ABSTRACT
Group decision-making has many advantages over making decisions as individuals. The sharing of skills and knowledge makes the group a powerful decision-making entity. Social network analysis (SNA) is a statistical and graphic methodology for understanding patterns of interconnectedness and interactions within and without a group. Collectively, SNA is considered to be a clean method for comparison between layers within a group, subgroups or between groups. Informal relationships among individuals are typically more representative of work processes in an organization than relationships established by position within the formal structure. Often, success in organizations may depend less on reporting structure and more on an unofficial web of contacts. SNA can be an invaluable tool for systematically assessing and then intervening at critical points within an informal network. SNA has been applied to fields as diverse as anthropology, ecology, epidemiology, linguistics, organization studies, political science, psychology and sociology; with influence in statistics.
