outcomes to both actors and groups of actors across a range of indicators. These leading ideas are articulated in current debates that center on issues of actor characteristics, agency, cognition, cooperation versus competition, and boundary specification. To complement the review, we provide a glossary of social network terms.
Background Interest in the use of social network analysis (SNA) in healthcare research has increased, but there has been little methodological research on how to choose the name generators that are often used to collect primary data on the social connection between individuals for SNA.
Objective We sought to determine a minimum set of name generators sufficient to distinguish the social networks of a target population of physicians active in quality improvement (QI).
Methods We conducted a pilot survey including 8 name generators in a convenience sample of 25 physicians active in QI to characterize their social networks. We used multidimensional scaling to determine what subset of these name generators was needed to distinguish these social networks.
Results We found that some physicians maintain a social network organized around a specific colleague who performed multiple roles while others maintained highly differentiated networks. We found that a set of 5 of the 8 name generators we used was needed to distinguish the networks of these physicians.
Conclusions Beyond methodology for selecting name generators, our findings suggest that QI networks may require 5 or more generators to elicit valid sets of relevant actors and relations in this target population.
In this paper we test the hypothesis that boundary spanning is a differentiated function that is not necessarily performed by one person, as assumed in much previous research. Using longitudinal network data collected during labor negotiations, we found that some individuals on the bargaining teams (representatives) broker ties toward their opponents, while others (gatekeepers) broker ties from their opponents; and some broker task-oriented ties (measured by flows of advice), while others broker socioemotional ties (measured by flows of trust). Differentiation of trust and advice brokerage roles was strong throughout the negotiations, while differentiation of representative and gatekeeper roles became more distinct as the contract deadline (and increased potential for role conflict) neared. This analytic distinction suggests that role conflict must be examined differently, both conceptually and methodologically, and widens the range of options available for managing potential role confllcts.
The network perspective is rapidly becoming a lingua franca across virtually all of the sciences from anthropology to physics. In this paper, we provide supply chain researchers with an overview of social network analysis, covering both specific concepts (such as structural holes or betweenness centrality) and the generic explanatory mechanisms that network theorists often invoke to relate network variables to outcomes of interest. One reason for discussing mechanisms is to facilitate appropriate translation and context-specific modification of concepts rather than blind copying. We have also taken care to apply network concepts to both “hard” types of ties (e.g., materials and money flows) and “soft” types of ties (e.g., friendships and sharing-of-information), as both are crucial (and mutually embedded) in the supply chain context. Another aim of the review is to point to areas in other fields that we think are particularly suitable for supply chain management (SCM) to draw network concepts from, such as sociology, ecology, input–output research and even the study of romantic networks. We believe the portability of many network concepts provides a potential for unifying many fields, and a consequence of this for SCM may be to decrease the distance between SCM and other branches of management science.
This study uses social network analysis to examine distributed leadership in work teams. We used sociometric data from 28 field-based sales teams to investigate how the network structure of leadership perceptions considered at the team level of analysis was related to team performance. We failed to find support for the idea that the more leadership is distributed across the members of a team the better the team's performance: Decentralization of the leadership network (across three different operationalizations of network decentralization) was not significantly related to superior team performance. But we did find support for the idea that certain kinds of decentralized leadership structures are associated with better team performance than others. Our study suggests that distributed leadership structures can differ with regard to important structural characteristics, and these differences can have important implications for team performance.
We discuss our ethnographic research on personal social networks in the workplace, arguing that traditional institutional resources are being replaced by resources that workers mine from their own networks. Social networks are key sources of labor and information in a rapidly transforming economy characterized by less institutional stability and fewer reliable corporate resources. The personal social network is fast becoming the only sensible alternative to the traditional "org chart" for many everyday transactions in today's economy.
https://sites.google.com/site/ucinetsoftware/
This article introduces the social network approach - its origins, key concepts, and methods. We argue for its use in organizational settings and apply the network approach in a comparative analysis of two organizations.
