3.3 Methodological Approaches
3.4.2 Network Factors
Healdet al.(1998) identified factors that may influence the error in SNC.13The identified
factors were divided into two categories;formalandemergent. Formal factors are objectively
verifiable attributes, such as position in the formal organisational network or demographic variables. Emergent factors are informal interactions between individuals in the organisa- tion. An example of a formal factor is a supervisor-subordinate role, whereas an informal factor can be a work-flow tie that emerges through daily interactions in the workplace.14
Three out of the five formal factors were correlated with accuracy between co-workers, namely: being in the same department; having a supervisor-subordinate relationship; and having the same gender. Of the informal factors, two were able to predict similarity in cognitive network error. These were: task communication and acquaintanceship.
Although the list of factors in this study is not exhaustive, it does improve understand- ing of how position in social structure or organisational roles might affect the way social networks are perceived. This view is different from the previous section, because they do not look at factors originating from bounded rationality, but rather, social position itself. Kumbasaret al.(1994) investigated a similar network based factor: centrality measure. They
were, however, focussed on cognitive limitations causing distortions rather than social po- sition.
The following year, Krackhardt and Kilduff(1999) followed the same focus by inves- tigating the effect of social distance on network perception, specifically the perception of
balance.15They concluded: “People tended to perceive relations close to and distant from themselves
Stanley Milgram confirming the average distance between any two people to be around six. Only later did Watts(1999) provide the first mathematical models to understand small world networks.
13Healdet al.(1998) label these errors as levels of congruence.
14It is informative to highlight that formal and informal, in this case, closely relates to informal and formal
networks as conceptualised inSection 3.7.
15Balance is the process of balancing triads in social relations. Balance thus illustrates the effect when A
as more balanced than relations of intermediate distance”1999, p. 770. Thus, individuals closer
to the respondent were perceived to have more balanced relations. However, balance re- duces with distance before finally again increasing. The perception of balance thus follows a non-linear relation with distance from the perceiver. A similar study byKrackhardt and Kilduff(2002) showed how dyads embedded in Simmelian ties would have similar cogni- tive errors in their network perceptions. In other words, these Simmelian tied dyads have a higher agreement of the informal social structure than normal dyads in an organisation.
Investigating two network measures of centrality, betweenness and degree centrality, Grippa and Gloor(2009) found that respondents who were more central, tended to under- report interactions with alters, while others’ perceptions of their centrality were more ac- curate. In other words, people with high centrality have a higher error with their perceived networks, while still being identified correctly as central by the rest of their network.
Casciaro (1998) investigated both formal and informal network positions, similar to Grippa and Gloor(2009) andHealdet al.(1998), with the addition of personality factors
to explain variance in network perception. Casciaro(1998) found that personality factors overall contributed significantly to explaining the variance in network accuracy, but less so compared to informal and formal network positions. The important finding for this section is that degree centrality was the best predictor of network error for both friendship and advice networks.
Network derived variables, including formal and informal social position, are, there- fore, able to significantly explain variance in individual perceptions of the social network. It is important to highlight the shift in labelling the measurement of the distortions as sys- tematic deviations, towardserror. The concept of SNC error will be investigated in more
detail inSection 3.6. However, it is prudent to briefly expand here.
Many authors, for exampleFreeman (1992), find patterns in individual constructions of their social networks. For instance, balanced relations change with distance from an ego, i.e, individuals tend to balance relations that are close or far to them, but have unbalanced relations at medium distance. These observations make no claim as to the accuracy of the in- dividual’s ability to cognitively represent some true network. However, in this section, and indeed the next, the narrative shifts towards accuracy. Accuraccy is intrinsically measuring individual cognition against some criteria to produce a form of cognitive performance of
theory in the work of Heider. Social distance is the distance in connections from ego. A direct friend of the respondent has distance one, and a direct contact of that friend is at distance two from ego, and so forth.
individuals. This objective is contrasted to that of uncovering systematic patterns in the pursuit to understand cognition against measuring deviance from a criterion to relate it to other variables. This issue will be elaborated on inSection 3.6.
The next section summarises the literature investigating the role of personality in ex- plaining variance in network perceptions.