AN EXPLORATION IN THE SMALL -WORLD NETWORKS

AN ACADEMIC EXERCISE PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION WITH HONOURS

BY VOON JOE YUNG

2000/2001

ABSTRACT
This academic exercise seeks to explore the small world phenomenon, which expresses the notion that anyone on this planet can be linked through only five or six intermediaries. We also seek to determine the relevancy of this phenomenon with our Singapore social network. In particular, we are interested to see how this phenomenon is able to fit into the world of the Internet, a virtual community. A preliminary study on this social network was conducted through a small world experiment, using a similar methodology that was used by Stanley Milgram. Milgram was the pioneer researcher in addressing this phenomenon formally and providing useful insights in understanding the practicality of this phenomenon. After which, his findings have set off an avalanche of researches being done in many field of studies that include physical and social sciences and many others.

We managed to reach two out of six targets successfully through our small world experiment. At the same time, we found out that an individual needs to traverse at least 1.5 links in order to reach these pre-selected targets. We also observed and documented a few heuristics used by our respondents in their anecdotal searching process. Hindrances, which affected the experiment, were identified and discussed in details. Strategic implications on the findings and the small world theory itself were also discussed to provide insights on the studies of management.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
We are currently witnessing a paradigm shift, not merely in the way we perceive our society, but especially in the way which people and institutions are connected. It is the shift from living in groups to living in networked societies in which people and institutions are becoming more connected through social networks and less so through groups.

Traditionally, members deal only with fellow members of the few groups to which they belong: at home, in the neighbourhood, at work, or in any voluntary organizations. All of these appear to be bodies with precise boundaries for inclusion and therefore exclusion. Although people often view the world in terms of groups, they function in networks. Networks are omnipresent. We see networks in human societies linked by ties of kinship, friendship, marriage and business. We see the brain as a network of neurons, and the global economy as a network of national economies that are in turn networks of markets, and similarly, markets are networks of producers and consumers. We also see networks in most of the utilities that define and enhance our daily lives, from power to transportation to telecommunications, which are defined in terms of transmission and distribution networks. Some of these networks are linked together even closer after the advent of the Internet and its concomitants, providing us a unique online social network.

Networks are generally viewed from two perspectives; they can be completely ordered as what we call a regular network, or completely random as what we call a random network. However, many real-world networks embody aspects of both order and

randomness, as shown by many researchers. These networks lie somewhere in between regularity and randomness, hence called small-world networks, which form the basis of the small world phenomenon.

1.1

An Introduction to the Small World Phenomenon

The introduction to every paper or book written about the small world phenomenon

typically begins with the cocktail party example that may be pertinent to ones own personal experiences.

A common introduction may hence begin with: Joe was attending a cocktail party at some ostentatious place in town. He walked around and iteratively mingled with all attendees by exchanging pleasantries and any other casual remarks. Finally, he met an energetic guy, Adam and found him interesting. They started to introduce themselves, including exchanging notes on their respective careers and recounting personal experiences. While mentioning about their own hobbies and favourite sports, Adam brought up his best friends name, Gordon, who played the same sports with him. Upon hearing his stories, Joe suddenly found this Gordon sounded familiar and he went on to ask more about this fellow.

To Joes surprise, Adam had confirmed his suspicions that Gordon was one of his neighbours and both Joe and Gordon had attended the same secondary school before! Joe had never met with Gordon ever since Gordon moved away from his neighbourhood after completing his course in the secondary school. Why was it possible that the coincidence

occurred? They could not explain this and the conversation might well have ended by a concluding exclamation, Well, isnt it a small world?

This example leads us to the generalized concept of small world phenomenon that most people are familiar with. This anecdotal notion expresses the idea that, in many cases, the distance between any two people, who can be represented by two nodes on a human acquaintanceship graph, will only be a few links apart on this acquaintanceship graph, despite the fact that the graph may contain millions of nodes. As such, the diameter of this graph is surprisingly small. Stanley Milgram (1967) made the first experimental assault on this problem and further supported this notion of you are only ever six degrees of separation away from anybody else on the planet. Knowing that only a few intermediaries separate the individuals in a social network, John Guare had popularized this concept of six degrees of separation through his film and play named after the notion.

1.2

Motivation for the Study

Many researchers have studied the small world phenomenon and applied it in various

fields of study. For instance, Watts and Strogatz (1998) had conceptualized the ideal of the small world phenomenon into a small world theory that could be applied into various reallife networks. Newman then applied this theory to study other human social networks (for example, the scientific collaboration networks) from similar perspective (Newman, 2000a; 2000b; 2000c). However, this phenomenon is not popularly known, much less explored or studied in the academic fields of Singapore. In addition, there is not a single study that applies this concept into our Singapore social network, or finds any relevance between the

small world theory and our local social network, given the smaller geographical size of Singapore as compared to most of the other countries.

Secondly, many researchers have claimed that, the invention of the Internet and the availability of cost-effective, global communication systems such as electronic mail (email), are making our world even smaller. Except for a few antediluvians and those economically below the digital divide, people are becoming increasingly wired. Therefore, as more and more people have access to emails, two individuals who actually stay geographically far apart can be very closely linked together. Again, this claim has not been validated by any study so far.

All the above have motivated and enthused our minds to look into these unattended areas. Therefore, this academic exercise seeks to fill in the gap by conducting a preliminary experiment on the context of Singapore social community. In order to validate the claimed hypothesis that the use of emails has shrunk the size of our planet, we look into the online community in Singapore. Through this study, in which email is used as a primary communication tool, we hope to contribute some insights into these yet unexplored areas.

1.3

Objectives of the Study

The objectives of this academic exercise include the following: 1. To present an overall taxonomical review of all the literature focused on the small world phenomenon and its relating subjects.

2. To examine the significance of the small world phenomenon in the context of Singapore online social community by conducting an experimental study. 3. To determine the length of the path connecting an individual to our pre-selected targets from the experiment conducted. 4. To study the various implications on the small world phenomenon and specifically its contribution and relevance to the management study.

1.4

Organization of the Study

The academic exercise is organized as follows: In this chapter, we began by explaining the small world phenomenon and the

background of this study, after which, the motivation, and objectives of the entire study were presented. Chapter 2 presents a review of existing literature on the small world phenomenon and the conceptualization of this phenomenon as a small world theory that can be applied to many other areas of study.

The design of the experiment and its methodology will be discussed in Chapter 3. The findings of the experiment and their accompanying analysis can be found in Chapter 4. The analysis emphasizes the calculation of chain length connecting two individuals in the experiment and also the searching process of the selected targets. Lastly, Chapter 5 gives an overall summary of the main findings, together with the implications on the small world experiment. The limitations of the study and directions for future research are also discussed in this concluding chapter.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Social structure becomes actually visible in an anthill; the movements and contacts one
sees are not random but patterned. We should also be able to see structure in the life of an American community if we had a sufficiently remote vantage point, a point from which persons would appear to be small moving dots We should see that these dots do not randomly approach one another, that some are usually together, some meet often, some never If one could get far enough away from it, human life would become pure pattern. Roger Brown, INSNA1 web site

2.1

Introduction
Ever since the exploration and formalization of the small world phenomenon, many

studies from various fields have been done into this area. This section seeks to present an overview of the literature pertaining to contributions related to this phenomenon, including an explanation for the small world study, various real small-world networks and other applications of small world phenomenon.

Figure 1 depicts the structure of this chapter. We will explain the various small world studies done by the community, paying more attention to the papers written by Milgram and associates. Following that, we will branch out and discuss the conceptualization of the small-world networks in which a categorization of the related papers on this subject is presented (refer to Figure 4). Apart from that, we will also cover

International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA), a web page containing all the information, resources and related topics on social network. The URL is http://info.heinz.cmu.edu/project/INSNA

the applications of the small world theory in many fields. Similarly, categorization of the papers in various fields is also presented for easy reference (refer to Figure 5). Lastly, we include a brief summary for the literature that has been reviewed in this chapter.

Figure 1: Evolution of small world phenomenon and its study

2.2 Small World Study

These studies, which dated way back to the 1960s, arose from the work of mathematical graph theorists who were interested in the probabilities that communication, or disease, would reach individuals at varying distances from the source in a network of relationships (Rapoport and Horvath, 1961). Instead of looking at the transition probabilities in a static network, a US psychologist, Stanley Milgram (Milgram 1967; Travers and Milgram 1969) pioneered a data collection design, which observed the mobilization of existing ties, and tried to uncover the connections that lurk in the networks of friends and acquaintances within the American context. In order to determine the probability that any two randomly chosen individuals will know each other, Pool and Kochen (this study was done earlier but published later in 1978) speculated that there is a one in 200,000 chance that two Americans would know each other, under the assumption that each American knows about 500 other people. Thus more than 50% of the time, any two Americans could be linked if two intermediaries are allowed (Pool and Kochen, 1978).

Korte and Milgram (1970) described the typical small world study as follows: The small world method consists of presenting each of the persons in a starting population with the description of a given target person his name, address, occupation, and other selected information. The task of a starter is to advance a booklet towards the target person by sending the booklet to a personal acquaintance he considers more likely than himself to know the target. Each person in turn advances the booklet in this manner until the chain reaches the target.

10

In Milgrams experiment (Milgram, 1967), volunteers in Kansas (first study) and Nebraska (second study) received folders that were addressed to unfamiliar targets living in Cambridge and Boston for the two studies respectively. Rosters on which the intermediaries wrote his or her name were included in the folders too. This was meant to tell the recipients exactly from whom they received the folders, and also to prevent endless looping of the folder through participants who had already been included in the chain. The intermediaries were also asked to return a postcard to the researcher reporting some basic demographic characteristics. The researcher could then compare the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful chains. Examples of the documents contained in the folder that was sent to the respondents were depicted in figures on the next page (see Figure 2a and 2b).

Many folders were lost along the way.

But, of the ones that made it to the

addressees, the length of acquaintance chains, from Kansas to Cambridge and from Nebraska to Boston, varied from two to ten intermediate acquaintances, with the median at five and a distribution mean at 5.2 links. It seemed that, on average, everyone in America from arms dealer to zookeeper could be connected to everyone else via a chain of just five or six intermediaries.

This result is associated with the phrase six degrees of separation, popularized by a 1990 play title and a later firm, both written by John Guare, that conveyed the popular notion that we are all connected (on average) at a social distance of no more than six mutual acquaintances. Harrison White (White, 1970) discussed the possible biases that could arise by using the small world technique. Most of these biases occur due to the typically much

11

lower response rate with this form of network data collection. Also, intermediaries in the experiment are able to optimize the search processes in terms of

Figure 2a: Documents contained in the folder used in Milgrams Experiment

Source: Milgram, 1969

12

Figure 2b: Continued documents contained in the folder used in Milgrams experiment

Source: Milgram, 1969

13

geographical distance. White (1970), and Hunter and Shotland (1974) have discussed better estimation strategies of network properties. White proposed a model to account for these biases and yielded a revised estimate of about seven intermediaries. Hunter and Shotland used Markov models to model the transition from one link to the next to determine the distance between groups.

