Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intellectual ...

Eva Eckenh<strong>of</strong>er
The analysis <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> social network focuses on two measures, <strong>the</strong> density <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> network and <strong>the</strong>
homophily prior to and after <strong>the</strong> organisational changes. Density describes <strong>the</strong> ratio between existing
relations and possible relations as a percentage and <strong>the</strong> degree <strong>of</strong> homophily describes whe<strong>the</strong>r
actors with similar attributes are connected to each o<strong>the</strong>r to a greater extent than to actors with
different attributes (Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Jansen, 2006). Hereby we wanted to see whe<strong>the</strong>r
actors who are not from <strong>the</strong> Czech Republic, and can be counted <strong>the</strong>refore as foreigners, are more
connected to o<strong>the</strong>r foreigners or whe<strong>the</strong>r Czech, Slovak and foreign students are mixed. Therefore
three groups have been formed: Czechs, Slovaks and Foreigners. The reason why Slovak students
were defined as a separate group is that even though <strong>the</strong>y could be counted as foreigners due to <strong>the</strong>ir
nationality <strong>the</strong> language barrier does not count for <strong>the</strong>m as Slovak and Czech language is close and
can be understood by both nationalities. This fact can be also observed in Figure 1.
3. Organisational changes
In <strong>the</strong> middle <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> academic year 2009 and 2010, after <strong>the</strong> completion <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> first survey, <strong>the</strong> biggest
organisational change took place and <strong>the</strong> <strong>of</strong>fices <strong>of</strong> foreign students, which originally were in a
different building, approximately 700 meter away from <strong>the</strong> Faculty building where <strong>the</strong> Czech students
had <strong>the</strong>ir <strong>of</strong>fices, were moved to <strong>the</strong> main faculty building. Following <strong>the</strong> field <strong>of</strong> dissertation, but not
merely according to <strong>the</strong> department a PhD student belongs, students were assigned to <strong>of</strong>fices. On
average ten students share an <strong>of</strong>fice, equipped with personal computers and printers. For ga<strong>the</strong>ring
information about <strong>the</strong> motivation and purposes <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> organizational changes an open interview has
been hold with <strong>the</strong> Vice-Dean for Research and Business Liaison, Ing. Adriana Knápková, Ph.D.
During <strong>the</strong> interview she pointed out that it was necessary to have all <strong>of</strong>fices in one building and that
Czech and foreign students have to share <strong>of</strong>fices, so that communication between Czech and foreign
students within <strong>the</strong> <strong>of</strong>fice is assisted.
Ano<strong>the</strong>r organisational change was that a compulsory attendance <strong>of</strong> 20 hours per week in <strong>the</strong> <strong>of</strong>fice
was introduced. This regulation aimed on <strong>the</strong> one hand to ensure that <strong>the</strong> PhD study is <strong>the</strong> main
activity <strong>of</strong> students and on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand to provoke that students meet in <strong>the</strong>ir <strong>of</strong>fices and have <strong>the</strong>
possibility to talk and exchange ideas about <strong>the</strong>ir research.
Beside <strong>the</strong> introduction <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>ficial meetings with all PhD students, <strong>the</strong> dean and vice-dean, where <strong>the</strong>
changes <strong>of</strong> regulations, projects and publication opportunities are on <strong>the</strong> agenda and which take
place at <strong>the</strong> beginning <strong>of</strong> each term. Also informal ga<strong>the</strong>rings have been introduced; motivation for
<strong>the</strong>se ga<strong>the</strong>rings came from <strong>the</strong> students <strong>the</strong>mselves who wanted to have joint celebrations as for
instance <strong>the</strong> Christmas parties. Moreover PhD students started to meet every week and give <strong>the</strong>
possibility to one colleague to present his/her topic or ideas and get feedback from fellow students.
These meetings turned out to be really fruitful, even when <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong> participants stagnated
around ten students.
4. Evaluation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> changes (findings)
The effect <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> organisational changes outlined in section 3 will be evaluated by analysing <strong>the</strong>
changes in <strong>the</strong> social networks <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> PhD students. The first step <strong>of</strong> evaluation is <strong>the</strong> graphical
illustration <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> social networks. In figure 2 on <strong>the</strong> left side <strong>the</strong> aggregated network <strong>of</strong> PhD students
in <strong>the</strong> year 2010 and on <strong>the</strong> right side <strong>the</strong> aggregated network <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> year 2011 can be seen. An
aggregation <strong>of</strong> relations means <strong>the</strong> sum <strong>of</strong> all relations, in our case eight relations. The graph<strong>the</strong>oretical
layout <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> network was generated by spring embedding, an algorithm that uses iterative
fitting to locate <strong>the</strong> points to each o<strong>the</strong>r according to <strong>the</strong>ir smallest geodesic distance (Trappmann et
al., 2005).
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