Social network analysis and organizational control in complex projects: construction of EXPO 2010 in China

Abstract

Social network analysis (SNA) has been widely used to explore the existence and strength of connections among various actors within an organization. Recently, understanding and interpreting social aspects in project organization have gained great interest in project management research. Consequently, there is a need to analyse complex project organization (CPO) by using SNA with increasing numbers of large-scale and complex projects. The goal of this research is to better appreciate the social network relations in a CPO environment and to improve the organizational efficiency and team performance through new organizational control mechanisms (OCMs). This study first discusses a multi-level social network framework with a focus on the CPO where major analytical components of the framework are presented including modelling elements and structures and preferred parameters. Next, social network-oriented OCM and strategies are illustrated and compared with regular organizational controls. To examine the mentioned SNA framework and strategy, this study employs a construction case of EXPO 2010 Shanghai China and analyses the information transmission, role and positional analysis, clique analysis, management power and leadership of the network. The result of the case study provides insightful suggestions for controlling the complex organization, including enhancement of organizational learning ability, standardized working protocols and regulations, and reinforces the management of key information intermediaries, professional requirement for centrality position units and the power shift in some ‘special units’. The case also reveals that the informal relations have more significant impacts on the organizational power, leadership and control, especially for complex projects.

Keywords:

• China 2010 Shanghai EXPO
• complex projects
• organizational control
• social network analysis (SNA)

Acknowledgements

The study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 70902045 and 70972071), Ministry of Education for Humanities and Social Sciences project (No. 09YJAZH067) and Program for Young Excellent Talents in Tongji University (2009KJ059). The authors also appreciate valuable comments from three anonymous reviewers.