This observation of the small world phenomenon is indeed central to a wide range of sociological models, such as Colemans association of social capital with closed networks, Granovetters theory of weak ties, Burts structural holes, and studies of social class (Coleman 1990; Granovetter 1973; Burt 1992; Domhoff 1967). Granovetters (1973) idea of the strength of weak ties follows logically from this perspective, by which agents seek new information through others who are outside the immediate set of contacts. In his paper, he grouped ties into strong ties and weak ties. Strong ties are those that are shared between a group of nodes and everyone in the group interact with one another frequently and closely. These groups are known as cliques or clusters and may be disconnected from the rest of the network. On the other hand, the weak ties, which travel between well-defined groups, are the ties that are responsible for joining many disparate groups and demographics, making the concept of "six degrees of separation" possible.

A game closely related to small world study is the Kevin Bacon Game (a kind of collaboration game). It was designed by Brett Tjaden a computer scientist at the University of Virginia and is available at the web site, The Oracle of Bacon2.

14

This is how the game goes: Think of an actor or actress. If they have ever been in a film with Kevin Bacon, then they have a "Bacon Number" of one. If they have never been in a film with Kevin Bacon but have been in a film with somebody else who has, then they have a Bacon Number of two, and so on. Kevin Bacon himself has a Bacon Number of zero.

For example, according to the web site, Jackie Chan has a Bacon number of 2. Jackie was in Shanghai Noon (a movie made in 2000) with Xander Berkeley, and Xander was in Apollo 13 (1995) with Kevin Bacon.

Tjaden claimed that no one in Hollywood film industry has a Bacon Number of greater than four. Later he conducted a survey of the Internet Movie Database3 and found out that the highest finite Bacon Number is eight. This Hollywood graph, if could be taken as complete and definitive, includes exactly one person with Bacon Number 0; 1433 with Bacon Number 1; 96829 have Bacon Number 2 and 208692 with Bacon Number 3, as reported by Hayes (2000a). However these numbers increase as time goes by, the latest figures are available at the web site of The Oracle of Bacon. There are several other games available at this site, such as Arnie Game and Elvis Game.

In the world of mathematics, a similar amusement involves assessing ones Erds number4, which measures the number of links needed to connect one to the prolific mathematician Paul Erds through jointly authored papers. Similarly, individuals have an
2 3

The address of this web site is http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/. The address of the web site is http://www.imdb.com.

15

Erds number of 1 if they co-authored a paper with Erds. If one of their co-authors writes a paper with Erds, then they have an Erds number of 2, and so forth. Other parodies appeared after the work of the Kevin Bacon Game, such as a Six Degrees of Monica Lewinsky featured in the New York Times. Another web venture puts Guare's famous slogan into practice, linking up people and their friends-of-friends to offer networking for jobs, advice, and apartment-hunting (www.sixdegrees.com).

The small world study was also replicated in a university context (Stevenson, Davidson, Manev and Walsh, 1997). The major differences between this study and Milgrams experiment (Milgram, 1967) were that the students were not asked to return a postcard describing themselves to the researcher and that the social network in the university context was definitely smaller than that of Milgrams experiment. They also used a distinctive individual, the undergraduate dean of the school of management as their target. Stevenson et al. tested four hypotheses by using an administrator as a target. The hypotheses include: 1. The longer the time at the university, the more likely a student is to initiate a successful chain of communication to a target. 2. Small world folders are more likely to be passed within a class than between classes and occupational groups in a university. 3. 4. Small world folders will converge on faculty and staff before reaching the target. Small world folders are more likely to be passed to members of the same sex.

The Erds Number Project is available at http://www.oakland.edu/~grossman/erdoshp.html.

16

The result was that 27% of the folders reached the target with a mean of 1.25 links between the starter and the target. Despite low response rate, students were found exhibiting a hierarchy of communication with upper-class students never passing folders to lower-class students. Graduate students, staff and faculty seemed to be much more closely tied to the administration as compared to undergraduate students. However, freshmen were particularly isolated in communication networks. Women relied more on homophilous ties to pass folders compared to men, and both sexes relied on homophilous ties when passing folders across occupational boundaries.

2.3 Small-world Networks

2.3.1 Watts-Strogatz Model Graphs found in many biological and manmade systems are small-world networks (Watts and Strogatz, 1998; Collins and Chow 1998 and Watts 1999), that lie somewhere in between regular lattices and random graphs, in which the following properties are shown: (i) (ii) Local neighborhood is preserved - as for regular lattices, and Diameter of the network, quantified by average shortest distance between two vertices, increases logarithmically with the number of vertices n - as for random graphs.

Hayes also identified the properties of small-world networks as: tending to be sparse, clustered and having a small diameter (Hayes, 2000b). Two parameters were formally introduced earlier on by Watts and Strogatz (Watts and Strogatz, 1998; Watts, 1999) to quantify these two properties: clustering coefficient C (a local property) and characteristic

17

path length L (a global property). For instance, in the case of the film industry where the number of vertices (n) was 225,226 and average number of edges per vertex (k) was 61, its characteristic path length (Lfilm) was found to be 3.65 and clustering coefficient (Cfilm) was 0.79. In comparison, a random graph with the same n and k was found to have an L of 2.99, a rather close number to Lfilm, and C of 0.00027 that was much smaller than Cfilm.

The clustering coefficient measures the average probability that two nodes with a mutual friend will be connected. It is the average number of edges existing in the clique divided by the maximum possible number of edges in the clique. Meanwhile, characteristic path length is defined as the length of the shortest path (i.e. smallest number of edges) required to connect one node to another, averaged overall all pairs of nodes. Small-world networks thus have a high clustering coefficient C and a short characteristic path length L. In other words, these networks are highly clustered, but the minimum distance between any two randomly chosen nodes in the graph is short. By comparison, random graphs are not clustered as the points are haphazardly connected and have short distances. Regular lattices tend to be clustered as the nearby points are connected by high density of links and have long distances (Erds and Rnyi, 1960; Bollobs, 1985).

Watts and Strogatz showed how, by using a regular lattice whose nodes were marginally linked to each other as a starting platform, one could develop such a structure (see Figure 3). With probability p, they "rewired" a proportion of ties between nodes that were chosen uniformly at random. At lower levels of rewiring where p was approximately zero, global connectivity remains relatively low. But as p increased (0<p<1), the network began to exhibit small world characteristics clusters remained and high connectivity across

18

these clusters emerged. They hence called this a small-world network. This result implies that when connectivity increases, as ties within clusters are replaced with ties that span them (long edge connections or shortcuts), clustering could still remain strong, even in large, highly dispersed networks. Three real networks have been proven to be small-world networks: (i) a database of feature-film actors ordered by their appearance in different films (Internet Movie Database); (ii) the electric power grid of the Western United States; and (iii) the neural network of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans.

Source: New Scientist, 6 June 1998

Figure 3: The formation of a small-world network

A small-world network lies along a continuum of network models between the two extreme networks of regular versus random connections. In these networks, they have n=20 vertices and each connected to k=4 nearest neighbours by undirected edges.

Watts and Strogatz also looked at the effect of the small world phenomenon on four dynamical systems, namely i) The spread of infectious disease in structured populations where it is predicted to spread much more easily and quickly in a small world;

19

ii)

The computation of density classification in cellular automata (Das, Mitchell and Crutchfield, 1994) induced that a simple majority-rule running on a small world graph could outperform all known human and genetic algorithm-generated rules running on a ring lattice;

iii)

Prisoners dilemma (Nowak and May, 1992) played on graphs in which the results show that as the fraction of short cuts increases, cooperation is less likely to emerge among the players using a generalized tit-for-tat strategy (Rapoport, 1965; Axelrod, 1984). The Prisoner's Dilemma models a situation of two partners in crime who are captured and locked in separate cells between which they are unable to communicate. The dilemma concerns whether each prisoner ought to "cooperate" by remaining silent or "defect" by selling out their partner in order to reap a reward, and

iv)

The global synchrony in populations of coupled phase oscillators that is found to be comparable as in the mean-field model (Kuramoto, 1984).

Many studies have also been put forth by other researchers ever since the conceptualization of small-world networks by Watts and Strogatz. The contributions are summarized in Figure 4. Newman and Watts (1999a) highlighted that there are two main problems with the Watts-Strogatz model. Firstly, it was noted that the distribution of shortcuts was not totally uniform and not all choices of positions were equally appropriate for rewiring. In the Watts-Strogatz model each node in the graph was considered equally likely to be rewired. However this is not very likely in the real world, as the level of interaction that an individual possess will not be the same with other individuals. The second

20

problem being put forward is that the average distance between pairs of vertices on the graph was poorly defined in their model, since it is probable that some parts of the graph might have been detached through the process of rewiring. As a result the distance of that particular part of the graph will be infinite. Newman and Watts suggested a slight

modification to eliminate these problems and thus produced a better model. Instead of taking away the current links, they allowed the original links to remain while adding shortcuts between pairs of vertices that were chosen uniformly at random. Furthermore, they also allowed more than one link between any vertices connecting to itself. Newman later summarized and reviewed various models of small world, in particular the characterization and modeling of networks, and the modeling of information or disease (Newman, 2000a).

2.3.2 A Harmonic Small-world Model Marchiori and Latora (2000) presented another model, which incorporated a new concept to the original model of Watts and Strogatz the connectivity length D that gave harmony to the whole theory and was able to replace the roles of characteristic path length L and clustering coefficient C. D is defined as the fixed distance to which we have to set every two vertices in the graph in order to maintain its performance.

N (N-1) D (G) = H ({di,j}i, jG) =

i, jG 1/di,j

where

G = metrical graph H = harmonic mean

21

N = number of vertices or nodes in graph G di,j = distance between two nodes i and j on the graph G

One point to note here is that the connectivity length of the graph is not the arithmetic mean but the harmonic mean of all the distances. In the Marchiori-Latora model, there is a uniform measure D for both global (Dglob) and local (Dloc) properties in which small worlds are defined by a small global and local D, i.e., by a high efficiency in propagating information both on a local and global scale. In their paper, Dglob referred to the connectivity length for the global graph G, and Dloc to the average connectivity length of its clusters. The other usefulness of D includes its application not only to the structural but also the dynamical aspects of a network. Moreover, it could be computed for any metrical network and not only for the topological cases, as compared to the Watts-Strogatz model. The main difference is that L is defined as the simple arithmetic mean of di, j, which could be applied only to connected graphs and could not be used for cliques subgraphs, which in most of the cases are disconnected. They tested this model by also looking at the neural system of the nematode C. elegans, the collaboration graph of film actors, and the oldest US subway system, as metrical networks and these networks were proven to be small-world networks.

