Getting Connected: The Inaugural Seminar of the Laboratory for Applied Network Research

1. Getting Connected:The Inaugural Seminar of the Laboratory for Applied Network Research Valentina Kuskova May 20, 2014 NRU HSE International Laboratory for Applied Network Research http://anr.hse.ru

2. The Lab: Introductions • Who we are • What we do • Projects • Papers / Conference Presentations • Education • Personal and Professional Development • Involvement in the Community • Basic responsibilities and rules of conduct • Special events and other admin issues

3. Getting Connected • What is a network? • Example: how did some of you learn of this lab? • A network is simply “a set of relations between objects which could be people, organizations, nations; brain cells, electrical transformers. • “Network” is not the same as “networking.” Transformers do not “network.” Therefore, we are mostly concerned with social networks and their information flows.

4. Getting Connected Cont’d • Networks are information maps • Networks can be hierarchical (leaders vs. followers) • Twitter, anyone? • Networks are conduits • Flows can be wanted (obvious) or unwanted (e.g., power grid failures, obesity) • Networks can be studied at all levels

5. Our first article:“Social Network Analysis for Organizations” • Authors: Noel M. Tichy, Michael L. Tushman and Charles Fombrun • Journal: Academy of Management Review • Year of publication: 1979 • Summary: First introduction of SNA into organizational research • Question: why bring SNA into organizational research?

6. Article Summary • Organizations are social groupings with relatively stable patterns of interaction over time • Such interactions can happen on three levels: • Macro • Micro • Meso • Social network perspective is capable of capturing all such interactions on multiple levels

7. Definition of Networks • Mitchell, 1969: "a specific set of linkages among a defined set of persons, with the additional property that the characteristics of these linkages as a whole may be used to interpret the social behavior of the persons involved”

8. Social Network Approach • Social networks approach views organizations as system of objects joined by a variety of relationships • Network analysis is concerned with the structure and patterning of these relationships and seeks to identify both their causes and consequences. • Individual level • Organizational level • Interorganizational level

9. Social Network Origins • SNA originated from three different research streams: • Sociology • Anthropology • Role theory

10. SNA Basic Concepts • Please see the article for details! (although we will come back to these concepts over and over) • In general, three sets of properties of networks are of particular interest: • Transactional content • Nature of links • Structural characteristics

11. Transactional content • What is exchanged when two actors are linked? • Four types of transactional contents can be distinguished: • (1) exchange of affect (liking, friendship), • (2) exchange of influence or power, • (3) exchange of information, and • (4) exchange of goods or services. • Social networks can be developed for each content type.

12. Nature of the links • The linkages between pairs of individuals can be described in terms o several characteristics: • Intensity: the strength of the relation as indicated by the degree to which individuals honor obligations or forego personal costs to carry out obligations or by the number of contacts in a unit of time • Reciprocity: the degree to which individuals report the same (or similar) intensities with each other for a content area.

13. Nature Cont’d • Clarity of expectations: the degree to which individuals agree about appropriate behavior in their relations to one another. • Multiplexity: individuals have multiple roles, such as worker, husband, community member, and group member. Multiplexity identifies the degree to which a pair is linked by multiple roles. The more role requirements linking one person to another, the stronger the linkage.

14. Structural Characteristics • Structural characteristics can be divided into four levels: • External network: in what ways is the focal unit linked with external domains? • Total internal network: given a set of actors that make up the network, in what ways are they linked? • Clusters within the network: areas of the network where actors are more closely linked to each other than they are to the rest of the network • Individuals as special nodes within the network: not all individuals are equally important in social networks.

15. Data collection and analysis • Article presents a summary of data collection and analysis methods, but we’ll skip them for now: • First, we are 35 years away from those methods • Second, we’ll be studying them all, and more, a great detail later

16. Example of SNA in Organizations: a Case • Data from Aston study (Pugh, Hickson, Hinnings, & Turner, 1969) • Theory: Contingency theory of organizations • Mechanic organization • Organic organization

17. Results

18. Future Research Agenda • Network analysis represents an underutilized framework for analyzing and conceptualizing organizations. Research agenda for studies based on network analysis includes: • Interorganizationalrelationships • Organizations and their boundaries • Career patterns and succession • Career change • Design configuration • Power and political processes