ABSTRACT
The potential of social network analysis (SNA) to foster knowledge management initiatives by providing insights into organizational communication and collaboration infrastructures has been the topic of frequent discussion (Swan et al., 1999; Cross et al., 2001, 2003; Marouf, 2007; Cross and Parker, 2004; Marouf and Doreian, 2010). In contrast to the formal tree structures of organizational charts, which are usually created on a management level, the generation of network visualizations is driven primarily from the bottom up by data collected through individual questionnaires or mined from communication databases. The resulting visualizations are able to display vital patterns of informal communication and knowledge sharing, and thus mirror how work actually gets done by teams of actors with different skills and competencies (Krackhardt and Hanson, 1993; Cross et al., 2003). To illustrate some of the insights that SNA methods can offer, Figure 11.1 shows a relational structure (i.e., a node link diagram) that could represent the network of a small organization, obtained by a question like “Who do you ask for advice?”
