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References: Introduction to Organizational Analytics

  1. Organizational Network Analysis - Wikipedia - Overview of ONA methodology including its origins in sociometry, core metrics, and applications to organizational design and change management.

  2. Social Network Analysis - Wikipedia - Comprehensive treatment of SNA theory, methods, and software tools. Covers centrality, cohesion, brokerage, and community concepts foundational to organizational analytics.

  3. Graph Database - Wikipedia - Explains graph database architectures, index-free adjacency, and query languages like Cypher. Directly relevant to understanding why graph databases outperform relational systems for relationship queries.

  4. The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations - Rob Cross and Andrew Parker - Harvard Business Review Press (2004) - The foundational practitioner guide to ONA. Cross and Parker operationalized academic network analysis for business leaders, showing how to diagnose and improve informal networks. Key concepts from this book that appear throughout this course:

    • Network mapping methodology — Surveys and communication data reveal the actual (not official) patterns of information flow, decision-making, and collaboration. Cross and Parker demonstrate that the org chart captures at most 30% of important work relationships.
    • Four key network roles — Central connectors (people everyone relies on), boundary spanners (bridges between groups), information brokers (control information flow), and peripheral specialists (experts loosely connected to the core). These map directly to centrality and brokerage metrics in Chapters 7-8.
    • Diagnosing collaboration overload — Central connectors often burn out because too many relationships funnel through them. The book provides frameworks for redistributing network load — a precursor to the vulnerability and flight-risk analysis in Chapter 11.
    • Silo detection and intervention — Cross and Parker show how to identify organizational silos by examining sparse cross-boundary connections, then design targeted interventions (rotations, joint projects, space redesign) to bridge them. This directly informs the silo detection methods in Chapter 11.
    • Energy and engagement networks — Beyond communication frequency, the book maps "energizing" vs. "de-energizing" relationships — a concept that anticipates the sentiment analysis approaches in Chapter 9.
    • Practical network interventions — Specific strategies for onboarding (accelerating new-hire network building), post-merger integration (connecting legacy teams), and leadership development (expanding peripheral leaders' networks). These applications appear in Chapters 12-13.

  5. Who Shall Survive? Foundations of Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy, and Sociodrama - Jacob L. Moreno - Beacon House (1934, revised 1953) - The origin text of sociometry and the sociogram. Moreno's hand-drawn maps of interpersonal choice patterns are the direct ancestor of modern organizational network visualization.

  6. The Strength of Weak Ties (Granovetter, 1973) - Wikipedia - Granovetter's landmark paper demonstrating that weak social ties often carry novel information and bridge otherwise disconnected groups. Foundational to understanding why bridge nodes matter in organizational networks.

  7. Structural Holes - Wikipedia - Ronald Burt's theory that competitive advantage accrues to individuals who bridge gaps between disconnected groups. Core theoretical lens for brokerage and boundary-spanning analysis in later chapters.

  8. Human Resource Management System - Wikipedia - Overview of HRIS/HRMS architecture, modules, and capabilities. Provides context for understanding the limitations of traditional HR systems that organizational analytics addresses.

  9. Neo4j Graph Database Platform - Neo4j - Official getting-started documentation for the most widely used graph database. Covers property graph fundamentals, Cypher query language basics, and architecture relevant to this course's technology stack.

  10. Network Science by Albert-László Barabási - Barabási Lab - Free online textbook covering scale-free networks, hubs, preferential attachment, and network dynamics. Provides the mathematical foundation for understanding why organizational networks exhibit the structures they do.