Communication network dynamics during organizational crisis

Abstract

Communication network is a personal or professional set of relationships between individuals or organizations. In other words, it is a pattern of contacts which are created due to the flow of information among the participating actors. The flow of information establishes various types of relationships among the participating entities. These relationships eventually form an overall pattern that could form a gestalt of the total structure within organizational context. In this paper, we analyze the changing communications structure in order to investigate the patterns associated with the final stages of organizational crisis. Organizational crisis has been defined as organizational mortality, organizational death, organizational exit, bankruptcy, decline, retrenchment and failure to characterize various forms of organizational crisis. We draw on theoretical perspectives on organizational crisis proposed by social network analysts and other sociologists to test 5 key propositions on the changes in the network communication structure associated with organizational crisis: (1) a few actors, who are prominent or more active, will become central during the organizational crisis period; (2) reciprocity within the organizational communication network will increase during crisis period; (3) organizational communication network becomes less transitive as organizations experience crisis; (4) number of cliques increases in a communication network as organizations are going through crisis; and (5) communication network becomes increasingly centralized as organizations go through crisis.