A Framework: Workflow-Based Social Network Discovery and Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to build a fundamental framework of discovering and analyzing a workflow-based social network formed through workflow-based organizational business operations. A little more precisely speaking, the framework formalizes a series of theoretical steps from discovering a workflow-based social network to analyzing the discovered social network. For the sake of the discovery phase, we conceive an algorithm that is able to automatically discover the workflow-based social network from a workflow procedure; while on the other hand, in the analysis phase we apply the degree centrality algorithm to the discovered social network, which is one of the well-known social network analysis algorithms in the literature. Consequently, the crucial implication of the framework is in quantifying the degree of work-intimacy among performers who are involved in enacting the corresponding workflow procedure. Also, as a conceptual extension of the framework, it can be applied to discovering and analyzing d gree centrality or collaborative closeness and betweenness among architectural components and nodes of collaborative cloud workflow computing environments.