One-mode multiplex, signed network of the bank wiring room (Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939)

Source: R/data_ison.R

Observational data on 14 Western Electric employees in the bank wiring room of the Hawthorne plant, first reported by Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939) and better known through Homans' (1950) scrutiny of the interactions and the blockmodel analysis in Breiger, Boorman and Arabie (1975). The men worked in a single room, and their interaction was recorded by an observer stationed there over several months.

Six layers of tie were recorded, four positive and two negative. As is the convention for 'stocnet' objects, the sign of a tie is the sign of its weight:

  • friendship (weight > 0): positive ties of friendship

  • games (weight > 0): participation in horseplay

  • help (weight > 0): helping another with their work

  • trades (weight > 0): trading job assignments, weighted by the number of times observed

  • antagonism (weight < 0): antagonistic behaviour

  • conflict (weight < 0): participation in arguments about open windows

One nodal attribute is included:

  • role: one of inspector (I1, I3), wireman (W1 to W9), or solderer (S1, S2, S4)

data(ison_bankwiring)

Format

#> -- # Bank Wiring Room ----------------------------------------------------------
#> # A labelled, multiplex, signed, weighted, directed network of 14 employees and
#> 13 friendship ties, 28 game ties, 24 help arcs, 7 trade arcs, 19 antagonism
#> ties, and 19 conflict ties
#>
#> -- Nodes
#> # A tibble: 14 x 2
#>   label role
#>   <chr> <chr>
#> 1 I1    inspector
#> 2 I3    inspector
#> 3 W1    wireman
#> 4 W2    wireman
#> 5 W3    wireman
#> 6 W4    wireman
#> # i 8 more rows
#>
#> -- Ties
#> # A tibble: 110 x 4
#>    from    to layer      weight
#>   <int> <int> <chr>       <dbl>
#> 1     1     5 friendship      1
#> 2     3     5 friendship      1
#> 3     3     6 friendship      1
#> 4     5     6 friendship      1
#> 5     9    10 friendship      1
#> 6     9    11 friendship      1
#> # i 104 more rows
#>

Source

The UCINET standard dataset collection, as distributed in {xUCINET}. The DOI given for Roethlisberger and Dickson resolves to the 2004 Routledge reissue; the 1939 original predates DOI registration.

Details

The network is directed as a whole because the help and trades relations are asymmetric. The four symmetric relations are held once per dyad, and the info component records the directedness of each layer. Coercion to another class reciprocates those layers again, because an 'igraph' or 'network' object is directed or undirected as a whole. to_uniplex() returns an undirected network for a symmetric layer.

All ties are weighted 1 or -1 except trades, which carries the observed count.

References

Roethlisberger, Fritz J., and William J. Dickson. 1939. Management and the Worker. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4324/9780203503010

Homans, George C. 1950. The Human Group. New York: Harcourt-Brace.

Breiger, Ronald L., Scott A. Boorman, and Phipps Arabie. 1975. "An algorithm for clustering relational data with applications to social network analysis and comparison with multidimensional scaling". Journal of Mathematical Psychology 12(3): 328-383. doi:10.1016/0022-2496(75)90028-0