Recognizing Innovation through Social Network Analysis

Author(s):  
Grippa Francesca ◽  
Elia Gianluca

Advances in communication technologies have enabled organizations to develop and operate decentralized organizational structures by supporting coordination among workers in different locations. Such developments have lessened formality in control structures and replaced formal channels of communication with less formal social networks. The chapter describes the development and application of a ‘Social Network Scorecard’ (SNS) managerial tool to monitor social interchanges and relationships within and across organizations in order to assess the effectiveness of knowledge networks. In this chapter, a project team made up of individuals from academia and industry collaboratively implemented an integrated technological platform for KM, e-Learning, e-Business, and project management disciplines in a higher education environment. This VeBMS platform, consisting of a collaborative working environment within the University of Salento, Italy, was used as a ‘test bed’ to evaluate the validity of the scorecard in practice. The chapter describes how the SNS tool can help in monitoring the evolution of an organizational community, recognizing creative roles and initiatives, and tracing the connections between such initiatives and innovative outcomes. Looking at trends at individual, team, inter-organizational, and organizational levels, researchers identified the most innovative phases within the team’s life cycle using network indicators like density and degree centrality. The SNS provided feedback on the effectiveness of the team and helped discover the phases in which the team acted in a manner conducive to innovation. The Virtual eBMS project team followed the typical structure of an innovative knowledge network where learning networks and innovation networks co-exist with a more sparse interest network.

2011 ◽  
pp. 2398-2419
Author(s):  
Grippa Francesca ◽  
Elia Gianluca

Advances in communication technologies have enabled organizations to develop and operate decentralized organizational structures by supporting coordination among workers in different locations. Such developments have lessened formality in control structures and replaced formal channels of communication with less formal social networks. The chapter describes the development and application of a ‘Social Network Scorecard’ (SNS) managerial tool to monitor social interchanges and relationships within and across organizations in order to assess the effectiveness of knowledge networks. In this chapter, a project team made up of individuals from academia and industry collaboratively implemented an integrated technological platform for KM, e-Learning, e-Business, and project management disciplines in a higher education environment. This VeBMS platform, consisting of a collaborative working environment within the University of Salento, Italy, was used as a ‘test bed’ to evaluate the validity of the scorecard in practice. The chapter describes how the SNS tool can help in monitoring the evolution of an organizational community, recognizing creative roles and initiatives, and tracing the connections between such initiatives and innovative outcomes. Looking at trends at individual, team, inter-organizational, and organizational levels, researchers identified the most innovative phases within the team’s life cycle using network indicators like density and degree centrality. The SNS provided feedback on the effectiveness of the team and helped discover the phases in which the team acted in a manner conducive to innovation. The Virtual eBMS project team followed the typical structure of an innovative knowledge network where learning networks and innovation networks co-exist with a more sparse interest network.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Amel Zayani ◽  
Leila Ghorbel ◽  
Ikram Amous ◽  
Manel Mezghanni ◽  
André Péninou ◽  
...  

Purpose Generally, the user requires customized information reflecting his/her current needs and interests that are stored in his/her profile. There are many sources which may provide beneficial information to enrich the user’s interests such as his/her social network for recommendation purposes. The proposed approach rests basically on predicting the reliability of the users’ profiles which may contain conflictual interests. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach This approach handles conflicts by detecting the reliability of neighbors’ profiles of a user. The authors consider that these profiles are dependent on one another as they may contain interests that are enriched from non-reliable profiles. The dependency relationship is determined between profiles, each of which contains interests that are structured based on k-means algorithm. This structure takes into consideration not only the evolutionary aspect of interests but also their semantic relationships. Findings The proposed approach was validated in a social-learning context as evaluations were conducted on learners who are members of Moodle e-learning system and Delicious social network. The quality of the created interest structure is assessed. Then, the result of the profile reliability is evaluated. The obtained results are satisfactory. These results could promote recommendation systems as the selection of interests that are considered of enrichment depends on the reliability of the profiles where they are stored. Research limitations/implications Some specific limitations are recorded. As the quality of the created interest structure would evolve in order to improve the profile reliability result. In addition, as Delicious is used as a main data source for the learner’s interest enrichment, it was necessary to obtain interests from other sources, such as e-recruitement systems. Originality/value This research is among the pioneer papers to combine the semantic as well as the hierarchical structure of interests and conflict resolution based on a profile reliability approach.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 52-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zandile Virtue Dlamini ◽  
Emmanuel Mutambara ◽  
Akwesi Assensoh-Kodua

Audit Committees are a vital component of accountability and good governance for any serious organisation and have progressively been perceived as an integral part of modern control structures and control practices in both the public and private sectors. However, Audit Committees can only discharge such gigantic responsibilities in a conducive environment to provide its effective performance of certain key functions in the areas of oversight of risk management, reporting, and internal controls. Nonetheless, the enablement of such conducive environments has become a challenge to many Audit Committees. It is against this background that this study investigates the relationship between an effective audit committee and infusion of a good control environment. The study used structured and unstructured questions to investigate population comprising standing committee members and Audit Committee members. Thus this study made use of a mixed methodology to collect quantitative data as well as reviewing audit documents, such as, the Audit Committee Charter and minutes of meetings in order to ascertain the environment under which such august practices are performed. The outcome concludes that the Audit Committee which was selected for the study has the good working environment.


