An exploratory study on the intra-organizational network during restructuring: An email network analysis

Organizational restructuring is a disruptive process that damages the communication patterns of surviving employees, in which the organizational networks could significantly affect a company performance, in particular its total quality management (TQM) performance. However, existing studies on how the employees of a TQM organization cope with lost communication linkages, and form new linkages are unclear. The study is designed to test the relationships of multiple network attributes of employees before and after the organizational restructuring due to the 2008 global financial crisis between 2008 (T1), 2009 (T2), and 2010 (T3). It utilized internal company e-mail log data to detect the network attributes of over 2,468 employees in a major TQM manufacturer through PLS analysis. The results show that during the organizational restructuring, the employee´s closeness decreased, but the degree and the betweenness recovered. The degree in 2008 is positively related to that in 2009-2010 as well as and the closeness in year 2010. The betweenness in 2008 is positively related to that in 2010. The closeness in 2008 is positively related to that in 2009. The paper explores how an organizational internal network changes during the organizational restructuring through a set of longitudinal data using social network analysis.