Organization diagnosis tools based on social network analysis

Abstract

Many organizations have challenges such as inter-organizational barriers and motivation of employees. However, these kinds of problems are not easy to visualize, and it is even more difficult to derive, implement and assess appropriate measures to deal with them. We developed a tool to visualize the dynamic structure of cooperative relationships between employees in organizations based on questionnaires given to employees of those organizations. This tool is used for visualizing barriers between teams and the effects of measures. In this paper we explain some features of this tool and verify its capabilities and effectiveness with a case study. The case study is some field research based on interviews that we conducted in which we applied measures to improve the employees' communication. We collected a set of data about relationships in an organization with questionnaires before and after implementing the measures. And we compared the observed result produced by the visualization tool with the result from the field research. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.