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
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
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.
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
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?
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
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”
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
Social Network Origins
• SNA originated from three different research
streams:
– Sociology
– Anthropology
– Role theory
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Results
Future Research Agenda
• Network analysis represents an underutilized
framework for analyzing and conceptualizing
organizations. Research agenda for studies
based on network analysis includes:
– Interorganizational relationships
– Organizations and their boundaries
– Career patterns and succession
– Career change
– Design configuration
– Power and political processes