Knowledge Matters™

In my last blog-post I addressed the issue of network analysis ethics . This was in response to a blog-post discussion with Euan Semple on “The map is not the territory”, which is still ongoing. This blog-post addresses Euan’s concern that “the activity is invariably couched in terms of one group - managers, the business - mapping the relationships of everyone else - the people prepared to open up and use the social tools in the first place”.

Now my concern with this assertion is it is an unsubstantiated generalisation. In fact this criticism could be levelled against all sorts of investigative and diagnostic approaches! Perhaps there are network analysts out there that do focus myopically on one group, but this need not be the case. It is a matter of study design and what one seeks to discover, or understand.

My own research overseen by the University of Canberra seeks to map and understand artefact, inter-personal, inter-positional, inter-unit, and inter-organisational networks. Clearly this design is multi-dimensional, with each map providing a different world-view and arguably different fidelity.

I have come to call this approach business network analysis, or BNA for short. My thinking is not complete on this yet, but at the moment I think a BNA is a diagnostic methodology that elicits the capacity of an organisation to effectively engage in its activities. It provides the ability to examine quantitatively, qualitatively, and graphically macro and micro linkages between nodes, where nodes are individuals, projects, project teams, business units, entire organisations, or even business functions, policies or documents.

You should note in my definition that the emphasis is on diagnostic methodology, and the bringing together of quantitative, qualitative and visual methods at the micro and macro level. For me a reasonably complete, but time-consuming and data-intensive, analysis would involve mapping and analysing:

• collaboration practices;
• information flows;
• organisational and stakeholder interfaces;
• project interfaces;
• social capital; and
• policy relationships.

My point is it all comes down to what you seek to discover. What you want to know informs the study design and the questions. In this regard network analysis is no different to any other methodology. The questions matter. What you do with the answers is an altogether different thing!

Regards, Graham