E-mail exchanges within organizations can reveal patterns
of collaboration and leadership that aren't part of any formal
organizational structure, according to recent research at
HP Labs.
The researchers --Joshua Tyler, Dennis Wilkinson and Bernardo
Huberman, all of the Information Dynamics Lab --have developed
a methodology for using e-mail logs to find out things like
who's really working with whom, and who truly holds
power within a group.
The researchers studied nearly one million messages collected
over a two-month span.
Informal networks are typically quite difficult to identify,
the researchers say, but e-mail interactions provide ample
data, just by examining the names of the senders and recipients.
It isn't necessary to read messages, which minimizes privacy
concerns.
Their work is the subject of a recent paper, Email
as Spectroscopy: Automated Discovery of Community Structure
within Organizations.
It also drew note from Nature magazine's online
Science Update.
- Jamie Beckett
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