Measuring Proximity in Human Organization

Traditional measures of proximity all share three common weaknesses when applied to the study of human organizations: (a) they are based on linear physical distance rather than functional distance, (b) they measure distance as afixed rather than afluctuating quantity, and (c) they treat people as proximate to a single other person rather than to multiple others. A measure of proximity which attempts to deal with these problems for research in large organizations is developed in this paper. Proximity is defined as the probability of people being in the same location during the same period of time, i.e., as an opportunity for face-to-face communication made possible by people sharing a communication space and time. It is operationalized as a mean joint probability among all people in the organization. A computer program (PROXVAL) developed to calculate the required quantities is described. Data which demonstrate the usefulness of the procedure are reported.