The article highlights the fact that numerous key decisions in temporary construction organisations are made as a result of informal, non-contractual relationships between organisation members that are not a result of formal organisational structures. These hidden relationships can be visualised in the form of social networks and Social Network Analysis methods (SNA) can be used to perform their structural analysis. In latest studies on self-organising networks in the construction sector, researchers have mostly focused on the design phase of large construction projects, e.g. infrastructural ones. Meanwhile, there exists a need for similar research to focus on temporary organisations created for the purpose of performing construction work. The authors took up this subject and examined a self-organising network of communication between the participants of the construction of a multi-family residential complex located in Katowice, Poland. The structural analysis of this network facilitated its in-depth understanding and identifying certain flaws and dysfunctions concerning individual participants of this project, which became a basis for further discussion. At the same time, the authors highlighted the benefits of managing such a self-organising network in the context of the effective achievement of project goals.
Construction projects are characterised by complexity in the technical, organisational and environmental sphere. The organisational complexity of such projects makes it necessary to manage relationships between actors who fulfil various functions. Formal organisational structures that have been developed for this purpose do not always reflect the actual relationships between construction project participants. In literature, scholars more and more often point to the need to identify and monitor such informal relationships and attempt to manage them in order to effectively carry out projects. Structural analysis of so-called self-organising networks of relationships between project participants is carried out on the basis of established structural measures by performing Social Network Analysis (SNA). In a situation when inappropriate communication between project participants relative to management staff expectations is detected, interventions meant to improve communication in such networks are possible. The goal of the article is proposing an optimisation-oriented approach to planning such interventions while taking various constraints, such as communication costs, into consideration. As a part of this optimisation, the authors proposed a method from the heuristic methods group. This solution will support decision-making in terms of intervening within an informal relationship structure. The method was presented on the example of an actual construction project involving the construction of a complex of housing buildings. the self-organising network structure was defined on the basis of a survey carried out among the project's participants and concerned communication between them over a four-week period. As a result of the structural network analysis, abnormalities in communication between project participants were detected. The optimisation method developed by the authors pointed to possibilities of improving communication effectiveness within this network. The effects of the analysis confirmed the application potential of the method that was presented.
This article analyses a hierarchical structure of academia within two academic social media networking sites, i.e. Academia.edu and ResearchGate. In this study, I investigate profiles (in these two services) of all academic staff members of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (N = 2661). I use the concept of prestige to analyse whether the hierarchical structure of academia is being reproduced in analysed services. Since prestige is an unobservable construct, I use two indicators to measure it: the number of followers and the number of views. My findings show that the hierarchical structure differs between Academia.edu and Research- Gate. While the structure of ResearchGate is explicitly hierarchical in reference to degrees of the researchers (a higher degree is related to a higher value of the prestige indicators), the structure of Academia.edu resembles a reversed pyramid (a higher degree is related to a lower value of the prestige indicators). The article concludes with a discussion concerning possible causes of differences between services in terms of reproducing the hierarchical structure. Moreover, I provide potential implications of the results as well as the justification of the necessity of using the concept of prestige to determine hierarchical structure of academia.
The paper investigates the mechanisms behind the formation and maintenance of those migrants’ social ties which translate into a particular composition of the network and become a source of social capital. Based on a number of in-depth interviews with Ukrainian migrants in Warsaw, we find that Ukrainian migrants’ networks are based primarily on ties homogenous in regard to nationality, level of education and character of work. The institutional context of social interaction determines with whom migrants form relations and whether these ties become a source of social advancement. The studied migrants do form bridging ties with more experienced, as well as socially and legally embedded persons, mainly other migrants, receiving both instrumental and emotional support.
One of the key issues in contemporary urban studies is to consider the city from the perspective of culture and consumption, which are treated as new drivers of urban development and economic prosperity, the essence of urban ways of life, and arenas for the implementation of urban policies. In a consumer society, cities become important nodes where collective and individual consumption takes place on a massive scale. The urban system organizes capabilities and provides the resources for consumption, thus facilitating various kinds of lifestyles. As a result, the urban space operates as an arena of competition, where different consumer orientations and social categories strive physically and symbolically to occupy ground, produce meanings, and create belonging in the spaces and places that constitute the city. In applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a “social field,” the aim of the article is to show how the space of social positions corresponds to the space of cultural practices. Drawing on the study of cultural and leisure activities in Wrocław, four general categories of urban residents are revealed and characterized by their distinct positions in different dimensions of the social space. The analysis also points to social capital (social networks) as an efficient new principle of cultural differentiation. The paper closes with the author’s concluding remarks and guidelines for further research.
en
pl
