Impact of Using Semantic Social Networks on Organizations

Abstract

In a rapidly changing environment, a shift toward decentralized structure for organizations seems inevitable. Semantic Web technologies combined with social network analysis make the transition of a centralized organization to a decentralized one much easier. By increasing controllability and manageability of a decentralized structure, these tools can improve functionality and performance. A framework for creation and maintenance of a semantic social network is introduced and two real world organizations have been analyzed. After selecting one organization suitable for decentralization, network datasets were generated from its structure. Generated datasets have been used as the input of the framework to create a semantic social network for the corresponding organization. Social network analysis was then performed on both semantic and non semantic social networks. Gain of performance was observed in many areas such as decision making, flexibility, reliability and throughput. Semantic social network also enables other functionalities along ease of decentralization such as gain of knowledge about dynamic structure of the organization. These functionalities are also discussed.