22

Figure 4: Small-world networks and its studies

23

2.4 Applications of Small World Theory

How does a disease like AIDS spread? Could an accident at a single power station bring down the entire power grid? How does a joke spread across the Internet? Why do women's menstrual cycles synchronize when they live together? How and why are the neurons of the brain connected the way they are? Could you prevent a crowd from panicking? How do you design the most efficient office building?

One would raise questions like above upon hearing the small world phenomenon and its potential benefits. Answers may be found when applying the theory of this phenomenon in various situations. For example, one might account for the spread of AIDS by applying the small world concept in which we specifically looked for shared sexual partners instead of shared acquaintances. Thus, many successive studies have tried to extend its implications to many other different fields. These studies can be broadly grouped into various categories (see Figure 5). One such category is the researches on the propagation of diseases. According to Moore and Newman, the major consideration in the spread of disease is the distance between people, which they classified as the connectivity of people in the group in which the disease outbreak occurred. If it were a highly clustered environment, such as a university, the spread of the disease would be rapid, whereas in a low clustered environment, the spread of disease would be very slow. Through this connectivity element Moore and Newman linked their studies to Watts and Strogatz (Moore and Newman, 1999; 2000).

Another popular research issue is the size exploration of World Wide Web and its small world behaviour, particularly the unique hyperlink structure (Albert, Jeong and

24

Barabsi, 1999; Adamic, 1999; Watts, 2000; Allen, 2000). The total number of pages on the Web is estimated to be over 8 x 108 documents (Albert et al., 1999) and the total number of hyperlinks would never be a stable figure due to constant updates. When Albert et al. (1999) studied the World Wide Web in their research, they used robots to obtain certain statistics and found that the web page hyperlinks follow the power law. They concluded that two randomly chosen documents on the web are on average 19 clicks away form each other.

Adamic instead looked at the World Wide Web from the perspective of WattsStrogatz model in which properties L and C were calculated based on all sites and a subset of .edu sites. Firstly she considered "undirected shortest paths" which had an average path length of 3.1 "clicks" between any two connected sites. Then she analyzed directional paths between sites, used 64,826 sites, and found that the average path length was 4.228. The graphs were shown to be small world graphs, and hence the World Wide Web is a small world. A prototype of search engine application was also developed to exploit the advantages of the small world properties in presenting documents corresponding to particular queries (Adamic, 1999).

Other interesting studies include scientific collaboration and co-authorship networks (Newman 2000b; Newman, 2000c), metabolic networks (Wagner and Fell, 2000; Gleiss, Stadler, Wagner and Fell, 2000), and various contributions in the area of information and communication technology, personal and business networking (examples include Shotland 1976; Bristor and Ryan, 1989; Giustiniano and Carignani, 1999; Kogut and Walker, 1999;

25

Figure 5: Applications of small world theory

Applications of Small World Theory

Social Network Study
Korte & Milgram 1970 Stevenson et al. 1997 Newman 2000b, c

Collaboration Graphs
The Kevin Bacon Game The Erds Number Project

Internet & Telecommunication Technology

Albert, Jeong & Barabsi 1999 Adamic 1999 Giustiniano & Carignani 1999 Comellas & Ozn 2000 Allen 2000

Business Applications
Shotland 1976 Bristor & Ryan 1989 Kreb 1999 Hansen 1999 Kogut & Walker 1999 Park 2000

Life Sciences
Wagner & Fell 2000 Gleiss et al. 2000 Bagnoli & Bezzi 2000

26

Comellas and Ozn, 2000). Montoya and Sol (2000) even found that some species-rich, well-defined food webs also show small world behaviour in the systems. Further elaboration regarding some of these studies will be presented here, in particular those studies that are more relevant to the study of management.

Giustiniano and Carignani (1999) hope to extend the small world study to their field of information and communication technology (ICT), in particular computer-supported social network (Wellman, Salaff, Dimitrova, et al., 1996) and to define the impact of the small world theory on social networks using the whole-network approach (Barnes, 1972) when considering the whole pattern of links connecting all the members of the network. As they applied the actor-network theory (Latour, 1991; Callon, 1992), both human and technology were considered as actors and intermediaries within a larger actor-network. For instance in a workgroup an actor (member) use intermediaries (connection technology, data exchange, etc.) to put another actor (member) into action, implying that all the technologically supported social processes could be explained as chains of continuous interactions. Thus a company could be globally considered as a network of relationships among the people cooperating and collaborating with one another in which the communication ties between them are highly clustered. Meanwhile, short cut connections among distant points also exist. This implies that the whole firm could be studied as a smallworld network and the workgroups could be considered as clusters interacting with one another.

27

Giustiniano and Carignani also noted that: The assessment of the impact and the role of the TCP/IP based architecture in terms of small world effects could be done in at least two perspectives. On the one hand, there is the possibility for any point in the network to benefit indirectly and in few steps of the data, the information or the knowledge received by his neighbour. On the second hand, ICT could permit to connect directly two nodes distant from each other, i.e. belonging to different functional area of the same corporate (clusters), enhancing the small world effect in the whole network.

Not long after that, Comellas and Ozn (2000) proposed that small-world networks are good candidates for communication networks, for the reason that typical data-flow patterns in communication networks show a huge amount of clustering with a small number of long-range communications that need to be accomplished efficiently and effectively. The probabilistic analysis technique and random rewiring of edges of the Watts-Strogatz model are said to be inappropriate for communication networks, which have fixed interconnections. Hence it was replaced by a deterministic analysis technique and nonrandom interconnection patterns. Furthermore, the maximum length of diameter was also used to replace the average distance between nodes. The resulting networks were further restricted to be regular.

Perhaps a more obvious contribution in terms of business application of the small world phenomenon is provided by Bristor and Ryan (1989), in which they applied the small world theory to organizational buying or organizational marketing issues. It was argued that organizational marketers, due to factors like global competition and economic recessions,

28

would need to develop clearer competitive advantages for survival. One way to develop these advantages is to look at the buyer-seller relationship using the concept of a buying network, whereby the important issue of how interpersonal relationships affect the buying process would be addressed. This thus provides marketers with more insight into how certain participants are able to exert influence and control buying decision outcomes. According to Bristor and Ryan (1989), a buying network could be formally defined as the set of individuals involved in a purchase process, over a specified time frame, and the set of one or more relations that link (or fail to link) each dyad. A dyad consists of a pair of actor and the (possible) ties(s) between them (Wasserman and Faust, 1994).

Bristor and Ryan (1989) further explained that there were two critical tasks necessary for developing a buyer-seller relationship. First, who was the right person to contact, and second, how they could be reached. This is where they applied three relevant concepts of the small world theory: structure, direct links and indirect links. By looking at the structure of the network, marketers would be able to know more about structural characteristics as follow: Number of buying participants; Density of relationships between members or the extent to which they interact; Number of different functional areas or departments represented in the network; Number of different hierarchical levels; Extent to which certain members are central to the network, and Memberships in various professional and social organizations, educational levels and social class

29

At the same time, by using direct and indirect links, marketers would then be able to fully utilize their networks and expand their contacts to their advantage. With knowledge of the small world phenomenon, one could derive better-estimated probabilities and predict the number of links between the marketer and the influential decision maker of the buying organization.

Park (2000) proposed that the idea of the small world phenomenon could also be applied to the whole organization, not only to a specific department. Corporations are moving from rigid, centralized organizations to more flexible, decentralized organizations; specialized groups like cross-functional teams and project groups are formed to be responsible for tackling specific tasks. These organizational forms make the whole organization resemble a web or network in which clusters of specialized units are interconnected with one another. These clusters are coordinated by communication and relational norms rather than by a hierarchical chain of command. However, there is a danger of losing control due to too much decentralization when specialized units are allowed to work independently. In order to visualize, achieve and optimize an efficient and robust form of network organization, Park therefore argued that firms therefore would need to recognize and accept that networks exist in their organizations for their advantage.

Networks in an organization could be formal or informal.

Visualizing these

networks requires tools such as social network mapping, or organizational network mapping. Only then could the small world theory be applied to optimize the networks. This theory could provide the right structure that promotes both efficient communication and effective teamwork high level of clustering (specialized units) with only a few links between any

30

two parts of the organization. For example, to rewire the links between employees, one could place a well-connected employee between departments without restructuring the whole organization and thus improve the interactions between these departments. As discussed in previous section, all elements in the Watts-Strogatz model are treated as identical; all ties are symmetric and equally weighted in the event of distributing the shortcuts. However in the real world, these assumptions are not really valid due to the fact that we have to take into consideration factors like the dynamics of the organization, social norms or personality types. Therefore he concluded that transforming an organization into a small world required tools that could better model the constraints of a real-world environment. One such application is a complexity-based simulation that is able to evolve small-world networks using a few relatively simple rules and constraints (Park, 2000).

A similar argument was also put forward to link up the project groups in order to improve the information flow in the organization (Kreb, 1999). An organizations data is found in its computer systems, but a company's intelligence is found in its biological and social systems. By adding a few shortcuts between the groups, the path lengths become shorter and hence the ability to find the required knowledge or intelligence would be greatly increased. Thus, there was no need for an organization to reinvent the information or outsource it from other parties. Morten Hansen from Harvard Business School (Hasen, 1999) found very similar results with project teams. Those teams that could easily reach other teams and access the knowledge required were more likely to be successful than teams with poor network connections. Hansen found that the ability to reach a diverse set of others in the network through very few links was the key to success. He also examined the

31

difference between those teams that have many direct connections to other project teams and those that used both direct and indirect ties to reach the resources they needed. The results showed that those teams that used direct ties to seek and find information were soon overwhelmed with too many connections. The teams that used the power of the indirect tie, while at the same time limiting their direct ties, were more successful they did not spend as much time interacting with the network to get what they need. This is consistent with Granovetters theory of weak ties, which are more important in connecting individuals in a network (Granovetter, 1973).

Another contribution of the small world theory in business context that is worth mentioning is a paper written by Kogut and Walker (1999), which suggested a rather different yet meaningful proposition. After examining the German firm ownership from 1993 to 1997, Kogut and Walker showed that these links exhibit small world behaviour in the events of many merger and acquisition activities. A simulation of potential disruptions to the observed German network was done. Their findings showed that the properties of the small world remained intact even with substantial perturbation in ownership ties, which supported the notion that increasing global competition may not lead to a dissolving of the structure of ownership in Germany, but instead led to a structural stability of the network. This dynamics of the small world permits economic actors to strategize; yet the inherent durability of network may have a strong stabilizing property that allows the structure to be replicated. This duality of action and structure, as Giddens (1984) called it, in the process of structuration contradicts the intuition that strategizing actors should disrupt social structure. Kogut and Walker hence argued that the conservative properties of a small-world network

32

would prevent them from deducing too much from the globalization of capital and the restructuring of equity ownership. They noted that networks are composed of entrepreneurs whose plausible purposes are to preserve their structural autonomy and cohesion through claims that globalization is a local affair by which national networks are able to resolve these forces.

