How emails predict a corporate downfall?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Email patterns within the organization can predict or give out alarming signals about a corporates' fate, says a recent study.

A research conducted by Ben Collingsworth and Ronaldo Menezes at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne said that the pattern of emails exchanged by the employees can give advance warning of an organization reaching crisis point, the New Scientist reported.

The researcher studied the case of Enron, which collapsed in December 2001 and found out that the number of active email clique within a particular group of the organization increased drastically from 100 to 800.

The researchers identified this behavior as a result of stress, where employees within the company start talking directly to people whom they are comfortable with, not sharing with everyone.

Federal investigators obtained records of emails sent by around 150 senior staff during Enron's final 18 months. The logs, which record 517,000 emails sent to around 15,000 employees, provide a rare insight into how communication within an organization changes during stressful times, reported New Scientist.

The researchers here did not look in to the content of the emails.