OB Research Seminar - Lisa Faessler, HEC Lausanne

Individuals connect to each other through social ties and form social network structures. Social networks drive information and behaviors. In the firm, they influence, for example, teamwork, creativity, (un)ethical behaviors, and team performance. Outside of the firm, humans expressed the ability to build more efficient networks for information exchange than random networks. In this study, I investigate whether similar patterns can be found in the firm. First, do the actual firm network exhibit increased efficiency compared to a random network? And second, does the formal firm network--the ideal network in the manager's opinion--outperform the actual network or a random network? I plan to elicit the actual and formal firm networks through surveys and email data. I will then compare the networks' potential information flow through the networks' global network efficiency.