Women's position in intra organizational informal relationship networks: an application of network analysis approach

In recent years, one of the issues considered by scientists is the relationship between gender and informal relationship networks in workplaces. Optimize utilization of social networks to achieve better job position in a higher organizational level is in great importance for both men and women. Social supporting and interaction networks play important roles in a workplace including improving performance and decreasing stress as well as fatigue of workers. Hence it has been a subject to be researched. Network analysis is a new approach of studying social structures that investigates how surrounding structures of people, groups or organizations affect them and one of its most important features is changing the focus from people and their characteristics to their relationships. This paper using network analysis approach draws the informal relationship network of 153 male and female workers of Peyvand industrial company to answer 2 following questions: Are women engaged in informal relationship networks in workplaces with masculine job nature as well as men and are they put in proper position? 2- Is the job nature effective in forming informal relationships among men and women? Data are analyzed using UCINET and depicted by Netdraw Software and discussed in the conclusion.