SNA in managerial field

SNA is described as a study of the pattern of interaction between actors within a social network. It mainly focus on the social actor and the relationship between actors. Until now, SNA is still in an early stage and the value of it is still blurred for us. In this blog, a real life application will be discussed in managerial field.

In our common sense, the hierarchical structure within a company is prescribed according to the executive positions. However, this is just the dominant formal structure. There is also a recessive one constituted by the informal relationship between people. To analyze and understand this informal structure will be of great use in management.

A survey carried out by IBM indicates that when people need to learn some new tech, they are more likely to turn to their friends and colleagues instead of the boring book or database. Although the knowledge from the database will be more accurate and comprehensive, people are more willingly to seek help from other people. In the survey of IBM, the knowledge sharing within a company can be classified by four layers. 

a. Knowledge. People knows what and who is working on what.

b. Access. Directly acquire needed knowledge from others.

c. Engagement. Improve the tech, ability and knowledge by communication.

d. Safety. Through the communication and interaction, the reliance and safety between people are built.

The ecosystem of knowledge is formed by these methods. SNA in this field will help us to understand how people convey ideas, share information and form new techs within a certain group of people. Based on the analyze, the manager acquires a new scope to discover the bottleneck, mistake and also get a new and efficient way to manage.

Actually, the knowledge sharing is only one tiny function provided by social network within a company. Broadly speaking, through SNA in the informal network within a company can also help the manger to 1) Choose the leader. To find out who is more reliable and respected by others. 2) Form a team. To find out the actual link between the company. 3) Merger and acquisition. To figure out the culture between two departments or companies. These application of SNA in managerial field will definitely improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a department or even the whole company.

As the SNA is still in the early stage, the applications of it is now limited. But the future of it is firmly unlimited!

Cloud computing in social networks and assignment in lecture 6

First, we have to find out what is cloud computing. Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). It means that the end user can get remote services by providing data to the server without doing all the complicated work using the local computer. This significantly reduces the computation load of local computer and more importantly it saves time for users!

A technical innovation always brings a new market. The emerge of cloud computing also provides enormous chance for IT field, such as the rise of Google. Cloud environments typically provide low level abstractions of computation or storage. Computation and Storage Clouds are complementary and act as building blocks from which high level service Clouds and mash-ups can be created. Storage Clouds are often used to extend the capabilities of storage-limited devices such as phones and desktops, and provide transparent access to data from anywhere.

Social network is just a model taking the advantages of cloud computing. It uses the trust relationships between friends as a foundation of data and services. And we take facebook as an example.

It indicates that if the users register Cloud services and their friends can then able to provision and use these resources through the Social Cloud Facebook application. The number of applications of cloud computing in social network will be increasing rapidly. Believe it or not, these kind of applications will finally change our life!

During the lecture 6, we have two assignments in class, an individual one and a group one according to a reading material.

Here I will share my answers of these questions (group work):

1)      What is the definition of Social Cloud?

A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.

2)      What are the possible applications of a Social Cloud?

The applications can be classified into five aspects shown as below:

1. A Social Computation Cloud: such as Onlive.com, web-based email service.
2. A Social Storage Cloud: such as SkyDrive by Microsoft. 3. A Social Collaborative Cloud: such as GOOGLE Docs. 4. A Social Cloud for Public Science: such as Wikipedia. 5. An Enterprise Social Cloud: such as Moodle@CUHK.

3)      What was the epistemic aims in (1) Class Activity One (individual work) and (2) Class Activity Two (group work)? Is there any change in epistemic aim? If so, why did you change your aims?

In the individual work, we aim at find out the answer from the reading material which is just in a metacognition level. While in the group work, we aim at discuss the problems and achieve more comprehensive and integrate ideas. We convey our ideas and improve our solutions by absorbing others’ opinion. This process make the understanding become real knowledge and that’s why we change our aims.

4)      Are there any differences in terms of individual and group epistemic cognition, how?

I think the answer is yes, there are some differences between them. The epistemic cognition of group might be more comprehensive and diverse than the individual one. You might have some limitation when solving a problem. But when it comes to group work, this shortage might be eliminated easily. That’s why you can always learn from your teammates.

5)      How did you approach to the problem individually and in group, respectively? Are there any differences in the processes involved?

In the individual work, I approach to the problem only by searching the reading material and my own experience. While in the group work, the opinions from my teammates make my answer more comprehensive and accurate.