How Much Communication is Enough?

[Graham Durant-Law]

I've just finished a very simple social network analysis exercise for an organisation of 121 people. The alleged problem according to the very vocal few, the most vocal of whom is a recognised white knight , was that "there is no communication in this organisation". The CEO to his credit decided to do something about it, but first he wanted objective data. He did not want an expensive exercise that took weeks to collect data: rather he wanted a simple exercise that would give him a feel for the problem, after which he would decide whether or not a complete social or organisational network analysis would be required. The map below is the gross result.

Now a few things a worth noting. The network is a complete closed network; that is there are no isolates, and in fact there is only one pendant (at one o'clock). This probably reflects the very high response rate (116 of 121) and the question (more on that in a moment). The density of the network is 0.026. So what does this mean? ...

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