Keith G. Provan

Do Networks Really Work? A Framework for Evaluating Public-Sector Organizational Networks

Although cooperative, interorganizational networks have become a common mechanism for delivery of public services, evaluating their effectiveness is extremely complex and has generally been neglected. To help resolve this problem, we discuss the evaluation of networks of community-based, mostly publicly funded health, human service, and public welfare organizations. Consistent with pressures to perform effectively from a broad range of key stakeholders, we argue that networks must be evaluated at three levels of analysis: community, network, and organization/participant levels. While the three levels are related, each has its own set of effectiveness criteria that must be considered. The article offers a general discussion of network effectiveness, followed by arguments explaining effectiveness criteria and stakeholders at each level of analysis. Finally, the article examines how effectiveness at one level of network analysis may or may not match effectiveness criteria at another level and the extent to which integration across levels may be possible.

Interorganizational Networks at the Network Level: A Review of the Empirical Literature on Whole Networks:

This article reviews and discusses the empirical literature on interorganizational networks at the network level of analysis, or what is sometimes referred to as “whole” networks. An overview of the distinction between egocentric and network-level research is first introduced. Then, a review of the modest literature on whole networks is undertaken, along with a summary table outlining the main findings based on a thorough literature search. Finally, the authors offer a discussion concerning what future directions might be taken by researchers hoping to expand this important, but understudied, topic.

Legitimacy Building in the Evolution of Small-Firm Multilateral Networks: A Comparative Study of Success and Demise

This article reports a longitudinal examination and comparison of two multilateral networks of small and medium-sized firms in the U.S. wood-products manufacturing industry. The research focused on how each of these networks built legitimacy over the course of their early evolution, from the pre-network field, to initial formation and growth, and toward sustainment, culminating in the success of one and the demise of the other. Our findings demonstrate that despite differences in their early bases of support, which resulted in very different strategic emphases, the two networks ultimately had to address three conceptually distinct dimensions of legitimacy—the network as form, the network as entity, and the network as interaction. Based on the findings, we develop specific propositions and draw some tentative conclusions about how legitimacy is established in multilateral networks and how the failure to build legitimacy across the three dimensions may lead to network collapse.

Interorganizational Dependence and Control as Predictors of Opportunism in Dealer-Supplier Relations

This study examines Williamsons (1975) concept of opportunism in relations between farm and power equipment dealers and their primary supplier organization. Results from a national survey generall...

Environmental Linkages and Power in Resource-Dependence Relations between Organizations.

This article is based on the first authors Ph.D. dissertation at the School of Management, State University of New York at Buffalo. He and the other authors wish to thank that school for its support of this research. They also wish to express their gratitude to those members of the United Way organization, particularly Dr. Herbert Rabinowitz, and its agencies, who contributed their time and cooperated with our efforts.

Networks Within Networks: Service Link Overlap, Organizational Cliques, and Network Effectiveness

This study explored the use of clique analysis for explaining network effectiveness. In data from networks of mental health agencies in three cities, effectiveness, measured as client outcomes, was...

Board Power and Organizational Effectiveness Among Human Service Agencies

This study examines the importance of an externally powerful board of directors to the effectiveness (ability to attract scarce resources) of 46 human service agencies operating within the same community. Traditional assumptions regarding the importance of a powerful board were supported when effectiveness was operationalized using static measures of funding but were not supported when dynamic measures were used.

Embeddedness, Interdependence, and Opportunism in Organizational Supplier-Buyer Networks

Despite the value of Williamson’s (1975; 1985) transaction cost economics perspective to organization theorists for offering new ways of thinking about relations between organizations, its focus on supplier-buyer dyads operating on a continuum ranging from markets to hierarchies de-emphasizes the importance of cooperative network relations. In this paper; theory and hypotheses are developed explaining constraints on the emergence of opportunism when supplier-buyer relations are considered in a network context. The general thesis is that the opportunistic behavior of individual network suppliers relative to the dominant buyer; or hub firm, will decline at increasing levels of embeddedness in an interdependent supplier-buyer network, despite conditions of high asset specificity and small numbers bargaining.

Measuring Network Structure

Networks have been a research issue in public administration for many years. Because of the difficulty of measuring networks, they have often been treated as a metaphor, a conceptual scheme, or a management technique (networking). The work on networks in public administration is almost all of the case study and rarely of the comparative case variety. This article presents the results of two studies of networks using social network analysis as a technique for studying structural relationships between organizations. This technique is utilized to show both the research and practical potential of network analysis as an evaluation methodology for organizations that jointly produce a service. In the first study, the network provides mental health services to seriously mentally ill adults. In the second study, the network attempts to prevent young people from abusing drugs and alcohol. The two studies were undertaken for different reasons. The first was an elaborate comparative study of four mental health networks and the relationship between network design and performance. The second was a much simpler consulting effort to help a local prevention partnership create linkages to other community organizations. However, in both of the studies the goal was to measure the structural ties in the network based on various types of relationships that exist in a given field of practice. These linkages are ties that bind the network together and become data that can be used to compare networks on their degree and type of integration. The article makes the argument that links in a network are one way that scholars can compare networks in similar or different policy domains. At the same time, the article argues that analysing linkages in an organization’s network is an effective and practical means of determining how well integrated any given organization is in a network.

Building Community Capacity Around Chronic Disease Services through a Collaborative Interorganizational Network

This article presents the findings of a study examining the evolution of a network of health and human service organizations operating in a rural community on the Southwest border. The aim of the networkwas to build the capacity of the community to provide chronic disease education, prevention, and treatment services by developing collaborative relationships among a broad range of organizations. The impetus for the effort was based on receipt of a Turning Point grant. The findings, based on two waves of data collected 1 year apart, demonstrate how network structure and attitudes toward collaboration evolve as a community attempts to build capacity to address its health needs.