Network Theory and Analysis

Abstract This article reviews developments in network analysis and its applications to problems of organization. From an arcane social science tradition focused chiefly on methods, it has evolved into a major paradigm for thinking about and researching relationships and social structure within and among organizations. Network ideas and methods have been embraced by organizational theorists in part because the world of organizations has itself changed: from centrally coordinated hierarchies to loosely linked strategic alliances and “network forms.” Methods issues continue to be important in network analysis; however, the data and the statistical methods appropriate to network study are quite different from those of other social and behavioral science domains. Network methods and models at varying levels of analysis are reviewed – node, dyad, subnetwork (clique or cluster), and network – and how they have been applied to recent subfields of organizational study.