Researching Organizational Systems using Social Network Analysis

A key impact of organizational systems and new information technologies is that they enable new organizational forms the structural features or patterns of relationships and information flows of an organization. Consequently, research on organization systems can benefit from methods that are explicitly directed toward describing and measuring organizational forms and structures. This article proposes social network analysis as a highly appropriate and useful method for framing and describing the effects of organizational systems on organizational forms and structures. It discusses the concept of representing organizations as social structures and how network analysis is an appropriate method given that representation. The article draws several implications of examining the impact of organizational systems from a network view, and reviews three examples of using network analysis to examine the impact of information technology.