Social Network Analysis in Organizational Studies

The IUP Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. IX, No. 3, pp. 74-97, July 2011, 2011

This paper is an attempt to systematize what has been published in the field of social network research applied to strategy and organization. The main goal is to identify the dimensions along which social network studies vary. However, the terminological and conceptual confusion, together with the increase in the volume of social network research, makes such studies not easily accessible. Thus, in order to map and assess the existing intellectual territory, the paper aims at synthesizing scientific articles on network research in a systematic and reproducible manner through the adoption of a complex data analysis approach, content analysis in conjunction with multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis. Articles are classified according to dimensions extracted with multiple correspondence analysis, then a typology of network studies is created. Considering together the research streams emerged from this typology could be interpreted as specific dimensions of the more general research stream of social capital. In other words, social capital seems to be the very trait of union among social network studies in strategic and organizational research.

Academy of Management Review, 1979

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. Organizations can be viewed as social groupings with relatively stable patterns of interaction over time [Katz & Kahn, 1966; Weick, 1969]. Such a

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013

The article considers the possibility of application of the economic sociology concept in the process of institutional value creation at a management level of organizational structure. In our research we are particularly interested in the first type of networ k structures as in it is based on informal interactions inside the organization, among divisions, such cooperation in the future will form the social capital of the organization which represents a certain value for the organization, and its competitive advantages. Studying of intrafirm interactions is presented from a position of organizational structure formation.

Sociology and other social sciences have employed network analysis earlier than management and organization sciences, and much earlier than economics, which has been the last one to systematically adopt it. Nevertheless, the development of network economics during last 15 years has been massive, alongside three main research streams: strategic formation network modeling, (mostly descriptive) analysis of real economic networks, and optimization methods of economic networks. The main reason why this enthusiastic and rapidly diffused interest of economists came so late is that the most essential network properties, like externalities, endogenous change processes, and nonlinear propagation processes, definitely prevent the possibility to build a general – and indeed even partial – competitive equilibrium theory. For this paradigm has dominated economics in the last century, this incompatibility operated as a hard brake, and presented network analysis as an inappropriate epistemology. Further, being intrinsically (and often, until recent times, also radically) structuralist, social network analysis was also antithetic to radical methodological individualism, which was – and still is – economics dominant methodology. Though culturally and scientifically influenced by economists in some fields, like finance, banking and industry studies, scholars in management and organization sciences were free from “neoclassical economics chains”, and therefore more ready and open to adopt the methodology and epistemology of social network analysis. The main and early field through which its methods were channeled was the sociology of organizations, and in particular group structure and communication, because this is a research area largely overlapped between sociology and management studies. Currently, network analysis is becoming more and more diffused within management and organization sciences. Mostly descriptive until 15 years ago, all the fields of social network analysis have a great opportunity of enriching and developing its methods of investigation through statistical network modeling, which offers the possibility to develop, respectively, network formation and network dynamics models. They are a good compromise between the much more powerful agent-based simulation models and the usually descriptive (or poorly analytical) methods.

The study of five types of organizational networks aims to understand how knowledge sharing and social capital are related together to management of organizational networks. Our research questions were (1) what are the enablers and obstacles for knowledge sharing, (2) what are the connections between enablers and obstacles of knowledge sharing and dimensions of social capital, and (3) what are the managerial implications for network management. Based on findings of this study, we assume that in knowledge management and in social capital development in organizational networks different dimensions of social capital may need different kinds of development efforts. The study showed that different network types had different kinds of knowledge sharing needs, and in part similar and different enablers or obstacles of knowledge sharing. Enhancing the development of relevant dimensions of social capital the effectiveness of these enablers may be intensified in the networks.

The Academy of Management Annals, 2010

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

AJIT-e Online Academic Journal of Information Technology, 2018

In this article, social network analysis SNA is defined and historical development process is explained. A comprehensive literature search has been conducted for this purpose. SAA is a powerful method that centralizes individuals and their relations, in that the effect of the individual on the social network can be uncovered and the network of individual groups can be evaluated holistically. SNA shows the structural gaps and social capital in institutions, and focuses managers' attention on critical informal networks. Evaluating strategically important networks within an organization, make "invisible" groups visible in the interaction and allows them to work with key groups to facilitate effective collaboration.

2019

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Journal of management, 2003

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.