The structure of organizational virtual social networks

Abstract

Organizational virtual social networks (OVSN) reshape social structures due to their ability to strengthen social ties, to change power relations and to enable new forms of cooperation. Research in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has led to various approaches that analyze the impact of OVSN on organizations in terms of structure and behavior. Our study aims to analyze important features related to the structure of OVSN. It also aims to strengthen a network approach to analyze organizational phenomena such as working groups and connected individuals, as well as the impact of online networks in organizations. This study was based on the approaches described by Oinas-Kukkonen et al. [J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 11(2), 61-68 (2010)] and on the research carried out by Bobsin and Hoppen [Estruturação de Redes Sociais Virtuais em Organizações: um estudo de caso. In: XXXVI Encontro da ANPAD, Rio de Janeiro (2012)] to understand the process of structuring OVSN. Our main result is an OVSN structure consisting of actors and roles, interactions, operating elements and articulating goals. We also analyzed structural elements of networks which may contribute to the development of a network based approach to study organizational phenomena.