Sunbelt XXXI International Network for Social Network ... - INSNA

Centrality, Structural Holes And Status: Examination Of Preferred Tie Alteration Strategies In A High Tech FirmHalgin, Daniel S.; Gopalakrishnan, Gopakumar; Borgatti, Stephen P.Intra‐Organizational Networks and Job PerformanceCommunication Networks, Tie decisions, Knowledge exchange, Tie formation strategyTHURS.PM1This paper investigates preferred tie alteration strategies of 70 employees in a multinational high technology company. Preferred tie alterations includeforming new ties and strengthening or weakening existing ties. Strategies for such alterations might include the goals of increasing one’s centrality, creatingstructural holes, and improving one’s reputation (via being connected to high status others). To identify such strategies in this setting, we analyze bothrespondents’ actual networks and their preferred networks (e.g., “Who would you like to develop a stronger relationship (interact more) with in order to bemore effective at work?”and, “Who would you like to interact with less in order to be more effective at work?”). We compare differences across gender, role,geography, and organizational tenure as well as examine whether tie alteration strategies are associated with individual work performance (as determined bysupervisor evaluations).Characterizing Power Elites By The Evolution Of Power Structuresde Salabert, Arturo; Pentland, Alex; Cebrián, ManuelElite networksHistorical Networks, Cohesion, Centralisation, Co‐evolution, Elites, ModellingTHURS.AM2Elites and power structures have attracted the interest of sociologists and political scientist for decades. However, most of the studies so far have been eitherqualitative or speculative, and focused on small samples of data or limited time spans. The few quantitative studies available are mostly based on statisticalanalysis of aggregated political groups. Use of aggregated data makes it difficult to gain an understanding of the fine‐grain power interdependencies amongpolitical actors. This is a critical limitation because power elites, if they exist, must be mediated by tangible networks of individual influence. We present anetwork theory approach to the study the evolution of the power structure in Spain over a period of 53 years (1939 to 1992). Our data contains the full set ofappointments and reappointments of highly ranked officials. This data set is especially interesting both for its considerable length and coverage, and because itincludes three radically different political situations: a 37‐year dictatorship, a 6‐year transition, and the first 10 years of democracy. These different situationserve the function of external control variables in our study. Our approach is inspired by the seminal work on matching, vacancies, and mobility by HarrisonWhite, although with a novel approach by which we uncover the power structure by constructing the network of co‐movements, i.e. politicians that traversetogether though the space of possible appointments (the `power space') are assumed to be connected. This allows us to identify hidden relationships both atthe scale of groups and individuals, and to gain a fine‐grained understanding of the power struggle along the different periods. Finally, a network model for theevolution of power structures is constructed (with realistic parameters extracted from dataset), where we explicitly prohibit the emergence of elites. Wecompare it with the real data, and dramatic differences are found. This is evidence that the behavior of power groups in centralized organizations hasdistinctive, characteristic, and non‐egalitarian patterns that can be measured from observable public information. We show that the existence of hidden powergroups can be detected without any prior knowledge of the human relationships and that, surprisingly, the power structures are not necessarily driven by thehighest and most visible positions. The study also shows how quantitative network parameters can be produced to measure the level of elitism/egalitarianismin an organization based on the observation of simple individual behavior.