Meetings as Networks: Applying Social Network Analysis to Team Interaction

Abstract

In recent decades, social network researchers have focused on analyzing networks of formal relationships (e.g., friendships). However, this work has yet to be applied to distributions of participation in small groups. This article provides an application of social network analysis to small group interaction and illustrates the approach through the analysis of 54 team meetings in two medium-sized German companies from the electrical and automotive supply industries (N = 332). Within a group interaction process, individual actions affect subsequent behavior, and their interactions shape a network when group members respond to previous actions. Their responses can be understood as network ties. We describe how to calculate centralization for all forms of small group interactions, and contribute to network research by providing insights into the interaction structure of team meetings. Multilevel analyses show that a group-level measure of centralization has a significant negative effect on team performance, whereas individual participation has no such effect. Implications for future research on interaction data via social network analysis are discussed.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research reported in this article was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Grant No. KA 2256/2-2). Subsets of this data have been examined before (Henschel, Kauffeld, & Neininger, 2011; Lehmann-Willenbrock, Meyers, Kauffeld, Neininger, & Henschel, 2011; Neininger, Lehmann-Willenbrock, Kauffeld, & Henschel, 2010; Lehmann-Willenbrock, Grohmann, & Kauffeld, 2011; Schulte, Lehmann-Willenbrock, & Kauffeld, in press; Lehmann-Willenbrock, Grohmann, & Kauffeld, in press). However, the hypotheses and set of variables examined here have not been published previously. We would like to thank Angela Henschel, Alexandra Neininger, and Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock for the collection of the data.