Hierarchical and Matrix Structures in a Large Organizational Email Network: Visualization and Modeling Approaches

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a study of the email network of a large scientific research organization, focusing on methods for visualizing and modeling organizational hierarchies within large, complex network datasets. In the first part of the paper, we find that visualization and interpretation of complex organizational network data is facilitated by integration of network data with information on formal organizational divisions and levels. By aggregating and visualizing email traffic between organizational units at various levels, we derive several insights into how large subdivisions of the organization interact with each other and with outside organizations. Our analysis shows that line and program management interactions in this organization systematically deviate from the idealized pattern of interaction prescribed by "matrix management." In the second part of the paper, we propose a power law model for predicting degree distribution of organizational email traffic based on hierarchical relationships between managers and employees. This model considers the influence of global email announcements sent from managers to all employees under their supervision, and the role support staff play in generating email traffic, acting as agents for managers. We also analyze patterns in email traffic volume over the course of a work week.

Structural Characteristics of Stakeholder Relationships and Value Chain Network in Data Exchange Ecosystem

“…Although the email network is established by interactions among people, it displays scale-free, disassortative [17], and hierarchical characteristics [17,55], which is similar to the stakeholder network of this study. This is because the entities (stakeholders in this study) with different business roles have closer communication (relationships such as data flows and services in this study) than the entities with the same role.…”

CommViz: Visualization of semantic patterns in large social communication networks

“…A number of information visualization systems have been developed specifically for analysis of email, with an emphasis on the metadata of email, including work that aims to identify communication structures within organizations, [18][19][20] thread structures, 21,22 or temporal patterns. 23,24 Few visualization systems have been developed that consider the context or content of messages.…”

“…Since the force-directed layout (cf. Figure 9) has remained among the most frequently used methodologies for visualizing communication networks, 18,20,59 the effectiveness of CommViz was compared with that of this rival visualization methodology as implemented in Cytoscape. 60 We first captured six screenshots from each visualization (CommViz and Cytoscape) related to the Enron email corpus.…”

“…Such organizational structure has been shown to be valuable for deriving insights into organizational communications. 20 The simplest integration of this into CommViz would be to capture this hierarchy in the representation of users, and enable drilling down in a manner analogous to the time dimension.…”

Communication network dynamics in a large organizational hierarchy

“…Guimera et al (2006) characterize a university email network and relate it to the community structure within the institution. Similarly, Boeva et al (2017) study a telecommunications company to evaluate metrics for comparing the formal organization to the informal communication structure, and Sims et al (2014) study communication patterns within Los Alamos National Laboratory through email records. In all three of these studies, organizational structures are coarsely measured and communication dynamics are only considered between units consisting of many individuals -colleges and administrative blocks in Guimera et al (2006), divisions in Boeva et al (2017), and programs/projects in Sims et al (2014) -rather than between individual employees.…”