SNA Goes Corporate
Social network analysis got its start as a social theory developed by scientists in the 1930s who were exploring social patterns. One of those researchers, a New York City psychiatrist named Jacob Moreno, is often credited with inventing the "sociogram", a diagram of points and lines designed to illustrate relationships and social interactions among people. Scientists and mathematicians built on these ideas over several decades, investigating ways in which people get jobs, become leaders and develop friendships. They then mapped the flow of information through social networks. From the start, SNA has attracted philosophers, sociologists and statisticians looking to analyze human relationships in a mathematical and visual way.
According to Valdis Krebs, an SNA guru who worked with IBM and started his own SNA software company called Orgnet.com, SNA can be defined as "the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, or other information- or knowledge-processing entities".
Over the past several years, with help from Krebs and other SNA believers, the corporate world has been waking up to the uses for this once arcane social science. Some of the interest stems from disappointment with efforts to build knowledge management databases that were largely ignored by employees. "We're seeing that companies want to have a picture of who the key knowledge brokers are in their organization," says Cross. "The rise of blogs, online support sites and social networking sites - such as Friendster and LinkedIn - have also helped raise SNA's profile."
"So many communications are electronic these days that it has become much easier to record who is talking to whom," says Stanley Wasserman, professor of sociology, psychology and statistics at Indiana University and chief scientist for Visible Path, a software company devoted to analyzing social networks. "It's a natural thing to examine these networks and try to make sense of them."
Companies interested in trying SNA can use software that falls into two basic categories: programs that track e-mail and other kinds of electronic communication, and programs that work from data collected via employee surveys. Such surveys typically ask employees to identify their top contacts within and outside the organization, as well as details about who provides good advice and how often they communicate. Companies may come up against some resistance from employees who may not want their networks mapped, but, as Mars was able to do, this resistance can be muted by promising confidentiality on the data supplied and by offering them versions of their "personal networks".
SNA can be a useful diagnostic tool in a wide variety of industries and professions, ranging from law firms to drug companies and financial services companies. But the practice is relatively new in the corporate arena, and finding ROI can be a challenge. "We use it to find out how we are connected," says Vic Gulas, chief people and knowledge officer for environmental and construction consultancy MWH Global. "The challenge is to link actual [company] performance to SNA." Still, there may be strategic and targeted uses in which SNA can make a difference. For example, pharmaceutical companies are using it to help identify key scientists and discover how they are developing ideas for new drugs; government agencies are using the technique to pinpoint top performers who may be close to retirement in order to quickly devise methods to transfer that knowledge; and investment banks are using it to find better ways of serving clients and clinching deals. "Lost knowledge is an invisible problem, so companies don't always see the threat," DeLong says. "SNA makes it visible."
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