Developed by Alex Bavelas (A Mathematical Model for Group Structures, 1948), Linton C. Freeman (Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification, 1979), and Phillip Bonacich (1972), set out by Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust (Social Network Analysis, 1994) and by Stephen P. Borgatti, Ajay Mehra, Daniel J. Brass, and Giuseppe Labianca (Network Analysis in the Social Sciences, 2009), and brought to managers by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker (The Hidden Power of Social Networks, 2004).
Measures where each person sits in a web of working ties (degree, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centrality) to find the connectors, brokers, and bottlenecks an org chart hides.
When to reach for it
When the org chart does not explain how information, advice, or influence actually moves, and someone needs to know whose position carries a change.
How it runs
- Decide who the nodes are and what counts as a tie.
- Gather tie data from a short survey, message metadata, or observation.
- Build the edge list and load it into network software.
- Compute several centrality measures before deciding which one matters.
- Compare the people who score high against the formal hierarchy.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- A Mathematical Model for Group Structures, Applied Anthropology, 1948
- Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification, Social Networks, 1979
- Factoring and Weighting Approaches to Status Scores and Clique Identification, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1972
- Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, Cambridge University Press, 1994
- The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations, Harvard Business School Press, 2004
- Network Analysis in the Social Sciences, Science, 2009