How network visibility and strategic networking leads to the emergence of certain network characteristics

Abstract

Person-to-person interactions within an organization form a network of people. Changes of the structural properties of these networks are caused through a variety of dynamic processes among the people. We argue in this paper that there is a feedback loop between individual actions and the network structure. Therefore, a proper interaction model is needed to explain the emerging structural changes among networked individuals. According to our proposed interaction model, which is based on a complex adaptive system approach, changes in the network properties are consequences of four factors: (1) the initial underlying network structures; (2) the process of network growth; (3) the adoption of strategic responses to what other individuals do in the network; and (4) the network visibility. The experimental results show that all of these factors have influence. If the process of network growth triggers strategic responses of all direct neighbors, we observe a heavy drop in the average shortest path length between the individuals. The value of the average shortest path length shrinks to three, even independently of the visibility of the global network topology. We observe the same trend for the clustering coefficient. Fluctuations in the clustering coefficients are not significant, if visibility of the network topology is set to a high value. However, in the presence of only small number of strategic responses and a high network visibility, a short average shortest path length and a high clustering coefficient can be observed.