Implementing the Structural Hole Theory to Analyze Academic Networks in Tertiary Institutions

Social network analysis (SNA) is the technique of performing analytics on data found in social environmental circles to understand the relationships and structures of underlying network. With the alarming rise of social media, many different concepts have been brought about through the behavior of people within these network. Of great confusion was how to identify and award credits to members who greatly influence the social network. This paper seeks to bring out the various networks in a social setting. It is known there can be a number of networks that can be drawn from the same dataset, the key objective thereforeis to help in the evaluation of academicfaculty membersin tertiary institutions and prove that those who fill the empty space i.e. structural hole in the network perform better.For a while it has been known that academic networks analysis has been largely implemented based on citation graphs not other attributes like areas of interest, interdisciplinary work and . The major drawback with this kind of analysis is that, the efficiency and homophily (strong ties) that exist between the faculty members outside of their citations could not be uncovered. While some members have low number of citations it however does not imply they are least hard working. Some members perform better in conference presentations while lagging in citations, therefore by imploring the citation graph it entails that these members could not be fully representedby theireffort and contribution to the society. With this proposed model; the underlying ties between faculty members is based on their areas of interestwhich has been an untamed domain. This will be analyzed against Butts' structural hole theory and see if it applies to academic institutions. Key questions to be answered are how these areas of interest have influenced fellow colleagues within their network and how it has earned them, if any, advantageous posts in institutions that have various members with different interests in one department. In an extended study the leadership strength of members in structural hole can also be determined. Nyasha F. Thusabantu | Dr. G Vadivu | Mr. L. Thusabantu"Implementing the Structural Hole Theory to Analyze Academic Networks in Tertiary Institutions" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-1 | Issue-5 , August 2017, URL: http://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd2361.pdf http://www.ijtsrd.com/computer-science/artificial-intelligence/2361/implementing-the-structural-hole-theory-to-analyze-academic-networks-in-tertiary-institutions/nyasha-f-thusabantu