Social Network Analysis

“In the networked organization, individual success and the success of a team depend less on reporting structure and more on ‘who you know’.”

Social Network Analysis? Social network analysis (SNA) provides a rich and systematic means of assessing informal networks by mapping and analyzing relationships among people, teams, departments or even entire organizations. A social network analysis examines the structure of social relationships in a group to uncover the informal connections between people.

A Peek in the History Most network analysts cite 1934 as the year in which the formal analysis of social networks began with Joseph Moreno’s introduction of the tools and methods of sociometry. Moreno developed the sociogram, a systematic method for graphically representing individuals as points/nodes and the relationships between them as lines/arcs.

SNA became much more popular with researchers in the early 1970s when advances in computer technology made it possible to study large groups.

How is SNA different? SNA assumes ‘people are all interdependent’. Different from the approach which assumes that ‘what people do, think, and feel is independent of who they know’.

SNA of a Petroleum Corp.

Business applications of SNA Knowledge Management and Collaboration Team-building Human Resources Sales and Marketing Strategy

Conducting SNA Three Elements: A Group. Interactions / Ties. Attributes.

A typical SNA Table

What Ties Reveal Are ties strong or weak? Strong ties : frequent interaction, feelings of closeness. Provide emotional support. Require high energy to maintain. Weak Ties: less social support Easier to maintain. Critical for innovation.

What Ties Reveal Important to have a good balance between strong and weak ties. Too many strong ties may limit access to important new information.

What Ties Reveal Are ties reciprocal? Relationships are naturally two-way. Many can be one-way and the directionality provides more information. In a network diagram, the arrows indicate directionality.

Are ties reciprocal?

What Ties Reveal Are ties direct or indirect? Direct Connection – connection b/w two people. Central people = more direct connections. Central people have more influence. Indirect Connection - “friend of a friend.” “small world problem”

What Ties Reveal Ties can represent a range of relationship types. likes, trusts, respects, reports to, communicates with, or gets information from sells to, buys from, delivers to, contracts with or collaborates with

Ties – The Who likes whom experiment

SNA Concepts Centrality. Measures of centrality include degree, betweenness and closeness centrality.

Centrality

SNA Concepts Social capital Social capital refers to the total sum of potential or actual resources that a person accrues as a result of interpersonal relationships.

SNA Concepts Structural holes A structural hole occurs whenever a person (a) has a relationship with someone who is connected to a separate cluster of people and (b) has no other direct or indirect connection with the people in that cluster.

Structural Holes

SNA Concepts Brokerage A person who connects two otherwise unconnected people is in a position to manage or “broker” information flow.

SNA Concepts Density. Density captures how closely a group or subgroup is knit. It is a proportion that indicates the number of actual ties present in the group relative to the number of possible ties in the group When calculating the density of an individual’s network, SNA looks at how closely connected a person’s friends are to each other.

SNA Concepts Cohesion. one common measure is the average number of ties it takes for a person in the group to “reach” another person in the group. There are several measures of cohesion, including density.

SNA Concepts Subgroup Identification. closely knit subgroups or “cliques” in a network. every unit is connected to every other unit in a clique. overlapping members v/s segregated subgroups.

Final Words about SNA Analyzing the combined network provides a great deal of insight into who is critical as well as who is currently less utilized within a group in terms of knowledge creation and sharing. In the words of one of the people central in the telecommunications practice, “I spend about an hour and a half every day responding to calls and other informational requests. . . [and] . . . none of that time gets seen in my performance metrics.”

Final Words about SNA Network analysis makes such interactions that are critical to a group visible, thus providing an opportunity for management to acknowledge these people and the critical role they play. A new approach to solving traditional problems in business and management. It assumes that people are interconnected, that connections have real consequences for performance and satisfaction, and that connections can be structured to optimize individual, group, and organizational outcomes.

Final Words about SNA The interpersonal connections that we once took for granted are no longer an assured part of everyday life. SNA places a premium on these relationships and their role in the way we do business.

References Inside Social Network Analysis by Kate Ehrlich and Inga Carboni Knowing What We Know: Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Social Networks by Rob Cross, Andrew Parker, Laurence Prusak, Stephen P. Borgatti

A SEMINAR by Tejaswi Khanna MNW-896-2k11