2.5

Summary
This chapter presented a taxonomical review of the papers related to the study on

small world phenomenon. From Milgram to Watts, we saw the formalization of the small world phenomenon as a small world theory that could be applied philosophically and mathematically into various fields of studies. These fields could be anything that might include social, physical sciences and even life sciences. Its application in Internet and telecommunication technology as well as business networking would be more applicable in bringing beneficial insights to management practice.

33

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter is dedicated to an elaboration and explanation of the experiment that was conducted in this thesis. In this chapter, we will first discuss the objective of the experiment, followed by a discussion on the usage of email as compared to traditional paper mail. We also describe the methodology that was used in this experiment, after which we explain the process of selecting our targets. Finally, we provide a concise explanation on how we have selected our first links and the sample size used in the experiment.

3.1

Experiment Objective
In order to gain a better understanding and to project a more practical view of the

small world phenomenon, we carried out an experiment based on the methodology that Stanley Milgram used in his experiments back in 1960s (Milgram 1967; Travers and Milgram, 1970). This methodology, termed as a small world study, was defined later as an attempt to determine how many actors (links or intermediaries) a respondent is separated from a target individual based on the respondents acquaintanceship by Wasserman and Faust (1994).

This experiment is to be conducted within the social context of Singapore. The objective of this experiment is to find out how big the Singapore social network, specifically the online community is, from the perspective of small world phenomenon. In other words, we seek to establish whether Singapore exhibits the characteristics of a small world network

34

by addressing the question: how many social contacts (or persons) will be needed for an individual to find another individual in Singapore? By zooming in onto the online community of Singapore, we hope to determine the relevance of the small world theory with this online community.

3.2 Email Vs Snail Mail

There is one distinct difference between this experiment and the one that was done by Stanley Milgram. In Milgrams experiment, he used the traditional paper mail to

transmit the information about his experiment and the targeted recipients. There was also a physical package for the participants to pass it on to the targeted recipients. However, in our experiment, electronic mail (email) the computer mediated communication tool was used as a medium of communication to transmit the required information instead of the traditional snail mail. Email is asynchronous, allowing individuals on different schedules to communicate. It is rapid and able to support transitive ties that aid flows of information across group boundaries. There are several reasons why we chose email as a communication tool here.

As reported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) in the Information Technology Household Survey 19995, home Internet access had grown rapidly since the availability of public access in 1994. The percentage of Singapore households that had Internet access had jumped from 9% in 1996 to 42% in 1999. The total number of Singapore home Internet users in 1999 was estimated at 764,680, which represented another

The information about this survey is available on the homepage of IDA, http://www.ida.gov.sg

35

significant increase from 114,368 in 1996. More importantly, according to the survey, home users with Internet access used the Internet most frequently for email or chatting activities (87%), information retrieval (70%), news (25%), web applications (20%) and online games or movie-watching (17%).

The latest report released by NetValue (www.netvalue.com) early January this year presented a global look at Internet usage and behaviour6. Singapore (47.4%) was reported to be one of the countries, which is fast approaching the Internet penetration rate of the US (52%). According to the report, a total of 4000 Singapore Internet users spent an average of 9.9 hours per month on the web and 52.5% of these users were hooked on instant messaging. The report also said that Internet users in Singapore were the most active users of email in Asia, with more than 45 emails either sent or received per Internet user per month. These figures are based on NetValue's results for November 2000. NetValue defined in this report that an Internet user is an individual who had connected to the Internet at least once during the reference period, to use at least one of these activities: web, email, chat rooms, audio, video and so on.

In light of above-mentioned statistical data, we decided to use email as a communication tool in order to match the present social context in Singapore, in which the use of email had flourished with the proliferation of home computers. The Internet-savvy Singapore users would certainly be familiar with the use of email in their daily communication activities. They might well prefer to use email as a communication tool rather than the traditional snail mail.

36

It would not be a surprise that most of us prefer the speed of cyberspace to that of the truck and plane, and the cost of an email is much lower than that of overnight delivery services or a normal paper mail. Not only that the use of email could lead to savings in costs and time, there is also less effort needed in sending out an email. Rather than writing a letter and waiting several days for it to be delivered and then for the other party to write back and another few days for their answer to be delivered, many have found comfort with the speed and ease of almost instantaneous email delivery. Similarly, the use of email would shorten the time needed for participants to be informed of the experiment. It would also shorten the time needed for them to respond to this experiment and therefore might yield a higher response rate. Lowering the costs and effort needed for the participants to be involved and take part in the experiment would also encourage higher participation in to the experiment.

3.3 Experiment Methodology

The target in our experiment in defined as the actor that has to be reached through the networks of respondents. This target was chosen based on certain criteria, which would be elaborated in a later section. Based on the pre-determined criteria, six targets were selected and hence there were six sets of the similar but distinctive experiments to be carried out.

A circulation email was sent to a group of randomly selected persons (the first links). This email contained a few integral components. The first component described the main aim and the purpose of the experiment. The second component provided the URL to
6

This report is also available in the press release dated 10, Jan 2001 on Business Wire,

37

the respective web sites that not only displayed the experiment objective but also provided some demographic data of the target person and the instructions for the experiment. The third component, a Tracing List (refer to Figure 6 for an example of the cover page of Tracing List) was an attached document that served a path-tracking function as well as a means of controlling the funneling process. In this Tracing List, the respondents were asked to fill in their names and own email addresses, the senders and the next recipients names and their respective email addresses. This attachment also included the URL in case of loss or incomplete information along the way.

Any first link that received this email from the experimenter would be instructed to identify the target displayed on the designated web site. If the first link does not know the target personally, he or she would then be required to forward the circulation email to only one other personal friend who would be more likely to know this target. This procedure would be repeated until the target was positively identified. If the first link did recognize this target, he or she would then contact the target person directly. Similar instructions were given to the rest of the participants down the acquaintance chains.

While forwarding the email to the next intended recipient, the participants were asked to send the experimenter a copy of the same email. This action was important in ensuring that tracking and control of the process would be possible. As such, the participants were asked to fill in the Tracing List that was sent together with every outgoing email. Another function of this Tracing List is also to enable easy calculation of chain lengths as a measurement for the experiment. After carrying out the six sets of the experiments, an
http://www.businesswire.com

38

average number was calculated to be the degree of separation in the Singapore social network.
Figure 6: An example of the Tracing List Please CC to nataliajoe@yahoo.com when you forward this attachment. Get $200 by participating in this Experiment!!! Read more about this at http://www.geocities.com/nataliakoh/gift.html This list is prepared to keep track of the length of the acquaintance chain. Please take a few minutes to fill in the fields below when you receive this email, and send it out together with the email to your next chosen friend. Please save the file before attach. If you are the first one who receive the email, fill in the first one; the second person that receives it should fill in the second one, etc. Furthermore, please continue to fill in the list even if the number of acquaintances already exceeds the number written below, you just have to extend the list. Thank you very much for your kindness and cooperation. Note: You can read the instructions and information about Target 6 at http://connect.to/yawsl or http://www.geocities.com/nataliayaw/nataliayaw.html 1. Name: Your email address: Received from (Name): His/her email address: Sending to (Name): His/her email address: Name: Your email address: Received from (Name): His/her email address: Sending to (Name):

2.

39

3.4 Target Selection

The six targets comprised of five males and one female. Male targets were preferred here as it might not be convenient to publish information on women on the Internet due to its public access. This is especially true in our Asian social context. One female target was still included here to find out if there was any significant difference in locating targets of the two genders. These six individuals were chosen to be targets in this experiment based on the following criteria: i) These targets were not parts of the experimenters main circles of contacts7, ii) iii) These targets were not known personally by the pool of first links, These targets were not unfamiliar with the usage of Internet and email, as email was used as a primary medium of communication

As mentioned in the previous section, the information about these targets was published in web sites. The URLs of these web sites are as follow: i) ii) iii) iv) v) vi) Target 1: http://connect.to/ong Target 2: http://connect.to/simss Target 3: http://connect.to/limyp Target 4: http://connect.to/richardkoh Target 5: http://connect.to/jonathaneo Target 6: http://connect.to/yawsl

Some of the targets were suggested by the thesis supervisors circle of contacts and were not acquaintances of the experimenter.

40

An example of the web page that was posted on the Internet is included here at the following pages. It was divided into four main sections, as shown by Figures 7, 8 and 9. The first section of the web page (refer to Figure 7) was an open letter addressed to the participants of the experiment, with the aim of informing them of the objective as well as other relevant information about this experiment.

Figure 8 comprises the second and third sections of the web page. The second section briefly explained the meaning of small world phenomenon, the central theme of this experiment. This would provide the respondents with the basic understanding of the small world phenomenon and the roles that they would be playing in this experimental setting. Meanwhile, the information about the target was included in the third section. All targets were provided with basic information like some demographic data such as name, age, and schools attended before or currently attending. High-resolution photos of the targets were often included for easy recognition.

The targets were treated differently by manipulating the information displayed on the Internet. For example, the job held by one of the targets and the company he was working for were explicitly specified. This applied to Target 4 who is a financial planner and an insurance agent at Prudential Assurance Company. In another case, photo of Target 5 were not posted on the Internet in order to identify the usefulness of photos during the recognition process. This manipulation of targets information is summarized in the following table (see Table 1).

41

Table 1: Information of the respective targets, posted on the Internet

Information Given Target

1 Male 2 Male 3 Female 4 Male 5 Male 6 Male Name Age Primary Schools Attended Secondary Schools Attended Tertiary Institutions Attended Current Job
(Include company name)

Photo

Figure 9 illustrates detailed instructions given to the participants. Important points to be noted by the participants were highlighted clearly in order to catch their attention. Following the instructions closely was a critical step under the setup of this experiment, as any points that were overlooked could potentially lead to distortion of the results. Web pages of the other five targets are similar except for the personal data of the individual targets.

42

Figure 7: 1st Section The open letter

How Big Is Singapore Social Network?

From the Perspective of "Small World Phenomenon"
Dear Friends and Friends of My Friends, This site is developed exclusively to carry out an experiment in order to find out how big the Singapore social network is and we examine this network from a perspective of "Small World Phenomenon". In particular, we are interested in the online social network of Singapore. The objective of this experiment is to determine the number of links or intermediaries that are required before we finally reach the pre-assigned Target. The Information about the selected Target is given below, as well as the Instructions that we need to follow to make this experiment a success. Please take a few minutes to read about the Target and the instructions given. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at my email address given below. Thank You Very Much for Your Kind Participation!

