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

Informal Status Hierarchies In Work Groups – Moving From Single To Multiple Individual QualitiesGrow, André; Wittek, Rafael; Flache, AndreasSimulation and Agent Based ModelsSocial Influence, agent‐based modeling, Inequalities in attachment networks, Emergence, Status hierarchiesFRI.PM1Informal status hierarchies in work groups receive increasing attention in organization research due to their impact on individual and group level outcomes.Informal status hierarchies are here conceptualized as inequalities in the attachment network in a group (i.e. individual differences in in‐/outdegree). Currentresearch on the emergence of such inequalities rests on two assumptions. First, individuals base their attachment decisions on a desirable quality of the target(e.g. research performance among academic university staff). Second, factors such as social influence can bias quality perceptions. Based on this, researchersmade predictions about inequalities in attachment networks. Hitherto research focused on situations in which individuals possess one desirable quality.However, in many organizations individuals possess multiple desirable qualities (e.g. research and teaching performance among academic university staff). Ourcontribution is to integrate this aspect into theories of the formation of status hierarchies. To this end we introduce new assumptions about how individualsdirect attachments to targets with multiple qualities. We elaborate our theory with an agent based computational model. In the model we assume thatindividuals possess multiple qualities of differential desirability. We examine the resulting status hierarchies and derive predictions about their emergenceunder varying conditions. One counterintuitive prediction of our model is that in groups with certain quality compositions it might not be the most desirablequality that leads to high individual status but a less desirable quality.Information Flows In Rural BotswanaWojcik, Deborah; Podkul, Timothy; McCarty, ChristopherOverlapping Personal NetworksSAT.AM1Water and wildlife are natural resources of paramount importance in the Okavango Delta region of rural Botswana, where communication around theseresources affect governance and conservation efforts. This research examines the hypothesis that network structure, community size and ethnicity can affectaccess to information and communication patterns within and beyond rural villages. We collected interview and personal network data from four villages ofvarying size, and overlapped the networks within each village to construct whole networks. These whole networks were compared and used to construct asample for further investigation of network structural effects on individual cognition. We will focus our discussion on the process, advantages and challengesof creating whole networks from personal networks.