10.28945/3331 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Malachowski

The phenomenal success and popularity of a new Polish social networking portal Nasza-klasa.pl (Our Class) is discussed. Essentials information on the portal, its functions and usability features are presented, together with an overview of technological platform employed. Statistical data is provided where appropriate to illustrate the phenomenon under study. The study attempts to provide a model method for success in the e-market and inspiration for prospective entrepreneurs in the world of virtual services.


Author(s):  
Michele A. Brandão ◽  
Matheus A. Diniz ◽  
Guilherme A. de Sousa ◽  
Mirella M. Moro

Studies have analyzed social networks considering a plethora of metrics for different goals, from improving e-learning to recommend people and things. Here, we focus on large-scale social networks defined by researchers and their common published articles, which form co-authorship social networks. Then, we introduce CNARe, an online tool that analyzes the networks and present recommendations of collaborations based on three different algorithms (Affin, CORALS and MVCWalker). Through visualizations and social networks metrics, CNARe also allows to investigate how the recommendations affect the co-authorship social networks, how researchers' networks are in a central and eagle-eye context, and how the strength of ties behaves in large co-authorship social networks. Furthermore, users can upload their own network in CNARe and make their own recommendation and social network analysis.


Author(s):  
A. A. Azeta ◽  
Charles K. Ayo ◽  
Aderemi Aaron Anthony Atayero ◽  
Nicholas Ikhu-Omoregbe

Government establishments are most times highly involved in different reorganization programs. The processes in e-Government are diversified and complex, hence the need for an appropriate training and learning strategy for governmental employees. Changing business processes and organizational structures always mean that the personnel have to be familiar with the changed procedures. Consequently, the employees need to be trained to develop capacity for new responsibilities. Existing methods of learning and training do not make provision for certain category of employees such as the visually impaired. They do not provide an alternative learning platform for government of employees that are not physically challenged. Many studies have demonstrated the value of several learning platforms, including mobile learning (m-Learning) but with the problems of access barriers and streamlined participation of most learners. The purpose of this chapter is to propose a voice-based e-Learning system, also known as voice-learning (v-Learning) as a variant of the m-Learning with particular relevance for the visually and mobility impaired learners. V-Learning makes possible ubiquitous learning in e-Government and provides additional capacity and speed of response to help facilitate change. Cost reduction is also achieved and there is no shortage of teachers.


Author(s):  
Rocael Hernandez Rizzardini ◽  
Christian Gütl

Web 2.0 tools offer innovative technologies for learning and training, and it exists a strong pedagogical foundation to include such tools in education. As a consequence of its more widespread usage arise issues in the context of managing these cloud services, such as to create adapted instances tool resources, to assign such resources to teachers and learners, and others. Web and educational interoperability technologies have provided initial paths toward building this type of e-Learning 3.0 cloud education environments, however, fundamental challenges remain such as granular tool resources management, and the lack of use of Semantic Web technologies to leverage automatic machine-processable tool API. To overcome these issues, an holistic model for flexible interoperability is contributed in this chapter. Covered aspects includes a semantic definition of tools' API, an interoperability service framework capable to automatically process APIs, a semantic proxy that enables usage of current APIs, and a system for learning activities orchestration using these tools. Furthermore, advanced semantic technologies to support the model for flexible interoperability are analyzed.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Valeri ◽  
Rodolfo Baggio

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of how quantitative analysis methods have been and can be used to improve the competitiveness of tourism destination. The focus of the study is social network analysis (SNA). Design/methodology/approach The research methodology is qualitative and consists of the review literature relevant to this thesis. This methodology is necessary to give an account of the methods and the techniques adopted for the data collection used in other economic sectors. Findings SNA is needed to analyze the creation and configuration of communities of practice within destination and to identify possible barriers to effective interaction. Essentially, it is a complex adaptive socio-economic system. It shares many (if not all) of the characteristics usually associated with such entities, namely, non-linear relationships among the components, self-organization and emergence of organizational structures, robustness to external shocks. Research limitations/implications The most important limit of this paper is that all the results presented here do not concern a single case study. Future research studies will provide a larger number of cases and examples to give the necessary validation to the findings presented here. Practical implications This paper provides a view into the network of relationships that may give tourism organization managers a strong leverage to improve the flow of information and to target opportunities where this flow may have the most impact on regulatory or business activities. Originality/value SNA can help to detect actual expertise and consequently project the potential losses deriving from an inefficient flow of knowledge. In addition, the authors will be able to define roles in the organizational networks and make an evaluation of informal organizational structures over the formal ones. Traditional organizational theories lack a concrete correspondence with mathematical studies and in this respect the authors sought to identify a correspondence.


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