Felichism Kabo

Spatial and Social Networks in Organizational Innovation

Research on the enabling factors of innovation has focused on either the social component of organizations or on the spatial dimensions involved in the innovation process. But no one has examined the aggregate consequences of the link from spatial layout, to social networks, to innovation. This project enriches our understanding of how innovation works especially in highly innovative organizations by exploring the social dimensions of innovation as they are embedded in a specific spatial milieu. Workspace layout generates spatial boundaries that divide and reunite built space. These boundaries create relations of accessibility and visibility that integrate or segregate behaviors, activities, and people. As built space structures patterns of circulation, copresence, coawareness, and encounter in an organization, these interrelationships become fundamental to the development of social networks, especially those networks critical to the innovation process. This article presents a review of the knowledge bases of social network and spatial layout theories, and reports on a preliminary study of the effects of spatial layout on the formation and maintenance of social network structure and the support of innovation.

Shared Paths to the Lab: A Sociospatial Network Analysis of Collaboration

Spatial layouts can significantly influence the formation and outcomes of social relationships. Physical proximity is thus essential to understanding the elemental building blocks of social networks, dyads. Situating relationships in space is instrumental to formulating better models of collaboration and information sharing in organizations and more robust theories of networks and their effects. We propose, develop, and test a concept, the functional zone, which effectively captures Festinger et al.’s classic description of “functional distance” as it pertains to social interactions. We operationalize functional zone with measures of path and areal zone overlap. At two biomedical research buildings with different layouts (compact versus linear), regression analyses of collaboration rates show that increasing path overlap increases collaboration. More traditional distance measures influence collaboration only in the more linear building. The functional zone concept improves our ability to understand relationships and their attendant organizational outcomes.

Spatial Layout, Social Structure, and Innovation in Organizations

Research on the enabling factors of innovation has most often addressed either the social component of organizations or the spatial dimensions involved in the innovation process. Few studies have examined the link from spatial layout and social networks to innovation. Social networks play important roles in structuring communication, collaboration, access to knowledge, and knowledge transformation. These processes are both antecedent to and part of the innovation process. Spatial layout structures patterns of circulation, proximity, awareness of others, and encounter in an organization. These interrelationships become fundamental to the development of social networks, especially those networks critical to the innovation process. This research explored associations between innovation within three partner organizations and the organizations social and spatial structure. The organizations included: A nonprofit life sciences institute dedicated to translational research on cancer, the research laboratories of a multinational software corporation, and the quality control group of an automobile manufacturer. The study applied spatial analysis to map and characterize physical space in conjunction with survey data capturing social contacts among researchers at the three organizations. For one partner organization, we augmented these tools with location-tracking methods. It could be argued that sociometric surveys capture the ‘perceived’ social network. Social networks researchers have been very interested in assessing ‘real’ networks either as reliability checks on sociometric survey networks, or as stand-alone networks. Our use of an ultrawideband location system allowed us to assess networks in real time. In interpreting our results, we suggest that through exposure to moving others, locations with high metric choice may provide the opportunities for serendipitous encounters among individuals who may come from disparate parts of an organization. Whereas low mean distance to others may provide the enhanced connections necessary to mobilize the resources and attention to move innovative ideas forward. Results demonstrate the salience of both social and spatial dimensions in the processes of innovation. The research suggests two strong factors that appear to influence our results: the institutional context which characterizes or prioritizes certain innovation outcomes; the extent to which the physical facility design of organizations tends to concentrate or spatially distribute the research unit. Our findings indicate that relationships between salutary network positions and beneficial locales themselves derive from institutional contexts that shape the priorities, opportunities, goals and practices of discovery. We suggest that innovation is a process that occurs at the intersection of social and physical space, and moves toward a sociospatial science of design for innovation.

The architecture of network collective intelligence: correlations between social network structure, spatial layout and prestige outcomes in an office

A social network represents interactions and knowledge that transcend the intelligence of any of its individual members. In this study, I examine the correlations between this network collective intelligence, spatial layout, and prestige or status outcomes at the individual and team levels in an organization. I propose that spatially influenced social cognition shapes which individuals become members of prestigious teams in organizations, and the prestige perception of teams by others in the organization. Prestige is a pathway to social rank, influence and upward mobility for individuals in organizations. For groups, perceived prestige of work teams is related to how team members identify with the group and with their collaborative behaviours. Prestige enhances a teams survivability and its access to resources. At the individual level, I ran two-stage Heckman sample selection models to examine the correlation between social network position and the number of prestigious projects a person is a member of, contingent on the association between physical space and social ties and networks. At the team level, I used linear regressions to examine the relationship among network structure, spatial proximity and the perceived prestige or innovativeness of a project team. In line with my hypotheses, for individuals there is a significant correlation between physical space and social networks, and contingent on that, between social network positions and the number of prestigious projects that a person is a member of. Also in accordance with my hypotheses, for teams there is a significant correlation between network structure and spatial proximity, and perceived prestige. While cross-sectional, the study findings illustrate the importance of considering the spatial domain in examinations of how network collective intelligence is related to organizational outcomes at the individual and team levels. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour’.

A Model of Potential Encounters in the Workplace The Relationships of Homophily, Spatial Distance, Organizational Structure, and Perceived Networks

Potential face-to-face encounters are foundational to most workplace social interactions. There is little resolution on the question of what factors are antecedent to these encounters. This study examines the association of potential encounters with homophily, spatial distance, organizational structure, and perceived networks. Real-time, fine-grained data were collected using ultrawide-band location-tracking technology deployed at a knowledge-intensive subunit of a global manufacturing firm. The organization comprised scientists and engineers responsible for environmental policy, and emissions reporting and trading at the parent company. Potential encounters were constructed from the location data and modeled on the factors above using dyadic network regression models. The results show that spatial distance, organizational structure, and perceived network ties are all significantly related to potential encounters. Surprisingly, the homophily variables were nonsignificant. The contributions of this research regarding the relationship between potential face-to-face encounters and homophily, spatial distance, organizational structure, and perceived networks are discussed.

Effect of a Clinical and Translational Science Award institute on grant funding in a major research university

Introduction Previous studies have examined the impact of Clinical and Translational Science Awards programs on other outcomes, but not on grant seeking. The authors examined the effects on grant seeking of the Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR), a Clinical and Translational Science Awards institute at the University of Michigan. Methods We assessed over 63,000 grant proposals submitted at the University of Michigan in the years 2002–2012 using data from the university and MICHR’s Tracking Metrics and Reporting System. We used a retrospective, observational study of the dynamics of grant-seeking success and award funding. Heckman selection models were run to assess MICHR’s relationship with a proposal’s success (selection), and subsequently the award’s size (outcome). Models were run for all proposals and for clinical and translational research (CTR) proposals alone. Other covariates included proposal classification, type of grant award, academic unit, and year. Results MICHR had a positive and statistically significant relationship with success for both proposal types. For all grants, MICHR was associated with a 29.6% increase in award size. For CTR grants, MICHR had a statistically nonsignificant relationship with award size. Conclusions MICHR’s infrastructure, created to enable and enhance CTR, has also created positive spillovers for a broader spectrum of research and grant seeking.