Understanding Organizational Interactions From a Social Network Perspective

Abstract

Social networks aid the theorization of interdependencies of organizational components and provide futuristic methods to operationalize and analyze relationships. The purpose is to study the existing knowledge base, understand interactions in organizations as socially composed networks of relationships, and enhance comprehension of social networks. The chapter provides a systematic review and synthesis of select research papers. It presents highlights to understand key concepts, theories, and models, with emergent themes to comprehend the role of networks and importance of emergent structures in the systems of organizations. It cites technology as an enabler of interaction in intra-organizational communication and provides deconstructed models of multidimensional networks. These will guide young network researchers in the area of social science. It concludes that better integration of information technology and network literature will be instrumental to micro-level studies of organizations and create sustainable networks beneficial to organizations.