Capturing the “Social” in Social Networks: The Conceptualization and Empirical Application of Relational Quality

Social networks are omnipresent in both our private and professional lives. As social beings, we thrive on technology’s ability to allow us to be social. But just because online social networks have been designed for “being social” as their name suggests, it does not mean they are actually supportive and representative of the rich social interchanges that take place when individuals communicate in a physical setting. Grounded in relational social capital and relational sociology, we examine the aspect of relational quality—a concept that has been neglected thus far in the bigger picture of social networks. Relational quality describes the richness of the relationship that develops between individuals through social interactions. Since current approaches to social networks mostly focus on structural and cognitive properties, our aim is to derive four theoretically motivated markers for relational quality, comprising markers for being personal, being curious, being respectful, and sharing with others, that—conceptually as well as methodologically—complement existing social network measures. By analyzing more than 440,000 messages posted by more than 24,000 employees across two enterprise social networks (ESN), we illustrate and validate the existence of relational quality in social networks, using sample measures for each marker. We further uncover important relationships between different forms of structural embeddedness and our dimensions of relational quality in online networks.