"A Network Perspective on Passing Legislation"

Passing legislation in the US Congress involves navigating a bill through numerous checkpoints.  Overcoming these checkpoints is made easier by making trades among Congressmen who have control over the various checkpoints, and by having many other representatives backing the bill, amendment, or law.  While in theory, all congressmen could know all other congressmen, member time is highly structured by the committee process, and so the committee assignments network is used to examine the impact of working with many fellow committee-members (out-degree centrality) and working with many well-connected members (eigenvector centrality) to pass legislation.

Geographical Proximity as a Factor for Transnational Virtual-Based Social Movements

The International Students Movement is a new, virtual-based social movement organization compiled of pre-existing independent education activist organizations. This paper examines the relationship of geographical region as a factor in the formation of dyadic organizational ties. I ask the question, since the ISM is a virtual network, why might region play a role in the formation of these ties? In addition to the attribute of region, single versus multiple issue organization attributes are examined. QAP technique was used to compute the correlation between the elements of region and the corresponding elements of issue.  Granovetter's Strength of Weak Ties is used to explain the resulting correlation.

Social Networks in a Living Learning Community

Colleges and universities are using more residence hall-based communities of common academic interest, called Living Learning Communities (LLC) that are intended to aid students in academic and social development.  This study uses Social Network Analysis to map social ties within a LLC and compares student satisfaction and participation in the LLC with placement in the network structure.

"Customer Network Value:  Understanding customer value beyond traditional metrics"

Since I am a student in marketing, what I am trying to do is to use social network analysis ideas and techniques and apply them to marketing. In marketing, there is a metric called Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) that is widely used to assess the profitability of the customers of the firm. Based on this measure, companies segment customers in different groups (from the most profitable to the least profitable) and treat them accordingly. The most profitable ones receive discounts, special offers and VIP treatment whereas the least profitable ones do not. In some cases, some marketing scholars have suggested that firms are better off if they fire the least profitable customers. In my research I argue that although CLV is a good metric for clustering customers, it is not good enough. Because it is totally based on single customer financial contribution to the firm and it ignores the network effect. A good example would be when a customer is not himself financially profitable for the firm but has a lot of influence on others. In that case, if we use CLV, we might  conclude that it is better to fire him, however firing him will cause indirect loss for the firm. Using network literature and measures, I have tried to build a measure to capture the network effect of customers, which can be crucial in determining which customers should e treated with caution.

Good and Bad Apples:  The effects of the salient personality characteristics of single individuals on team outcomes. 

In this study we seek to investigate an important aspect of team dynamics that can substantially impact both relational and task-related team outcomes, but has been lacking in the literature.  The research question we investigate is as follows: How do the salient personality characteristics of single individuals affect team outcomes (i.e. both network structure and performance)?  In other words, how do the prominent personality characteristics of one person on a team affect both the pattern of relationships on the team and also the level of team satisfaction and performance?  Our results indicate that a highly neurotic individual negatively affects within-team friendship density and in turn team satisfaction.  In addition, an individual high in self-monitoring positively affects team level measures of performance.  The findings give empirical evidence to the common notion that one person on a team can significantly affect team level outcomes. 

Local power: A case study in the analysis of urban politics

Logan and Molotch's Growth Coalition Theory has offered promising insight into how growth occurs in urban settings, by illustrating how land owners, whom they call place entrepreneurs, strive to increase the exchange value of place. These efforts by place entrepreneurs to increase the exchange value of their land often creates conflict between use value coalitions of neighborhood groups, environ-mentalists, and preservationalists who tend to demand responsible growth or none at all. In my paper a network is established of 391 local actors and their ties to 24 different organizations prominent in the Lexington area through extensive content analysis of 2 local newspapers and several local blogs. . 2-mode Social Network Analysis methodology is used to show organizational interlocks and illustrate the local power structure. Several measures proposed by Borgatti and Everett 1997 are utilized to examine the structure of the growth coalitions and its opponents to see if their network positions provide insight on how political conflict unfolded over a controversial growth project. Several interviews of both local reporters and leaders are used to verify ties and provide qualitative data about the nature of ties in the network and how and why they formed. The preliminary findings of my analysis point to an inability of use value coalitions to form coalitions capable of mobilizing adequate resources to combat urban growth. This leads to a hypothesize that a large part of the inability of local activists to defeat growth coalitions is due to the use-value coalitions’ relative lack of network actors who have financial resources and 'access' to public officials through local boards of directors and campaign financing. In conclusion, suggestions are provided of possible methods to investigate deeper into this subject using existing qualitative methods of research complemented by newer quantitative Social Network Analysis methods.

"An Analysis of Innovation within the Irish Farmhouse Cheese Sector"

The purpose of this presentation is to assess the role of innovation within an apparently 'low-tech' sector of the Irish economy. The presentation will critically examine the role of innovation as a measure of firm performance. Empirical data will be used to assess the relationship between network position and innovation. A firms position within the network is believed to be an important indicator of access to external knowledge. Access to knowledge does not however imply the ability to use that knowledge. In addition a measure of the absorptive capacity of the firm will be used to test whether internal capabilities of the firm moderate the relationship between network position and innovation.