Transformations  in
Business & Economics

DIGITAL NETWORK TWIN - MAPPING SOCIO-ECONOMIC NETWORKS INTO THE VIRTUAL REALITY¹¹
Piotr Sliwa, Grzegorz Krzos, Estera Piwoni-Krzeszowska

ABSTRACT. The concept of Digital Twin suggests that every physical product needs a virtual counterpart which can be used for simulating, forecasting, and reasoning about the real product without a costly and risky physical interaction. We argue that organizational networks - the fabric of the whole socio-economic world - need analogous virtual representations (digital network twins) for researchers' and practitioners' disposal. However, our systematic literature review revealed that current conceptualizations of organizational networks have significant limitations which make them unsuitable for being used as a framework for building digital network twins. Therefore, the aim of this article is to present a conceptual framework of a digital network twin based on a multi-level multi-modal organizational network model. The proposed multi-graph representation unifies the levels of analysis (inter- and intra-organizational) and minimizes a priori assumptions about network characteristics.

KEYWORDS: digital network twin, organizational network, multi-level, multi-modal, conceptual framework.

JEL classification: L14, L22.

¹¹Acknowledgment: The research is financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland under the program" Regional Initiative of Excellence" 2019 - 2022 project number 015/RID/2018/19 total funding amount 10 721 040,00 PLN.