Networks of social agents and decision making dynamics in organizations

Stefano Battiston

Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Ecole Normale Supérieure 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France

I will present the results of two models investigating how the structure of the connectivity of a social network affects the dynamics of the decision making process in which the social agents are involved. In this models agents are not supposed to be fully rational in the sense of economics, but rather to adopt what is known as "herd" behaviour. We focus on a particular type of organization for which the social structure is relatively well defined and for which empirical data are available, namely the network of boards of directors in large companies. We investigate two issues: on one side we ask under which conditions a minority is able to drive a majority within a single board of directors. On the other hand we ask under which conditions e decision made in central board propagates to other boards via the connections of interlocked directors.