Evolution and Diffusion of the Michigan State University Tradition of Organizational Communication Network Research

Communication Studies, Dec 2005 by Susskind, Alex M, Schwartz, Donald F, Richards, William D, Johnson, J David

This article documents the 30-year history of communication network research at Michigan State University (M.S.U.), providing a case study of the evolution and diffusion of an academic innovation. Three past and continuing issues for network scholars are identified: a lack of professional reward for developing user-friendly computer programs, unresolved methodological problems, and a need for better theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The narrative also illustrates the difficulty communication as a discipline has in impacting broader intellectual traditions. The story begins with the first doctoral dissertation (Schwartz, 1968) and the first network analysis software program in 1970 (Richards' Negopy), continuing to the last dissertation (Susskind, 1996), and ending in 1998 when J. David Johnson left the M.S.U. faculty. Other major players in the M.S.U. network tradition included David K. Berlo, Eugene Jacobson, Everett M. Rogers, Vincent Farace, Peter Monge, and Erwin Bettinghaus. Ironically, Schwartz and Susskind met in 1998 while Schwartz was preparing to retire from Cornell University and Susskind was starting as an Assistant Professor in a different department, thus providing closure to the M.S.U. network.

Keywords: Network Analysis; Communication Networks; History of Communication Network Analysis; History of Communication; Evolution of Research Tradition

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in network analysis in the social sciences (Biggart & Delbridge, 2004; Monge & Contractor, 2003; Pescosolido & Rubin, 2000; Seary & Richards, 2003; Seary, Richards, McKeown-Eyssen, & Baines, 2005) and even the natural sciences (Barabasi, 2003; Buchanan, 2002; Newman, 2003), owing in part to the development of such heuristic concepts as social capital (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000; Seibert, Kraimer, & Liden, 2001) and structural holes (Burt, 1992,2000; Finlay & Coverdill, 2000; Taylor & Doerful, 2003). Interestingly, as this essay details, communication as a discipline had considerable "first mover" advantage in developing network research, but was never able to capitalize on it for reasons partially revealed in this history of network analysis research at Michigan State University (M.S.U.).

From 1968 to 1998 a series of Ph.D. dissertation studies in the M.S.U. Department of Communication investigated communication networks in organizations. The series began with the joint interests of a graduate student, Donald F. Schwartz, and an adjunct communication graduate faculty member, Eugene Jacobson who was an organizational behavior scholar in psychology. Communication network research at M.S.U. was nurtured over the years primarily by Jacobson and three Communication faculty members: Everett M. Rogers, who was on the M.S.U. faculty from 1964 to 1973 and served as a member of Schwartz's advisory committee; R. Vincent Farace, a faculty member from 1965 to 1987 who was joined on the faculty by Peter Monge, his former student, from the late 1970s through the early 1980s; and J. David Johnson, who completed his M.S.U. Ph.D. in 1978 and joined the M.S.U. Communication faculty in 1988, leaving in 1998. Johnson was a member of Alex Susskind's doctoral committee. Susskind's 1996 dissertation was the last in the M.S.U. series. After Johnson left M.S.U. in 1998, no one on the communication faculty taught network analysis.

Because the early studies were not immediately published, the M.S.U. network research in the late 1960s and early 1970s can be characterized as an "invisible college" (Rogers & Agarwala-Rogers, 1976). So-called invisible colleges form around a revolutionary paradigm where scholars exchange unpublished papers and "commune with each other at small select conferences and seminars" (Price, 1970, cited by Rogers & Agarwala-Rogers, 1976). Most of the "communing" about communication network analysis was within the M.S.U. Department of Communication among faculty and graduate students, but also included M.S.U. Ph.D. alumni, largely at annual International Communication Association (I.C.A.) conferences. Schwartz presented the first conference paper at I.C.A. in 1969. It wasn't until 1972 with establishment of the I.C.A. organizational communication audit project that communication network analysis began to diffuse beyond M.S.U. and the invisible college began to wane. It "went public" with the first published journal article in 1974 by Farace and MacDonald.

This article is the story of the M.S.U. communication network analysis tradition. Our purpose is to document the personal and intellectual history of that work as an illustration of the evolution of an academic innovation in a young discipline. Our narrative illuminates three past and continuing issues for network scholars generally, but it also reveals how a group of academic entrepreneurs failed to confront these problems making it difficult for them to impact larger, more mature academic disciplines. The first issue is a lack of professional reward for developing user-friendly computer programs for network analysis. The innovative work of Bill Richards at M.S.U. yielding one of the first software programs was a fortunate effort that few others attempted early on. Over the years others have accepted the challenge and low professional reward ratio of software development, but in a point-and-click era user-friendliness remains an issue. Second are unresolved methodological problems, such as the reliability and validity of network data and the application of statistics to relational data. As a discipline communication has never developed the specialization of a field like physics where experimentalists and theoreticians serve as a useful counterpoint to each other, with experimentalists constructing ever more sophisticated tools to measure and assess theoretical ideas. Finally, communication has depended on other disciplines for the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that guide our research. Given our relative size and position in the academic firmament, it is only at the early stages of inquiry that we might have the best opportunity to shape broader intellectual traditions.