Social Interaction and Power Relations in Companies: An Entropy-based Approach Using the Expert System Shell-SPIRIT

Abstract

The changed cooperation and organizational structure in companies are to be examined quantitatively with regard to their power structures and changes are to be revealed. The expert system Shell Symmetrical Probabilistic Intensional Reasoning in Inference Networks in Transition (Shell-SPIRIT, a.k.a., SPIRIT) is to be applied as the SPIRIT tool was already used for different applications in the context of information faithful knowledge processing, wherewith it’s achievement potential becomes visible, see, e.g., Rödder et al., Logic Journal of IGPL, Vol. 14 (2006). More recently the potential to model power structures and measure their power potentials in the SPIRIT tool has been recognized, see, e.g., Rödder et al., Decision Analytics Journal, (2021). This chapter will discuss from a practitioner’s perspective, how power structures in companies might have changed by Corona Virus Pandemic (a.k.a. Corona) in order to adequately model this in the SPIRIT tool. The chapter also presents and discusses the literature research, modeling results of power structures and rankings based on employee skills obtained from the SPIRIT tool, and their practical relevance.