Down-to-Earth Performance Enhancements: A case study from the Italian Aerospace Industry

This paper presents the results of a study in which we applied social network analysis to four technology communities within a large Italian group in the aerospace and defense industry. The goal of this study was to evaluate the communities’ degree of connectivity (internal, cross-community, and external connections) relative to their established performance measures. Approximately 400 subjects reported the frequency of their communications with members of their own community, other communities and external stakeholders via e-mail, face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and e-meetings. Data were collected through web-based questionnaires for a period of five weeks. The average response rate was 82%. The analysis compared the growth of the four communities related to four performance dimensions: people, innovation, financial outcomes and processes. The most frequent internal and external communications occurred via e-mail (results ranged from 57% to 75% across the four communities), then by face-to-face (from 25% to 50%), then by phone (from 18% to 38%) and least frequently by e-meetings (from 0.5% to 7%). Each community identified strong ties between members and key stakeholders (25% from academia, 30% from government institutions and 45% from industrial institutions). The highest-performing community demonstrated well-balanced communication behaviors. They had a high frequency of external communication, reporting an average 14 phone calls/day, 11 e-mails/day and 10 e-meetings/month with external partners. We found that optimal performance was associated with a high level of network density and no disconnected actors. Our findings also suggest how to optimize a collaborative network by not relying on one predominant communication channel.