Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Social Network Analysis


"Social network analysis is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities." 
----Valdis Krebs, 2002


Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a study of patterns between actors which include people, groups, and other network members. Each participant in the community is called an actor and depicted as a node. SNA not only focuses on the actors and the relationship between them, but also values relations between actors which are depicted as links or ties. It is a method for visualizing our people and connecting power, leading us to identify how we can best be interacted to share knowledge.


In the context of knowledge management, SNA enables relationships between people to be mapped in order to identify knowledge flows: who do people seek information and knowledge from? Who do they share information and knowledge with? In contrast to an organization chart which shows formal relationships such as who works where and who reports to whom, a social network analysis chart shows informal relationships. It allows managers to visualize and understand the many relationships that can either facilitate or impede knowledge creation and sharing. Because these relationships are normally invisible, SNA is sometimes referred to as an 'organizational x-ray', showing the real networks that operate underneath the surface organizational structure. Thus, social network analysis is mostly used to meet the following specific needs:

  • Facilitate identification of who knows who and who might know what.
  • Identify isolated teams or individuals and knowledge bottlenecks.
  • Improve the effectiveness of formal and informal communication channels.
  • Accelerate the flow of knowledge and information across functional and organizational boundaries.
  • Raise awareness of the importance of informal networks.
  • Visualize relationships within and outside of the organization.
  • Strategically work to improve knowledge flows.


Here are some applications of social network analysis:


Application of SNA in Social Psychology Research
Nowadays, SNA is increasingly being used to evaluate the communication patterns and status structures that emerge during students’ web-based discussions. SNA can reveal the most prolific and the most influential students, as well as those students who are isolated those who assume roles as mediators between their classmates.
Application of SNA in Knowledge Processes
SNA is now applied to analyze existing knowledge exchange processes in companies. In the past, these processes were mainly analyzed by traditional business process modeling methods, some of which are working with a specific knowledge perspective. The SNA however has no direct reference to processes; here persons with specific relationships (e.g. knowledge exchange) are mainly the object of interest. Therefore SNA metrics can be used to analyze knowledge and information flows in companies or in specific communities.
Application of SNA to Collaborative Team Formation
Team formation is a challenging problem in many large organizations in which it is entirely possible for two individuals to work on similar projects without realizing it. By applying social network analysis to mappings of co-authors and to mappings of related research paper keywords, it is easy to help generate teams of diverse individuals with similar interests and aptitudes.





9 comments:

  1. Thank you for introducing us the defination of SNA,together with some applications of social network analysis.The last one is very interesting and impressive.

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    1. yup,the words are very clear about what's SNA and how we introduce and analyse it.besides, the applications is very clear, too. i like the way of this article.

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    2. Thank you for your interest.I think social network analysis is a new discipline for us to learn.

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  2. I think you give some analyse idea about social network. You show us some different ways to measure the relationships between people. I think these analyse is very important because we can't know the relation by looking at the social network. The application you listed is also useful for certain area.

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    1. Yeah,it's true that social network analysis has become one of the most latest researches in the world,and applications I have introduced in the article are only a small part,I believe there are more useful applications of SNA.

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  3. SNA like an 'organizational x-ray'?That is a cool comparison. Maybe not only manager need to learn something about SNA, HR department also can use it in their daily work. ;D

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  4. Thank you for you explanation about the SNA. And I like your comparison of the organizational X-ray. Some relations between the data are difficult to find their importance. And people without any knowledge about social networking often ignore the data relations and is difficult to apply the interaction among data relations. So this course is very useful to help us know what social networking and how to use these knowledge about social networking to create the new products.

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  5. Really clear explanation about the SNA,however more detailed progress of calculation will be admirable. All in all, thanks for your explain that inspires me a lot.

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  6. This essay describes the usage of social network analysis in business world as it can be regarded as an x-ray of a organization. It is nice that examples are also given in the end which strengths the understanding of readers.

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