Brisbane’s small world - Page 5

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 3: Webs of Power
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Malcolm Alexander

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The core network of Brisbane's public elites

Figure Three maps the core network of our survey of public elites in Brisbane. By selecting the 12 boards with the highest number of connections to other boards, we highlight the boards central to the network. These are the nodes through which will be involved with the greatest number of paths within the network. We have simplified the diagram however to show only the connections among these 12 boards themselves and their positioning relative to each other.

Table Two gives the names and organizational type of the boards in this core group.

Table 2: Boards in network core (15 or more outside connections)

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We see how important the advisory boards of major public institutions are on this list. They are crucial to the creation of a community network. Without them, the network would be very sparse and possibly not even connected. Listed companies, by contrast, do not enter this core group of boards. (The most connected listed company board is Bank of Queensland with 13 outside connections.) This is not surprising however. Advisory boards are larger than company boards and their members are seldom paid (certainly not at the scale of private company director's fees). They serve because of their recognised prior contribution to the community and contribute to the boards from that base. To be attractive boards have to provide them with ways to enhance their contacts and networks. Furthermore, as advisory boards, they need to draw in expertise and experience from a wide range of stakeholders. The evidence of their linkages to other organizations is a reflection of this role.

The placement of each organization in Figure 3 indicates its centrality relative to other organizations in the core. This is a valid but limited view of an organization's place in the overall network. An indication of a board's significance in network of interpersonal connections is suggested by the ‘efficiency' of a board to an individual wishing to make the maximum number of connections through the least number of people. We find this indicator by dividing the number of connections made by a whole board by the number of networkers on that board. For someone wishing to connect as efficiently as possible, this indicator would say where the most well connected networkers are gathered.

Table Three ranks the core organizations on this indicator.

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We can see the ‘efficiency' suggested by this indicator by comparing the top and bottom boards. The Brisbane City Council advisory board (BCHO) is a highly connected group of persons. It has gathered people to it that already have multiple connections and hence has many connections available through each member. The Senate of the University of Queensland, by contrast, has many networkers on it but these networkers do not have a lot of further contacts. The Senate itself is the forum for the links to be made rather than its members themselves being highly connected networkers.

Summary and Conclusion

Scientific interest in small world networks suggests how they arise from the combination of localised activity (‘bonds') with only a smattering of long-distance ‘ties'. Watts' model showed how the phenomena of short average path lengths, the six degrees of separation of small world theory, emerges far sooner than was originally thought possible. The connections among Brisbane's public elites exemplify small world network architecture. For members of boards connected to the large component of 253 organizations, the average distance between them is only 4.68 steps.

It is, primarily, the public advisory boards that make a network happen rather than private sector companies and boards. The State government and City Council advisory bodies attract people active on other boards, including company boards. They are the forums for publicly active persons to meet one another and network. There is no institutionalised centralization in this network. However, if sustained over a period of time, locally determined patterns of appointment, and attraction, will produce a centrality of organisations and persons such as we map here. Our snapshot, frozen in time, produces a structured picture of the community network. It is likely, however, that when the State government and City Council change, the particular structure we have found will be disrupted. Like natural systems and ecologies social networks change and adapt to changing environments re-organising their basic properties of connectivity and centralization into different configurations.

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