What Is the Entropy of a Social Organization?

Abstract

We quantify a social organization’s potentiality, that is, its ability to attain different configurations. The organization is represented as a network in which nodes correspond to individuals and (multi-)edges to their multiple interactions. Attainable configurations are treated as realizations from a network ensemble. To have the ability to encode interaction preferences, we choose the generalized hypergeometric ensemble of random graphs, which is described by a closed-form probability distribution. From this distribution we calculate Shannon entropy as a measure of potentiality. This allows us to compare different organizations as well as different stages in the development of a given organization. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated using data from three empirical and two synthetic systems.