Organizational Network Analysis

The org chart shows formal authority, but work, influence, and ideas usually flow through informal relationships that the chart does not capture. Brass found that positions in workflow, communication, and friendship networks predicted perceived influence and promotion beyond formal rank, and Ibarra found that network centrality predicted involvement in innovation. The informal network is where advice is sought, trust is granted, and coalitions form, so mapping it explains organizational behavior that the hierarchy alone cannot. Organizational network analysis makes this otherwise invisible structure measurable and actionable.

It depends on the mechanism you care about. Degree centrality — the number of direct ties — captures local connectedness and access, useful when influence comes from being widely sought out. Betweenness centrality counts how often a person lies on the shortest paths between others, capturing brokerage and control over flows, useful when power comes from bridging otherwise separate groups. Ibarra showed that different forms of centrality matter for technical versus administrative innovation roles, so the right measure follows the theory. Many studies report several centrality measures and check whether results are robust across them.

Krackhardt measured not only each person's actual network position but also how accurately they perceived the whole informal network. He compared each member's mental map of the advice and friendship networks to the aggregated consensus and found that people who more accurately perceived the advice network were rated as more powerful, independent of their structural position. The intuition is that knowing who really talks to whom lets you navigate coalitions, find the right person, and anticipate reactions. Accuracy of the friendship network was not similarly related to power, underscoring that it is knowledge of the instrumental advice network that confers advantage.