Yours sincerely, Voon Joe Yung BBA Honours Faculty of Business Administration nataliajoe@yahoo.com

Experiment Termination Date: 28 February 2001

43

Figure 8: The 2nd and 3rd sections

What is Small World Phenomenon?

Ever heard of a saying My, it's a small world! This should not be an unfamiliar phrase in our everyday conversation, and most of us will encounter this experience at least once in our lifetime. A scenario like this can happen anytime at anywhere: two strangers meet on a plane, and after a short conversation they realize that they have a mutual friend. This phenomenon illustrates that the world is connected together by a network of relationships, even on a planet of billions of people and often we are impressed by how tightly these connections work. Back to Top

Information on Target
Name: Hanyu Pinyin: Age: Nationality: Primary Education: Secondary Education: Tertiary Education: Note: Please do not search for the target person if you do not know him personally. Back to Top

44

Figure 9: 4th Section Instructions for the experiment

Instructions
1. After reading through the information of Target on this web page, add your name and other information in the Tracing List (Attachment: Tracing List) and save the attachment. 2. If you know the person on a personal basis, forward the email with Tracing List attached to him. Do this only if you have previously met the target person and know each other on a first name basis. 3. If you do not know the target person on a personal basis, do not try to contact him directly or search for him by any means. Instead, send this email to only one of your personal acquaintance that is more likely to know the person. As I am the one who carries out this experiment, please exclude me in your consideration of forwarding the email. You may send this email to a friend or relative, but it must be someone you know personally. Please include the saved Tracing List (with your information added) while sending. 4. Please cc. a copy of the email to me at email address: nataliajoe@yahoo.com or nataliajoe@sinagirl.com or nataliajoe@atozasia.com when you are sending out the email to your friend. This step is important for me to keep track of the experiment progress. Back to Top

45

3.5 First Link Selection and Its Sample Size

A first link was someone who received the circulated email first from the experimenter. The first link played an important role, as he or she was the one who would initiate the whole tracing path that might lead to the targets. If any of the first links refused to cooperate and take part in the experiment, his or her chain is said to die out and could not be considered in the calculation of chain lengths.

These first links were picked based on the experimenters careful research and consideration that the targets and the first links were not acquaintanced with one another. Apart from that, the first links had to be familiar with the usage of email and owned at least one email account in order to facilitate communication with the experimenter. The pool of first links used mainly consisted of the experimenters personal contacts. Most of the first links have tried looking for all the targets available. The respondent sample size used was 50 for each target, making up a total of 300 chains that were sent out throughout the whole experiment. In order to encourage higher response rate, there was also a cash reward given to the respondents who found any of the targets. The announcement about this cash reward was made on the Internet (refer to Figure 10) and also through emails after the first set of experiment had been carried out.

46

Figure 10: The announcement of cash reward

A Gift For You!!!

You should have seen an email titled 'How Big is Singapore Social Network?' going around these days and might have helped me before by looking for the targets. Thank you very much! As a token of appreciation, I have decided to present our participants with a gift of $200 cash. This gift is only entitled to the first chain that found any of my targets. No matter how long or how short the chain is, as long as it is the first chain that finds the target, you will get the money. There are altogether 6 targets to be found, so there are few ways to get the gift. Please click the hyperlinks below to get to the information pages of the targets. Target 1 Target 2 Target 3 Target 4 Target 5 Target 6 Ong Shean Long Melvyn Sim Soon Suen Lim Yueh Ping Richard Koh Beng Teck Jonathan Neo Bing Lee Yaw Shin Leong

In order for me to announce who is the winner, be sure to include your email add and name in the Tracing List that comes together with the emails. There will be 6 different Tracing List for each of the targets, for example, Tracing List 1 for Target 1, Tracing List 2 for Target 2 and so on, so Don't Mix Up. If you wish to have the Tracing List for any targets, email me to get it. Very important also, CC me at nataliajoe@yahoo.com or nataliajoe@sinagirl.com when you forward the emails and attachments in order for me to distribute the gift later. If you have any question, do feel free to contact me at the above email addresses. Have fun with the experiments. Happy New Year! Regards, Voon Joe Yung Faculty of Business Administration National University of Singapore

47

3.6 Summary
This chapter presented the objective and research methodology of this small world experiment. The objective of this experiment was to test out the adoption of small world theory in the world of Internet in Singapore social network.

Under the section of research methodology, we explained extensively the experimental design and compared it with the experiment that was done by Stanley Milgram. Specifically, our experiment used a different primary communication and circulation tool. We adopted email that is fast, inexpensive and easy to use as opposed to the traditional snail mail that was used in Milgrams experiment. Apart from that, we also employed the use of the Internet as a medium to display the relevant information of our preselected targets. Despite these two significant differences, the rest of the experiment was very similar to Milgrams pioneering research.

Following that, we also detailed the process of selecting individuals as target persons for the experiment. In addition to that, choosing an appropriate sample size of the first link population was discussed as well as stating the criteria for suitable first links.

48

CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

4.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the interesting findings of our experiment will be presented, in particular the response rate, success rate, hit rate, the length of incomplete chains and complete chains that connected first links to the respective targets. Following that, we explore the searching process for the targets employed by our respondents. In this particular section, we discuss the heuristics used by the respondents when they were searching for the targets. We also look at the difference between our experiment and the experiment done by Stanley Milgram in terms of the searching processes. Last but not least, various obstacles to the progress of the experiment will also be noted to present a clearer picture of how the experiment was proceeding.

4.2

Experiment Findings

4.2.1 Response Rate Number of Emails Sent Out 50 50 50 50 50 50 300 Number of Emails Replied/Responded by First Links 26 16 13 10 8 13 86 Response Rate 52.00% 32.00% 26.00% 20.00% 16.00% 26.00% 28.67%

Target 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total

Table 2: Response rate for the respective targets

49

The response rate is defined here as the percentage of respondents from the first link population who took part in this experiment by sending out the circulation emails to the next intermediaries. The response rates for individual targets are summarized in the above table (see Table 2). Looking at the table, Target 1 had the highest response rate followed by Target 2 (32%) while Target 5 had the lowest response rate. And, 3 out of 6 individual response rates fell under the range of 20%-26%. We achieved an overall response rate of 28.67%, by averaging the individual response rates for the six sets of experiments. In other words, among the 300 emails that were sent out by the experimenter, the first link population initiated only 86 chains in total.

Target 1 was the first set of the experiment that was carried out. The high response rate could be due to respondents being new to the idea; therefore they were more enthusiastic and hence, more responsive. For Target 5, its low response rate was most likely due to the unavailability of his photograph on the Internet. The absence of this vital piece of data might have raised the level of difficulty in the recognition process. The respondents had no idea who to send to, resulting in possible dropping out from the first link population. As for Target 3 who is the only female target, the response rate was close to the other male targets with the medium level of response rate. Based on these findings alone, we could deduce that gender bias was not visible in this experiment setting. However this might also be partly due to the overall response rate that we obtained, thereby reducing the possibility to draw more conclusive remarks.

50

The overall response rate of 28.67% is low but it is not out of line for the small world study in general. The response rate of this kind of experiment is generally low due to a number of factors. For one, this experiment relied on the voluntary participation and cooperation of individual respondents. If the first links were uncooperative, there would be less chains being initiated. As such the overall response rate would certainly be lower at the end of the experiments.

4.2.2 Success Rate and Hit Rate Number of Chains Initiated 26 16 13 10 8 13 86 Number of Chains Which Found the Target 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 Success Rate

Target 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total

Hit Rate

2.33%

33.33%

Table 3: Overall success rate and hit rate of the experiment

The success rate is defined here as the percentage of the number of chains initiated by the first link population that found any of the targets. Another similar terminology that could be used here is the completion rate. Among the 86 chains that were initiated in the first links population, 2 chains finally found the targets (see Table 3). One out of 16 chains found Target 2. Similarly, one chain out of 13 found Target 6. These produced an overall success rate of 2.33%. This success rate was lower than expected, as compared with the success rates that were found in other small world studies. Lin (1989) reported that for a normal community population, the percentage of chains successfully reaching the targets

51

was around 25% but seldom exceeded 30%. For example in the paper written by Travers and Milgram (1969), they achieved a success rate of 29.5% based on a 73.3% response rate. However, Lundberg (1975) found a completion rate of 57% in his organizational study as compared to a 21% rate in his society study. The higher completion rate was due to the nature of definite boundary of the organization.

After aggregating the findings, we concluded a hit rate that was calculated based on the number of targets that were found out of the total number of targets. In the experiment, we successfully found two out of the six targets that were available, thereby producing a hit rate that is a high 33.33%. This result is also shown in Table 3. Compared to the success rate that was found earlier, this hit rate would be more applicable in assessing the achievement of this experiment, due to the surprising fact that one could actually reach the targets through this simple and straightforward experiment in Singapore.

4.2.3

Length of Incomplete Chains Number of Intermediaries 2 3 4 6 9 Total Number of Incomplete Chains Target 1 Target 2 Target 3 Target 4 Target 5 Target 6 14 10 9 7 5 7 7 4 3 3 3 4 3 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 26 15 13 10 8 13

Table 4: Number of incomplete chains for each target, categorized by the number of intermediaries

Table 4 illustrates the number of incomplete chains with their respective intermediaries. For instance, there were 14 chains with two intermediaries searching for

52

Target 1 and remained inactive after that. Among all the chains, the longest chain had 9 intermediaries searching for Target 1. Most of the chains became inactive after reaching the third intermediary who did not want to take part in the experiment by not responding to the circulation emails. It was likely that this occurred due to one or more of the following reasons: 1) Individuals were not motivated to participate in the study, although there was monetary reward for the chain that managed to find any of the targets. 2) It could also be possible that when the chain became too long, the recipients felt indifferent to the monetary reward, which was going to be shared by all the respondents belonging to the chain that found the target. 3) Individuals did not know to whom to send the email in order to advance it strategically toward the target.

4.2.4 Length of Complete Chains As shown in the previous section, there were two complete chains that eventually found two of our targets. The length of chain refers to the number of respondents required to connect first links and their respective targets, including the first links themselves. Figure 11 illustrates the two paths leading to the respective targets.

53

Figure 11: Complete chains that found Targets 2 & 6

For example, in Chain 1 that found Melvyn Sim (Target 2), the first link, Leong Phooi Tze, sent the circulation email to Chua Lu Fong, as both of them had attended the same junior college before and Phooi Tze knows that Lu Fong is currently attending a course in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). By sending the email to Lu Fong,

54

Phooi Tze thought that Lu Fong would be more likely to know Melvyn or at least met him before in the university compound. Then Lu Fong found Melvyn by forwarding the email to him. There were only two intermediaries and Phooi Tze is said to be two degrees away from Melvyn. In the other chain that found our Target 6, Yaw Shin Leong, the first link (Lim Heng Seng) knew the target himself. Heng Seng and Shin Leong were acquaintances when attending their degree courses in National University of Singapore (NUS). Hence the chain length was only one and Heng Seng was only one degree away from Shin Leong. On average, the respondents can be said to be 1.5 degrees away from another randomly selected individual.

