Employees’ positions in virtual working community and their job performances: a social network analysis

Abstract

Along with the rapid development of Internet, virtual community is gradually introduced into employees’ work and learning. There are many research studies about virtual learning community, but few focus on the virtual working community. This research examines a virtual working community, analyses its social network structure, measures employees’ centrality, and tests the relationship between centrality and job performance. The virtual working community of the online tutors at the School of Distance Learning in Peking University was the research object. Findings suggest that the centrality of employees in the virtual community and their job performance have significant positive correlation. Centrality of the employees and gender are also significantly correlated.