Data for "Formal and Informal Interpersonal Relationships: interaction of networks in the academic environment" published by RAC-Revista de Administração Contemporânea
Description
The academic literature presents concepts that are explored by their formal and informal aspects. In addition, it is emphasized that informal interpersonal relationships complement and contribute synergistically with the formal relationships that occur in the various human activities. Some authors have studied the similarity between the formal and informal parts, others have indicated that one could study the joint effects of interaction or the delineation of the boundaries of the informal part by the formal part or if both would have reciprocal influences. The objective of this study was to compare the informal and formal social network structures of two different classes of university students, based on their own perceptions and evaluations, in different periods of relationship. The verification of the interaction patterns between the networks based on the measures provided by the analysis of social networks applied in the two classes of students can offer indications as to the existence or not of the interaction between the formal and informal networks and if there is, how this interaction occurs based on the relationships present in a class, inside and outside the classroom. In the case of classrooms, the influence that informal ties (friendship, trust etc.) have had on the formal ties which means the performance of individual or group tasks imposed by teachers in the disciplines and rules of the educational institution, in different periods of relationship, while taking the course. The role of the analysis of social networks in this work was to present formal and informal networks measures with the objective of comparing them and the measures of the centrality of the actors in this case, the students of the classes of a university. For this subject, the literature also presents research on the differences between the genres that was analyzed in this study. Several measures were collected based on the students' perception and the analysis of the data indicated results that were not consistent with the literature, indicating the non-occurrence of a relationship between the formal and informal aspects. The results offer paths that can be traced in the same type of analysis in other types of organizations, such as public or private, because it deals with the relationships between employees who experience both formal and informal structure in their work environments. The focus is restricted to the relationship patterns among common actors that must be related in the accomplishment of diverse tasks imposed by the formal structure, represented by the educational institution and the professors of the disciplines. Future work should take into account other actors such as teachers, principals and others who are also part of the organizations. The analysis of social networks can offer measures that, based on the results, can be used in these future studies.