Following that, all the chains leading to the respective targets were drawn in six individual diagrams (see Figures 12 to 17). These diagrams showed the flow of information from the first links to the second links and so on. They also showed the number of chains with their respective intermediaries. We also highlighted the chains that found our targets as well as some interlinks between the chains. In these diagrams, we represented the respondents in the experiment by a number of nodes. Each node represented a respondent, while lines connecting two nodes showed the interaction between the two respondents when one sent email to another. After which, a portion of the entire network (including all respondents searching for the six targets) was drawn, showing some of the clusters that were formed by the respondents during the searching process (see Figure 18). Clusters were seen crowding around the experimenter in the figure, as there were instances where some chains were interlinked together by bridging certain points on the different chains. Generally for any given point (excluding the point representing the targets or those respondents that did

55

not reply to the emails), there would be at least one line connecting to it and another line emanating out from it, representing the interactions of receiving and sending email.

56

57

58

59

This figure shows a segment of the whole network in which all respondents searching for 6 targets were aggregated. Formation of clusters was seen crowding around the experimenter.

4.3

The Searching Process

4.3.1 Who is the Next Link? After reading the findings of the experiment, one could not help but wonder how all these findings arose. We would like to know the thinking process employed by the respondents when they chose their next recipients of the email. What criteria or reasoning did they exactly use?

In order to understand the searching process, we tried to interview the respondents. After carrying out interviews with first links and other respondents, either through emails or

60

face-to-face communication, we found a few common heuristics that were frequently used by the respondents. The respondents would choose to send the email to:

a) A friend whom the respondents thought that he or she would participate Apart from sending to someone whom the respondents thought were more likely to know the targets, as instructed by the experimenter, the respondents also viewed that willingness to participate was another critical point to be considered. Sending to someone whom the respondents thought would be willing to participate would increase the response rate of the experiment. This would certainly increase the probability in finding the targets.

b) A friend that the experimenter did not know The respondents chose to send to someone that the experimenter did not know, hoping that this will reduce the amount of duplication, under the assumption that the experimenter will approach all her friends to help look for the targets. Hence this would increase the number of chains that could be initiated.

c) A friend who was not from their main circle of contacts When sending the email to someone who is not from the respondents main circle of contacts, the respondents hoped to expand the population of respondents that could be covered by the experiment. This might also be due to the reason that the respondents did not have an idea which of their friend would be more likely to know the targets.

d) A friend who studied or is currently studying in the same school as the target before

61

In the thinking process, if the respondents had a friend who had attended or is attending the same school as the targets, be it primary or secondary school, or even tertiary institution, they would normally forward the email to him or her. The respondents hoped that their friends would have been acquainted with the targets before. This heuristic was used by one of our respondents who actually found Target 2.

e) A friend who stayed around the same area Although the geographical addresses of the targets were not posted on the Internet, their residential areas could more or less be deduced from the schools they attended before. For example, Target 1 attended Clementi North Primary School and Jin Tai Primary School that are both in the western part of Singapore, in particular Clementi and West Coast area. Similarly, the secondary school that he attended is also situated in the same neighbourhood area. Therefore, the respondents could actually forward the email to friends who stayed around these areas and hope that they could funnel the searching process to the targets.

f) Anyone that appeared in the respondents thoughts There were respondents who simply did not spend much time on this experiment. Worse still, they might not even have read the email and went ahead to email to any one of their friends that came to mind. Though this kind of action would not increase the probability of finding the targets; it did not necessarily bring about any negative effect either. As such, their efforts in helping out in this experiment are still greatly appreciated.

62

4.3.2 Comparison with Milgrams Experiment As mentioned in Chapter 3, the one distinct difference between our experiment and Milgrams experiment was the use of email as a communication and circulation tool, compared to traditional paper mail used by Milgram. The difference in the use of communication and circulation tool also differentiated our searching process to that of Milgrams experiment.

In Milgrams experiment, respondents in Nebraska were certain to send the traditional paper mail to the target person who stayed in Massachusetts and worked as a stockbroker in Boston. The respondents had the exact idea on where they should be heading to, thereby developing a progressive closing in on the target area as each new respondent was added to the chain. The funneling effect was more distinguishable in this sense. Hence motivation to advance the package to the target could be increased because of this aspect.

However in our experiment, geographical distance was not of utmost importance as email was used as a communication tool. In the world of Internet, physical distance could be eliminated as a barrier as its ability to span continents at a single bound has reduced the constraints of time and distance. This was the main reason for not posting the targets addresses on the Internet. Although schools attended were included on the Internet as an indirect clue for the targets residential areas, there was a possibility that the target could move to other places in any point in time. Furthermore, there are also instances where students stay far away from their education institutions. Hence this clue might not have been helpful in advancing the emails towards the targets in terms of geographical distance.

63

4.4

Hindrances to the Experiment

This experiment depended purely on respondents voluntary actions and these were

the critical factors for the success of the experiment. During the course of the experiment, we encountered various problematic yet interesting incidents, so much so that one of the respondents even suggested humorously the following subjects to be studied in future: (1) how unsociable Singapore network is, (2) how many times I failed to send my mail across, and (3) how frequently Singaporeans failed to read instructions carefully.

Fun and jokes aside, these incidents generally hindered the progress of our experiment and hence reduced the effects of meaningful results that could be deduced from the experiment. Most of these instances could lower the response rate as well as the success rate. Some of these also impeded the feedback loop where tracing the progress of the experiment was difficult. These incidents were represented by the feedback from the various respondents that were conveyed time and again to the experimenter. These sayings would be illustrated below. Here, I refers to the respondents and you to the experimenter.

These sayings were: a) What are all these things about? Some of the respondents did not read the email and attached information at all and rushed to reply to the experimenter with this type of question. This might imply that the respondents were not keen on participating in this experiment at all. However, there were respondents who eventually took part in the experiment after much personal explanation through either face-to-face interactions or email communication.

64

Apart from that, we did not rule out the possibility that the respondents were truly unable to figure out what the experiment was about. This experimental technique relied heavily on the literacy of the participants. The respondent had to comprehend the instructions given and also to take all details into considerations when forwarding the email to the next recipient.

b) I am sorry, I have been too busy lately. Upon receiving this kind of response from the respondents, one should know that the respondents were determined not to get involved in the experiment. There were many instances where the experimenter tried to persuade and explain to the respondents after receiving this response but to no avail. These respondents simply did not respond at all or ignored the email. As mentioned earlier, individuals could choose either to volunteer or not in this experiment.

c) So sorry, I didnt check my email account recently. This might seem to be a strange phenomenon to certain people who rely heavily on email as a communication tool. Generally, one would assume that in this Internet Age, communication using email with friends, colleagues or relatives is a norm and daily routine for most people, especially those that use the Internet frequently for studies, work or leisure purposes.

However it is also true that not everyone surf the Internet and check their email accounts everyday, unless it is required by the nature of their jobs. Hence, this somehow slowed down the progress of the experiment if the respondents noticed the circulation

65

email only days, weeks or even months later.

The worst case was that, when the

respondent finally saw the email, he or she would think that the email was already obsolete and hence simply discarded the email.

d) Oops, I forgot all about that email account totally. If there were people who did not check their email accounts regularly, there would also be people who have never check their email accounts at all. This could be because there are too many free web-based email accounts available on the Internet nowadays, and it is not unusual at all that one might have several email accounts at the same time. By the same reasoning, there were bound to be some email accounts that were being neglected, forgotten or totally ignored by the users. If the circulation email were sent to these accounts, then the experimenter could foresee the certainty that the email would not be noticed or responded to.

People subscribed to secondary or even tertiary email accounts for certain reasons. They might want to have more account capacity. They might also want to assign different utilities to different email accounts and to keep the primary email account solely for serious use. Other email accounts could then be used for purposes such as receiving jokes or forwarded emails from friends. Hence, more often than not, most people would give their secondary or tertiary email accounts to acquaintances in order to avoid receiving unwanted junk mails in their primary accounts. Therefore, emails in these secondary or tertiary accounts were given less attention than those sent to the primary email accounts.

66

e) Oops, I forgot to fill in the Tracing List, or Oops, I forgot to attach the Tracing List, or I participated, but forgot to make a carbon copy (C.C.) to you. All of the above statements boiled down to one observation: the respondents did not read instructions carefully. If the respondents had paid attention to the instructions given, such situations would not occur. The consequences of not following the instructions were disastrous and often led to a snowball effect. For instance, if the first link did not fill in the Tracing List, the rest of the respondents following the same chain would do the same thing. And after a few forwarding steps, the recipients would not have a clue as to who was in the chain previously. Also, it caused a similar difficulty if Tracing List was not attached at all. These defeated the purpose of having the Tracing List in place.

In the worst situation where the respondents did not make a carbon copy to the experimenter while sending out emails to the next recipients, the experimenter then could not specify a definite number of chains that were initiated. Due to this omission, the experimenter might not even have been informed if there were chains that found the targets. As a result of that, these chains were not being taken into consideration in the calculation of chain length; the findings on the chain length would be under-represented.

4.5

Summary
This chapter summarized the findings as well as the analysis of our experiment. In

our findings, we calculated the response rate, success rate, hit rate and the lengths of complete and incomplete chains. The overall response rate and success rate were 28.67%

67

and 2.33% respectively. We also achieved a hit rate of 33.33% due to the result that two targets were found out of the total six. The average length of a chain that connected the first link to the target was 1.5. Clustering effect was seen among the various chains that were initiated.

Later in the chapter, the search process for the targets was explained by noting the various heuristics that were commonly used by our respondents. An individual would normally forward the email to (1) someone who would be more likely to participate; (2) someone whom the experimenter did not know by personal basis; (3) someone who attended or is still attending the same schools as the targets; (4) someone who stayed around the same area; or (5) anyone that appeared in the respondents thoughts. A comparison with experiment carried out by Stanley Milgram was done with respect to the searching process used by the respondents in which the zooming-in effect was more prominent in Milgrams experiment, due to the presence of geographical factor.

Lastly, some incidents were identified as hindrances to the progress of our experiment. Such incidents, like multiple or inactive email accounts, led to failure in reaching the respondents. This decreased the overall response rate of the experiment. Failure to follow the instructions given also led to untraceable paths or even under-representation of experiment findings.

68

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter we present a compendium of the key findings gathered in the previous chapter and discuss their significance. Subsequently, we will conclude our small world experiment with the distribution of cash rewards to the respondents who found the target as a token of appreciation. Strategic, managerial implications of the small world theory and our findings will be discussed to illustrate how these findings could be applied in the context of a business setting. Limitations of the study will be presented, followed by suggestions for future research on the small world theory and its applications.