Similarity breeds connection. This principle--the homophily principle--structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
In order to test the social mechanisms through which organizational climate emerges, this article introduces a model that combines transformational leadership and social interaction as antecedents of climate strength (i.e., the degree of within-unit agreement about climate perceptions). Despite their longstanding status as primary variables, both antecedents have received limited empirical research. The sample consisted of 45 platoons of infantry soldiers from 5 different brigades, using safety climate as the exemplar. Results indicate a partially mediated model between transformational leadership and climate strength, with density of group communication network as the mediating variable. In addition, the results showed independent effects for group centralization of the communication and friendship networks, which exerted incremental effects on climate strength over transformational leadership. Whereas centralization of the communication network was found to be negatively related to climate strength, centralization of the friendship network was positively related to it. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Der Beitrag diskutiert die Möglichkeiten der Triangulation qualitativer und quantitatver Methoden in der Netzwerkanalyse. In der empirischen Sozialforschung versteht man unter Triangulation die Kombination von unterschiedlichen Methoden, durch welche eine umfassendere und präzisere Erkenntnisgrundlage gewonnen werden kann. Zu klären ist dabei, wann eine triangulierende Forschungsstrategie in Frage kommt sowie welche Art Triangulation durchgeführt werden soll. Der Beitrag beschränkt sich auf Verfahren der Netzwerkanalyse, die explizit für die Untersuchung von Relationen entworfen wurden. Gemeinsam ist sämtlichen Verfahren, dass sich diese eindeutig der Kategorie quantitativer Methoden zuordnen lassen und bisher nur vereinzelt von qualitativen Methoden die Rede war. Triangulation sollte immer dann in Betracht gezogen werden, wenn variierende Relevanzsetzungen vorliegen, von einer hohen Bedeutung von Kontextfaktoren auszugehen ist und wenig Vorwissen hinsichtlich der systemspezifischen Relevanzsetzungen besteht. Eine Triangulation in der Netzwerkanalyse ist unerlässlich, wenn es darum geht, nicht nur Strukturen und deren Effekte zu beschreiben, sondern auch zugrunde liegende Akteursstrategien zu identifizieren, mit denen sich Netzwerkstrukturen, -effekte und -dynamiken besser erklären und verstehen lassen. (ICB2)
Walk into any organization and you will get a snapshot of the company in action--people and products moving every which way. But ask for a picture of the company and you will be given the org chart, with its orderly little boxes showing just the names and titles of managers. Now there's a more revealing way to depict the people and operations within an organization--an approach called the organigraph. The organigraph is not a chart. It's a map that offers an overview of the company's functions and the ways that people organize themselves at work. Perhaps most important, an organigraph can help managers see untapped competitive opportunities. Drawing on the organigraphs they created for about a dozen companies, authors Mintzberg and Van der Heyden illustrate just how valuable a tool the organigraph is. For instance, one they created for Electrocomponents, a British distributor of electrical and mechanical items, led managers to a better understanding of the company's real expertise--business-to-business relationships. As a result of that insight, the company wisely decided to expand in Asia and to increase its Internet business. As one manager says, "It allowed the company to see all sorts of new possibilities." With traditional hierarchies vanishing and newfangled--and often quite complex--organizational forms taking their place, people are struggling to understand how their companies work. What parts connect to one another? How should processes and people come together? Whose ideas have to flow where? With their flexibility and realism, organigraphs give managers a new way to answer those questions.
The need of employees to contribute to the generation, promotion, and realization of innovative
ideas has proliferated extensive research about employees’ innovative work behavior. While
it has been argued that innovative work behavior contains a substantial socio-political dimension,
the social processes that take place during the generation, promotion, and realization
of innovative ideas have received little attention. We explored the determinants for choosing
interaction partners during the innovation process and hypothesized that employees’ decisions
are largely influenced by their general patterns of social interactions they display during daily
work. Moreover, in line with similarity attraction theory and homophily literature, we argued
that employees are more likely to interact with colleagues who are similar to themselves. In
this exploratory study, we investigated 1,038 dyadic relationships between employees of five
complete networks using social network analysis. After analyzing each network on its own,
we combined the results in a meta-analysis. The results show first evidence for our arguments.
