The Military Group Communication Network And The Structure Analysis

Many studies suggest that effective communication is the key effect on team effectiveness. SNA(social network analysis) is a kind of theory and method studying interpersonal relations. It emphasizes relatedness rather than individual, providing a new perspective to study organizational behavior and psychology. It is difficult to describe the communication pattern. However, communication network and the structure could be studied by SNA. This study has theoretical and practical significance for the protection and early-warning of information trauma and team building.The major target of this research is to investigate the Chinese army by case study, and understand the characteristic of interpersonal communication, which is help to control and monitor the transfer of information in the military group. From the perspective of information transfer, information trauma could be understood fully.This research is composed of two parts:First Part: Investigation for communication characteristic. We use interview and questionnaire investigation approaches, in order to understand the way of soldiers getting information, and the impact of interpersonal communication on information transfer, and so on.Second Part: Based on the result of the first part, we build three different kind of communication network. Through social network analysis, we examine all the members in whole companies to describe communication networks, and study their structures. Binary logistic regression is used to examine the effects of different kind of interpersonal relations on information transmit.Major conclusions of the research:1. The characteristic of soldiers’ communication. Television is the main medium to access the information. The information transmitted between soldiers is characterized by importance of the communication subject to speaker and listener and the ambiguousness of the situation associated with the communication. The reliability of information acquired by communication is poorer. The two major benefits are the release of emotion and access of information.2. The characteristic of communication network structures. Due to various personnel structure, duty and so on, different companies has different communication network. Different members always lie in different location in the network. The members who are leaders, married and long tenure always lie in the core position, so they can control information resource in the whole company.3. The impact of interpersonal relations on the ties of communication networks. The affective information tends to transmit between countrymen, the same year soldiers or the same class soldiers. However, instrumental information is inclined to transmit between same class soldiers.