5.1

Summary of Findings
Target
1 2 3 4 5 Ong Shean Melvyn Sim Lim Yueh Richard Koh Jonathan Neo Long Soon Suan Ping Beng Teck Bing Lee Found in 1 Not found chain with 2 Not found Not found Not found intermediaries 52.00% 32.00% 26.00% 20.00% 16.00% 6 Yaw Shin Leong Found in 1 chain with 1 intermediary 26.00%

Results Name of the target

Position Individual Response Rate Overall Response Rate Overall Success Rate

28.67% 2.33% 33.33% Table 5: A compendium of key findings of the experiment

Hit Rate

Table 5 summarizes the key findings of our experiment. Two chains found Melvyn Sim and Yaw Shin Leong, and the overall response rate and success rate are 28.67% and

69

2.33% respectively. On average, individuals were found to be 1.5 degrees separated from the target persons, if the target persons can be found at all. Though it may be premature for us to deduce the size of Singapore social network based on our existing response rate and success rate, it is nevertheless surprising that we can locate two out of the six targets using this approach, which is shown as a hit rate of 33.33%. The success rate of as much as 2.33% gathered in this experiment indeed captures the level of sociability of the individuals in this network. Furthermore, such response rate and success rate can be considered normal and acceptable due to the nature of this type of social experiment. Coupling with the hit rate that we obtained, these serendipitous findings may serve to illuminate the existence of small world characteristics in our Singapore social network.

In addition, our result of 1.5 degrees of separation is indeed a much smaller number than the conventional finding of six degrees of separation that is found in Milgrams experiment. Although this may be partly due to the low but still acceptable response rate and success rate, we cannot simply rule out the possibility that the use of email actually does influence the targets searching process thereby shortening the distance between individuals. Communication between two spatially dispersed individuals is made simpler and faster through their adoption of emails as communication tool and therefore this makes it easier for an individual to cast his social network wider.

One point to note is that, when we state that there are 1.5 intermediaries, it may not necessarily refer to the geographical distance between the first links and the targeted individuals. In fact, it refers to their psychological and social distances. Milgram (1967)

70

once pointed out that his findings of five intermediate acquaintances seemed to be small only because mathematically we always regard five as a small manageable quantity that can be easily calculated. He suggested we think of the two individuals as being not five persons apart, but five circle of acquaintances or five structures apart.

The ability to reach the targets in our experiment depends on a few factors. Firstly, this depends on which heuristic the respondents used and whether it leads the respondents closer to the targets or further away from them. Secondly, we also depend on the degree of the voluntarism of our respondents in participating in this experiment as well as their ability to recall if they are old acquaintances with the targets. Thirdly, the information available about the targets is important and the most current information and the availability of photo are deemed to be more applicable in locating the targets. Finally, the ability to reach the targets also depends on the social institutions or circles of which the targets belong. If the target belongs to some well-known institutions such as MIT or NUS, generally the respondents can be directed closer to the targets. Also, we must not forget that the whole searching process is depending on the usage of email communication.

As promised earlier, there would be a cash reward of S$200 distributed equally to the respondents belonging to the first chain that find any one of our targets. In our experiment, Leong Phooi Tze and Chua Lu Fong are the two respondents who belonged to the first chain that managed to reach our target, Melvyn Sim. Therefore, the cash reward was awarded to them as a way to express our greatest gratitude. Similarly, Melvyn Sim was also given a share of the reward for his voluntary participation as a target in the experiment. Finally, we

71

wrap up our experiment by presenting the pictures of the respondents and target person taken together with the experimenter during the prize-giving session (see Figures 19 to 21).

Figure 19:1st link

These are the photos of the 1st link, Phooi Tze and the 2nd link, Lu Fong, who belong to the first chain that found our Target 2.

The experimenter was unable to pass the cash reward to Lu Fong as he is now attending his course at MIT.

Figure 20: 2nd link

72

Figure 21 The experimenter was handing the cash reward to Melvyn Sim, expressing her greatest gratitude towards his voluntary participation as one of the targets in the experiment.

5.2

Strategic Implications
This study illustrated an experimental model that can be used to determine and

understand the characteristics embedded in the Singapore social network, in particular the online social network. After understanding the concept of this experiment, an organization can easily replicate the study to its own organizational network, employee network or even the customer network. The results should be more conclusive as looking into a network with a definite boundary is shown to have higher success rate than examining an indefinite population (Lundberg, 1975).

In applying the small world theory to examine the existing network embedded in the organization, the management of the organization will be able to exploit the final results, analysis and any other valuable information for their business use. This information is especially useful in the areas of pooling as well as distributing existing resources for corporate use. In fact, this applies more to the intangible resources of the organization as they are probably residing in various business units and not being organized in a proper

73

manner for easy retrieving.

Examples of these intangible resources may include the

personal experiences or knowledge possessed by the key personnel in the organization. These resources can be highly valuable and critically important in developing the core competencies of the organization or even directing the strategic direction that the organization should follow in the future.

Pooling and classifying all these intangible resources could be a difficult and daunting task. For instance, ones knowledge and personal experience have the potential to increase almost infinitely at varying rates with varying content, depending on the individual. We can hardly pool all the existing resources together and categorize them for strategic use at one time. By identifying the organization network as being a small-world network and understanding its accompanied characteristics, we will be able to find out what is the most efficient and effective way to retrieve required knowledge or information from an enormous pool of resources. As such, the organization will be able to shorten the time taken and also reduce the costs incurred in the process of getting the appropriate resources for corporate use. Other researchers have put forth similar suggestions for improving the interactions and information flow between departments or project teams in an organization (Kreb, 1999; Hansen, 1999; Park, 2000).

We see this small world phenomenon as a variant for word of mouth that we are familiar with in everyday life. Social units, such as individuals, groups or organizations, can be represented as points or nodes in a network. If the network shows the small world characteristics, these points will be linked together through shorter paths showing that

74

information can transmit faster than normal rate in a regular network. Knowing this, we will be able to make good use of this result by utilizing the best-connected social unit in the network as a key node for receiving and sending out the necessary information. This bestconnected social unit will be able to reach out to most of the other points present in the network through the shortest paths available as compared to other points. By traveling through minimal number of steps to achieve the targeted level of information transmission, less time is taken and hence costs involved will also be reduced.

Another important implication is related to personal referrals and networking in ones career advancement. A Career Satisfaction & Salary Survey8 in 1999 reported that most researchers believe word of mouth to be the most effective means of finding a job and also of filling job openings. According to the survey, 29% of the respondents found their current jobs through word of mouth, and another 77% of the respondents expressed their willingness to use word of mouth if they were looking for a job. On the other hand, 54% used word of mouth to find suitable candidates to fill their job openings. Finally, 24% said that word of mouth was the most effective way to source for job candidates.

Applying the concept of the small world phenomenon in this incident, it seems to reinforce the validity of word of mouth as a primary mechanism for finding a job. If one understands the significance of the small world phenomenon, he will try to establish useful long-range connections or short cuts in order to reach out to a wider population, thereby increasing the opportunities of receiving the news of various job openings as well as

R&D Magazine and Kelly Scientific Resources conducted this survey in 1999. Findings are available at the web site of R&D Magazine, http://www.rdmag.com

75

increasing the opportunities of finding suitable candidates to fill the jobs available. These long-range connections may refer to casual acquaintances or distant and old contacts of an individual. To increase the chances of success in ones career life, according to the small world theory, one will have to stay in touch with casual acquaintances and make contact with well-connected people. These well-connected people, or the connector, are those who know many people from other countries, different disciplines or unusual subcultures and they are able to establish surprising interconnections between groups that seem impossibly distant from one another.

We looked at the Singapore social network from the perspective of an online community who uses the email as a communication tool. In our experiment, we use emails to transmit information. This is similar to the word of mouth phenomenon found in the physical world. This virtual counterpart of the word of mouth phenomenon can be termed as the Internet word of mouth. This Internet word of mouth generally has a deeper impact on the network population as transmitting information over the Internet is generally faster and easier and these online influences can be furthered magnified by the small world clustering effect.

Online advertising has become another popular way to convey information about the products and services in order to boost the organization business. However most researchers have always questioned the effectiveness of online advertising, as many Internet users tend to ignore the plethoric presence of the advertisement banners while surfing the Internet. The accumulated cost of an extensive online advertising campaign may not be justifiable due to

76

the indifference in users behaviours and hence impoverish the required market returns. However, in the small world of Internet, one can exploit the links existing between individuals for the purpose of marketing. Individuals are now more closely linked together, a result of the advancement in computer and communication technology. As such, an individual who is not connected to the Internet itself may also be connected to the Internet indirectly if he has a friend who is an Internet user. Therefore, an organization has to carefully draw out its online marketing plans. Excessive online advertisement may not be necessarily useful but to choose a certain area as a niche market for advertising campaign may serve just the right purpose.

5.3

Limitations of the Study

This section presents a revelation of the inherent limitations in this experimental

study. There is not a single research that can or tries to do everything related to a specific subject, and this is especially true for this academic exercise. Being the first research paper that looks into the small world phenomenon in Singapore, the experimental design is constrained by a number of limitations. There are three limitations that are inherent to the small world study itself (Lin, 1989) and another three for the experimental design that we used.

a)

Limitations of the small world study Comparing with other studies, a small world study heavily relies on the voluntary

participation and cooperation of individuals. Individuals are free to choose whether to participate or not. They also have the discretion to put in more (or less) effort in the

77

experiment though each of their actions is of equal importance. Any new person added to the chain is an important step to either leading the chain towards or further away from the target.

This study also relies substantially on the literacy of the participants. Each participant has to understand the instructions given on how to fill in the tracing list, forwarding the email to the next recipient as well as attaching the completed tracing list. As discussed in Chapter 4, this limitation has clearly been played out in our experiment in which many respondents failed to follow the instructions closely. Another limitation that is intrinsic to the study is the typical low success rate that is also evident in our experimental study.

b)

Limitations of the experimental design The first limitation of our experimental design is inherent in our restriction when

choosing the sample size for our first link population. A first link has to be someone who is familiar with the use of email and has at least one email account. The reason being that the experimenter would have to contact the first links by means of email only. Furthermore, most of the first links were picked from the experimenters personal contacts. The aim of this was to increase the likelihood of the respondents taking part in the experiment. These two factors reduced the final sample size that can be drawn from the original population and therefore may result in random sampling error. This error can only be reduced if the sample size can be increased. Evidently, if the sample size is larger, the final response rate will most probably also increase.