We contribute to the literature by emphasizing the social side of innovative work behavior in
groups of employees. Based on this insight, attention can then be drawn to factors that play
a role in the decision to engage in social interactions during processes of innovation development.
Towards Relational Sociology argues that social worlds comprise networks of interaction and relations. Crossley asserts that relations are lived trajectories of iterated interaction, built up through a history of interaction, but also entailing anticipation of future interaction. In addition, he demonstrates how networks comprise multiple dyadic relations which are mutually transformed through their combination. On this conceptual basis he builds a relational foundation for sociology. Over the course of the book, three central sociological dichotomies are addressed - individualism/holism, structure/agency and micro/macro - and utilised as a foil against which to construct the case for relational sociology. Through this, Crossley is able to argue that neither individuals nor 'wholes' - in the traditional sociological sense - should take precedence in sociology. Rather sociologists should focus upon evolving and dynamic networks of interaction and relations. The book covers many of the key concepts and concerns of contemporary sociology, including identity, power, exchange and meaning. As such it is an invaluable reference tool for postgraduate students and researchers alike.
This is a review of argument and evidence on the connection between social networks and social capital. My summary points are three: (1) Research and theory will better cumulate across studies if we focus on the network mechanisms responsible for social capital effects rather than trying to integrate across metaphors of social capital loosely tied to distant empirical indicators. (2) There is an impressive diversity of empirical evidence showing that social capital is more a function of brokerage across structural holes than closure within a network, but there are contingency factors. (3) The two leading network mechanisms can be brought together in a productive way within a more general model of social capital. Structural holes are the source of value added, but network closure can be essential to realizing the value buried in the holes.
Social network researchers are routinely faced with the boundary specification problem, namely, where to place limits on nodes that constitute a social network. The complexity of the issue varies; some networks are easily delineated, while others are not. For instance, if we were interested in exploring the relations among older people in an elder care home, then ‘residence’ would define actor membership. However, where a network exists with ambiguous, perhaps unstable, outer limits and its population proves tricky to access, significant challenges arise for the researcher. In this article, I consider ‘the boundary specification problem’ as it relates to an amorphous, ‘tricky-to-access’ population of cross-community youth leaders in North Belfast, Northern Ireland. This article will review current strategies and approaches for bounding social networks, assess the applicability of each and provide practical insights and extended ideas around delineating ambiguous, unstable, elusive structures composed of ‘tricky to access’ populations.
Informal learning has become an important driver for professional development and workplace learning. Yet, however powerful informal learning may be, there is a problem when it comes to making it a real asset within organizations: Informal learning activities are spontaneous and mostly invisible to others. The aim of this study is to develop a method that helps raise awareness about these activities using a learning analytics approach. This method concentrates on detecting and visualizing informal professional social networks and finding ways in which their presence and accessibility can be improved. This study shows that the presented methodology is a promising research-driven intervention. With this methodology we can detect multiple (isolated) networks in organizations, connect ideas, and facilitate value creation. Using this approach, organizations can link with existing informal networks of practice and unlock their potential for organizational learning by giving them a voice and making their results more explicit within the organization.
Since the mid 1980s, organization theorists have highlighted the emergence of the networked model of organization as a response to global competition and pressures for increased market flexibility. Cultural industries have not been immune from this development. In this paper, we examine the shift from hierarchy to network in the U.K. television industry. We argue that an important result of this disaggregation is the emergence oflatent organization, groupings of individuals and teams of individuals that persist through time and are periodically drawn together for recurrent projects by network brokers who either buy in programmes for publisher-broadcasters or who draw together those artists and technicians who actually produce them. In conclusion, we note how latent organizations may become increasingly important foreffective cultural industry production, and in particular how they may provide stable points of reference and recurring work projects for those many individuals now working outside of large, vertically integrated producer-broadcasters.
