Social network analysis and organizational disintegration: The case of enron corporation

Abstract

Email networks in contemporary organizations are fairly representative of the underlying communications networks. We show that changes in communication networks have implications for studying organization disintegration. In this paper, we analyzed the changing communication network structure at Enron Corporation during the period of its disintegration (2000-2001). Our goal was to understand how communication patterns and structure were affected by organizational disintegration. Drawing on (social) network disintegration theory, we tested several propositions using the Enron email corpus: (1) Number of cliques increases (2) Communication network becomes increasingly centralized, and (3) Connectedness among the top management executives increases, as organizations move towards disintegration. The results of the tests and their implications are discussed.