78

The second limitation is the time constraint that is applied to the experiment setting. The presence of an ending date, although provided a definite time frame for the experiment, also inhibited the chains from continuing to search for the targets. If the time window given had been larger, there is the possibility that more chains could be completed by reaching the targets and hence be able to increase our success rate. Lastly, we were also beggared by the low response rate gathered from the experiment. As mentioned in Chapter 3, information about the targets were subjected to different treatments in order to determine which piece of information is more valuable in finding the targets. However, the low response rate has crudely prohibited further conclusive analysis to be drawn from our findings.

5.4

Recommendations for Future Research

There are indeed many other research issues related to the small world theory that

can be done in the future. One possible research related to this academic exercise is to increase the sample size of the experiment and replicate the experiment with different settings. Increasing sample size can eliminate possible sampling errors and hence serve to validate our preliminary study on Singapore social network. By getting a larger sample size, it will more likely improve the response rate for the experiment. Different tools of communication can also be adopted while replicating the similar experiments to analyze the significance of different communication tools being used. Furthermore, by using different communication tools we can also increase the sample size of population that can be examined.

79

Secondly, more researches can be carried out to examine specific networks or organizations closely. For example, one can look at the industry-buying network in Singapore, employee network embedded in an organization and so on. We can also study the customer network of an organization in order to determine the effects of the small world phenomenon in bringing in the customers to the organization. Understanding the interaction between customers can benefit the organization. This information can help them be more responsive to customers needs, enabling them to seek out changing trends in a more timely fashion.

5.5

Concluding Remarks
Given the mythical nature of the small world phenomenon and the dynamics of a

social network, we hope that this paper has managed to uncover the mystery of the small world phenomenon by presenting a taxonomical review of most of the relevant research papers related to this interesting subject. Furthermore, we seek to understand the nature of the social network in Singapore by mimicking Milgrams experiment, suitably modified for the Internet setting. The experiment, conducted over a span of several months, has also uncovered some of the inherent problems and issues associated with the small world study. It is indeed surprising to verify the effect of the small world phenomenon in first hand, as illustrated by the ability of our simple experiment to locate 2 out of the 6 targets involved.

80

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adamic, L. (1999). The Small World Web. Available at http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/groups/iea/www/smallworldpaper.html Albert, R., Jeong, H., and Barabsi, A. (1999). Diameter of the World Wide Web. Nature 401: 130-131. Allen, M. M. (2000). Six degrees of affiliation: The small world of search tools. Online 24, Issue 5: 49-52. Argollo de Menezes, M., Moukarzel, C. F., and Penna, T. J. P. (1999). First-order transition in small-world networks. Available as Condensed Matter/9903426. Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York. Bagnoli, F., and Bezzi, M. (2000). Small world effects in evolution. Available as Condensed Matter/0007458. Barnes, J. A. (1972). Social Network. MA: Addison-Wesley. Barthelemy, M, and Amaral, L. A. N. (1999). Small-world networks: Evidence for a crossover picture. Available as Condensed Matter/9903108. Barrat, A. (1999). Comment on Small-world networks: Evidence for a crossover picture. Available as Condensed Matter/9903323. Barrat, A., and Weight, M. (1999). On the properties of small-world network models. Available as Condensed Matter/9903411. Bollobs, B. (1985). Random Graphs. New York: Academic Press. Bristor, J. M., and Ryan, M. J. (1989). Applying the small world phenomenon to organizational buying. In M. Kochen (Ed.), The Small World, chapter 4, pp. 87-99. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural Holes: the Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Callon, M. (1992). The dynamics of techno-economic networks. In R. Coombs, P. Saviotti and V. Walsh (eds.), Technological Change and Company Strategies. London: Hartcourt Brace Jovanovich. Coleman, J. (1990). Foundations of Social Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago.

81

Collins, J. J., and Chow, C. C. (1998). Its a small world. Nature 393: 409-410. Comellas, F., and Ozn, J. (2000). Deterministic small-world communication networks. Information Processing Letters 76, Issue 1-2: 83-90. Das, R., Mitchell, M., and Crutchfield, J. P. (1994). A genetic algorithm discovers particlebased computation in cellular automata. In Y. Davidor, H.P. Schwefel, and R. Manner (eds.), Parallel Problem Solving in Nature, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 344353. Berlin: Springer. Domhoff, G. W. (1967). Who Rules America? Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Dorogovtsev, S. N., and Mendes, J. F. F. (1999). Exactly solvable analogy of small-world networks. Available as Condensed Matter/990745. Erds, P., and Rnyi, A. (1960). On the evolution of random graphs. Publications of the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 5: 17-61. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Giustiniano, L., and Carigniani, A. (1999). A conference paper for the BIT 99 conference. Available at http://www.informatik.gu.se/~kai/pharma/pub/smn.pdf Gleiss, P. M., Stadler, P. F., Wagner, A., and Fell. D. (2000). Small cycles in Small Worlds. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper, 00-10-058. Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology 78, Issue 6: 1360-1380. Hansen, M. T. (1999). The search-transfer problem: The role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 82-111. Hayes, B. (2000a). Graph theory in practice: part I. American Scientist 88, No.1: 9-13. Hayes, B. (2000b). Graph theory in practice: part II. American Scientist 88, No.2: 104-109. Hunter, J., and Shotland, R.L. (1974). Treating data collected by the small world method as a Markov process. Social Forces 52: 321-332. Jespersen, S., Sokolov, I. M. and Blumen, A. Relaxation Properties of Small-World Networks. Available as Condensed Matter/0004214. Kogut, B., and Walker, G. (1999). The small world of firm ownership and acquisitions in Germany from 1993 to 1997: The durability of national networks. Wharton School, Reginald H. Jones Center Working Paper. Korte, C., and Milgram, S. (1970). Acquaintance networks between racial groups: Application of the small-world method. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 15: 101-108.
82

Krebs, V. (1999). Improving information flow. White Papers available at www.knetus.net/white/knowledge-flow.html. Kulkarni, R. V., Almaas, E. and Stroud, D. (1999a). Evolutionary dynamics in the BakSneppen model on small-world networks. Available as Condensed Matter/9905066. Kulkarni, R. V., Almaas, E. and Stroud, D. (1999b). Exact results and scaling properties of small-world networks. Available as Condensed Matter/9908216. Kuramoto, Y. (1984). Chemical Oscillations, Waves, and Turbulence. Berlin: Springer. Lago-Fernandez, L. F., Huerta, R., Corbacho, F., and Siguenza, J. (1999). Fast Response and Temporal Coding on Coherent Oscillations in Small-World Networks. Available as Condensed Matter/9909379. Latour, B. (1991). Technology is society made durable. In J. Law (ed.), A Sociology of Monsters. London: Routledge. Lin, N. (1989). The smallworld technique as a theory-construction tool. In M. Kochen (Ed.), The Small World, chapter 2, pp. 231-238. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Lundberg, Craig C. (1975). Patterns of acquaintanceship in society and complex organization: A comparative study of the small world problem. Pacific Sociological Review 18: 206-222. Marchiori, M., and Latora, V. (2000). Harmony in the small-world. Physica A 285: 539-546. Mathias, N, and Gopal, V. (2000). Small worlds: how and why. Available as Condensed Matter/0002076. Milgram, S. (1967). The small-world problem. Psychology Today 22: 61-67. Milgram, S. (1969). Interdisciplinary thinking and the small world problem. In M. Sherif & C. W. Sherif (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Relationships In The Social Sciences. Chicago: Aldine. Monasson, R. (1999). Diffusion, localization and dispersion relations on small-world lattices. Available as Condensed Matter/9903347. Montoya, J. M., and Sol, R. V. (2000). Small world patterns in food webs. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper, 00-10-059. Moore, C., and Newman, M. E. J. (2000a). Epidemics and percolation in small-world networks. Physical Review E 61: 5678-5682. Moore, C., and Newman, M. E. J. (2000b). Exact solution of site and bond percolation on small-world networks. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper, 00-01-007.

83

Moukarzel, C. F., and Argollo de Menezes., M. (1999). Infinite characteristic length on small-world systems. Available as Condensed Matter/9905131. Newman, M. E. J. (2000a). Small worlds, the structure of social networks. Journal of Statistical Physics 101, Nos. 3/4. Newman, M. E. J. (2000b). The structure of scientific collaboration networks. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper, 00-07-037. Newman, M. E. J. (2000c). Who is the best connected scientist? A study of scientific coauthorship networks. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper, 00-12-064. Newmam, M. E. J., Moore, C., and Watts, D. J. (1999). Mean-field solution of the smallworld network model. Available as Condensed Matter/9909165. Newman, M. E. J., and Watts, D. J. (1999a). Scaling and percolation in the small-world network model. Physical Review E 60: 7332-7342. Newman, M. E. J., and Watts, D. J. (1999b). Renormalization group analysis of the smallworld network model. Available as Condensed Matter/9903357. Nowak, M. A., and May, R. M. (1992). Evolutionary games and spatial chaos. Nature 359: 826-829. Pandit, S. A., and Amritkar, R. E. (1999). Characterization and control of small-world networks. Available as chao-dyn/9901017. Pandit, S. A., and Amritkar, R. E. (2000). Random spread on the family of small-world networks. Available as Condensed Matter/0004163. Park, J. (2000). Evolving adaptive organizations. Perspective on Business Innovation 4: 5964. Pool, Ithiel de Sola, and Kochen, M. (1978). Contacts and Influence. Social Networks 1: 148. Also in M. Kochen (Ed.), The Small World (1989), chapter 1, pp. 3-51. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Rapoport, A. (1965). Prisoners Dilemma: A Study of Conflict and Cooperation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Rapoport, A., and Horvath, W. J. (1961). A study of a large sociogram. Behavioural Science 6: 280-285. Shotland, R. L. (1976). University Communication Networks: The Small World Method. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

84

Stevenson, W.B., Davidson, B., Manev, I., and Walsh, K. (1997). The small world of the university: A classroom exercise in the study of networks. Connections 20, Issue 2: 23-33. Travers, J., and Milgram, S. (1969). An experimental study of the small world problem. Sociometry 32: 425. Wagner, A., and Fell, D. (2000). The small world inside large metabolic networks. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper, 00-07-041. Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1994). Social Network Analysis. Cambridge University Press. Watts, D. (2000). The Internet, the small world, and the nature of distance. Scientist Essay available at http://aries.mos.org/internet/essay.html. Watts, D. J. (1999) Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness. Princeton University Press. Watts, D. J., and Strogatz, S. H. (1998). Collective Dynamics of small world networks. Nature 393: 440-442. Wellman, B., Salaff, J., Dimitrova, D., et al. (1996). Computer networks as social networks: virtual community, computer-supported cooperative work and telework. Annual Review of Sociology 22: 213-238. White, H.C. (1970). Search parameters for the small world problem. Social Forces 49: 259264. Zhu, C. P., and Xiong, S. J. (2000). Localization-delocalization transition of electron states in a disordered quantum small world network. Available as Condensed Matter/0007181.

85