University of Michigan Graduate Student Wins First Annual Visible Path Social Network Analysis Award; Research Finds That Success Might Be Related Not Just to Whom You Know but to How You Communicate with Them.

FOSTER CITY, Calif. -- lNathaniel Bulkley, a doctoral student working with assistant professor Marshall Van Alstyne at the University of Michigan School of Information, won the first annual Visible Path Graduate Student Award for new research on social networks and professional performance, the International Network for Social Network Analysis announced (INSNA) today.

Bulkley analyzed how white collar workers use social networks to improve professional performance. The hypothesis that success is related not just to whom you know but how you communicate with them was supported by key findings including:

--Professionals' use of social networks evolves over the course of their career from accumulating relationship capital to exercising it

--Frequent, short communication outperforms lengthy, infrequent communication in efficiently moving information through a social network

--A central position in an organizational social network is consistent with higher individual performance

For his research, Bulkley conducted surveys and studied six months of email data and accounting records from an executive recruiting firm representative of professional services firms organized around client practices.(1)

An unexpected finding was a lack of relationship between a recruiter's private rolodex and network size or job performance.

"In the early days of executive recruiting, the recruiters with the largest individual rolodexes may have been the most successful. That no longer appears to be true, as information sharing and teamwork have become increasingly important," said Bulkley, who holds a MSI in Information Economics, Management and Policy from University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Arts in history from Brown University.

"Business value is often associated with relationships," Bulkley said. "In the future, techniques for analyzing email and other electronic communication records may help us better understand these dynamics within and across organizations."

The award, created by Visible Path and INSNA, carries a $5,000 prize plus paid expenses to INSNA's annual Sunbelt conference, April 25th to 30th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where the winner will present a paper to an international audience of over 500 network researchers. It is awarded in recognition of research on how social networks are used to improve individual and inter-organizational performance.

"The quality and quantity of candidate papers considered for this award can be seen as indicative of recent increases in both the level of interest in and the pace of new research into the juncture between social networks and organizational performance," said Bill Richards, INSNA president and professor of communications at Simon Fraser University. "Congratulations to Mr. Bulkley. We look forward to receiving submissions for the 2007 award."

More information on this year's winning paper, "An Empirical Analysis of Strategies and Efficiencies in Social Networks," is available at www.centralityjournal.com.

Instructions for the 2007 Visible Path Student will be available April, 2006 at www.insna.org.

For more about Visible Path, visit www.visiblepath.com

(1) Data gathering was conducted under NSF Career Award 9876233 and sponsorship from Intel Corporation.