Empirical Study on the Micro Network Structure of a Building Industrialization Project Based on Social Network Analysis

With the increasing emphasis on intellectualization and professionalization, building industrialization (BI) has become an inevitable trend of construction industry in China. However, enterprises face development barriers because of their confusion about their position, strength and weakness in the network. And managers’ implementations of BI are far from satisfactory because of lacking comprehensive perspective of BI organization. To resolve these issues, an analysis of BI micro social network is established based on the social network theory in this paper. Firstly, BI project’s micro social network is analyzed theoretically. Secondly, a questionnaire survey is conducted to collect authentic data and UCINET is used to quantify four network characters. The outcome of social network analysis indicates that developer is the information hinge of BI project whereas contractor and component supplier also occupy critical structural holes and play important roles in BI network. Theoretically, this study might provide a new perspective for implementer of BI to organize staff more effectively and allocate resources more rationally.