While the recent focus on knowledge has undoubtedly benefited organizational studies, the literature still presents a sharply contrasting and even contradictory view of knowledge, which at times is described as "sticky" and at other times "leaky." This paper is written on the premise that there is more than a problem with metaphors at issue here, and more than accounts of different types of knowledge (such as "tacit" and "explicit") can readily explain. Rather, these contrary descriptions of knowledge reflect different, partial, and sometimes "balkanized" perspectives from which knowledge and organization are viewed. Taking the community of practice as a unifying unit of analysis for understanding knowledge in the firm, the paper suggests that often too much attention is paid to the idea of community, too little to the implications of practice. Practice, we suggest, creates epistemic differences among the communities within a firm, and the firm's advantage over the market lies in dynamically coordinating the knowledge produced by these communities despite such differences. In making this argument, we argue that analyses of systemic innovation should be extended to embrace all firms in a knowledge economy, not just the classically innovative. This extension will call for a transformation of conventional ideas coordination and of the trade-off between exploration and exploitation.
Similarity breeds connection. This principle - the homophily principle - structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, comembership, and other types of relationship. The result is that people's personal networks are homogeneous with regard to many sociodemographic, behavioral, and intrapersonal characteristics. Homophily limits people's social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. Homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments, with age, religion, education, occupation, and gender following in roughly that order. Geographic propinquity, families, organizations, and isomorphic positions in social systems all create contexts in which homophilous relations form. Ties between nonsimilar individuals also dissolve at a higher rate, which sets the stage for the formation of niches (localized positions) within social space. We argue for more research on: (a) the basic ecological processes that link organizations, associations, cultural communities, social movements, and many other social forms; (b) the impact of multiplex ties on the patterns of homophily; and (c) the dynamics of network change over time through which networks and other social entities co-evolve.
This article investigates, for leadership research, the implications of new directions in social network theory that emphasize networks as both cognitive structures in the minds of organizational members and opportunity structures that facilitate and constrain action. We introduce the four core ideas at the heart of the network research program: the importance of relations, actors' embeddedness, the social utility of connections, and the structural patterning of social life. Then we present a theoretical model of how network cognitions in the minds of leaders affect three types of networks: the direct ties surrounding leaders, the pattern of direct and indirect ties within which leaders are embedded in the whole organization and the interorganizational linkages formed by leaders as representatives of organizations. We suggest that these patterns of ties can contribute to leader effectiveness.
We use survey network and personality profile data to explore the idea that personality varies systematically with structural holes. We draw two conclusions from the analysis: (1) Personality does vary with structural holes. The association is concentrated in a few items, but those few personality items describe three-fourths of the variance in network constraint. (2) The association is consistent with the structural hole argument. People in the least constrained networks claim the personality of an entrepreneurial outsider (versus conforming and obedient insider), in search of authority (versus security), thriving on advocacy and change (versus stability). We summarize with a network entrepreneur personality index that defines a surprisingly accurate probability of the respondent having an entrepreneurial network. We conclude with cautionary evidence from a survey of corporate staff in a large financial organization. Where the personality index is associated with entrepreneurial networks (lower ranks), neither the index nor the networks are associated with manager performance. Where manager performance is significantly linked with entrepreneurial networks (more senior ranks), the personality index is not associated with network structure, and performance is not higher for managers with more entrepreneurial personalities. The personality data are an interesting correlate, but no substitute for sociometric data.
This paper combines the concept of weak ties from social network research and the notion of complex knowledge to explain the role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits in a multiunit organization. I use a network study of 120 new-product development projects undertaken by 41 divisions in a large electronics company to examine the task of developing new products in the least amount of time. Findings show that weak interunit ties help a project team search for useful knowledge in other subunits but impede the transfer of complex knowledge, which tends to require a strong tie between the two parties to a transfer. Having weak interunit ties speeds up projects when knowledge is not complex but slows them down when the knowledge to be transferred is highly complex. I discuss the implications of these findings for research on social networks and product innovation.
The social cognition of social structure: Examining the learning of relations
- G A Janicik
- GA Janicik
Applied network analysis: A methodological introduction
- E O Laumann
- P V Marsden
- D Prensky
- EO Laumann