FN Thomson Reuters Web of Scienceā„¢ VR 1.0 PT J AU Everett, MG Borgatti, SP AF Everett, MG Borgatti, SP TI The centrality of groups and classes SO JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL SOCIOLOGY AB This paper extends the standard network centrality measures of degree, closeness and betweenness to apply to groups and classes as well as individuals. The group centrality measures will enable researchers to answer such questions as 'how central is the engineering department in the informal influence network of this company?' or 'among middle managers in a given organization, which are more central, the men or the women?' With these measures we can also solve the inverse problem: given the network of ties among organization members, how can we form a team that is maximally central? The measures are illustrated using two classic network data sets. We also formalize a measure of group centrality efficiency, which indicates the extent to which a group's centrality is principally due to a small subset of its members. SN 0022-250X PY 1999 VL 23 IS 3 BP 181 EP 201 UT WOS:000080084100002 ER EF