...bureaucracy. The driving force behind the rise of public sector networks is the realization that policy problems, such as welfare, disaster relief, and environmental protection, are so complex in nature that no single hierarchical organization can solve them independently (Agranoff and McGuire 2001; O'Toole 1997). The mismatch between complicated policy problems and the capacity of a hierarchical government bureaucracy to address these problems adequately makes collaborative networks of public and nongovernmental actors the logical course of action (O'Toole 1997; Provan and Milward 2001). Compared to top-heavy hierarchical government, networks offer a more flexible, responsive, and efficient production system to deliver publicly funded services (Goldsmith and Eggers 2004).

Consistent with the New Public Management movement (Kettl 2000), policy makers must demand that public sector networks be held accountable for producing cost-effective results. One way to enhance the accountability of network organizations is through formal governance by a network administrative organization (NAO) (Provan, Isett, and Milward 2004). An NAO not only monitors and coordinates the activities of member organizations to achieve collective goals but will also be held accountable to principals, such as appointed or elected officials, who fund and monitor the network and its activities.

As part of the push for greater accountability and outcome measurement, how nonprofit health and human service agencies conduct their working relationships with other agencies regarding such issues as sharing information and exchange of clients is a question of considerable concern. This issue has significant importance for civil society because social relations of cooperation and work among nonprofit organizations for the betterment of a community serve as important venues where members of a community, through their involvement as donors, volunteers, staff, and board members, can join together in public service and build civil society (Putnam 2000).

This article provides an examination of one publicly funded network, focusing on the patterns of interaction and recognition among network members, including the NAO. We argue that the extent of interaction and recognition among network members will vary in a consistent and predictable way, based on the nature of the particular resource that is at the source of the interaction. We also argue that such patterns of interaction and recognition can help us better understand the relationship between client-centered collaboration and management control in a publicly funded network. The research extends theory on network interactions as well as having implications for network practice.

RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH

The study of networks has emerged as a major focus of research among public administration scholars (Agranoff and McGuire 2001). Over the past decade and more, we have learned a great deal about why networks are important (O'Toole 1997), how they are structured (Provan and Milward 1995), how they might be evaluated (Provan and Milward 2001), what their shortcomings are (Teisman and Klijn 2002), what managerial issues are important (McGuire 2002), and how they are governed (Goldsmith and Eggers 2004). Despite this wealth of information, there is still a great deal about networks that we do not know.

One issue that is too often ignored in the public network literature is the nature of the types of relationships that hold the network together. Although there is general acceptance that not all types of ties are the same, too often, those who study public networks typically talk about "the network," as if it were a single multiorganizational form. In reality, however, although most networks are defined and bounded by a set of common relationships, within every "network," there are many different types of relationships that bind the network together in different ways. This point was recognized nearly 30 years ago by Harrison C. White and his colleagues at Harvard University in their early work on block modeling for social structure from multiple networks (for a review, see Laumann 1979). Consistent with the idea that network structures are relationship specific, Hanf, Hjern, and Porter (1978) found that course planning, resource acquisition, and recruitment and placement were organized in different ways in local networks of manpower training in Sweden and Germany. More recently, Bolland and Wilson (1994) found that coordination among agencies was very different depending on the type of tie being considered.

Building on this previous research, we argue that within a health and human service network different types of interorganizational relationships bind the network together in different ways. To the extent that community-based nonprofit health and human service organizations serve as mainstays of civil society, the question that we raise is how social relations of cooperation and work among nonprofit health and human service agencies will be organized in a managed network setting. From a network management perspective, understanding what subnetworks (defined as a subset of relations linking all members of a network) exist within the broader network can be critical for knowing how client-centered collaboration is organized and how network-level problems and challenges might best be addressed.

It is, of course, possible to capture empirically what these various subnetworks look like by utilizing network data collection procedures and analytical methods that distinguish among different types of relationships (Provan and Milward 1995). However, critics of the network approach have argued that instead of capitalizing on opportunities for applying its increasingly sophisticated analytical methods, network researchers should construct network theories of organization to explain why structures of interactions exist and how they enable or disable organizations to achieve collective and individual interests (Kilduff and Tsai 2003; Salancik 1995).

Our article answers this call to explain the different patterns of network interaction. We argue that the network organizations involved in subnetworks cannot only be identified but that the network substructure can be explained based on which critical resources are involved and the nature of these resources. Drawing on resource dependence theory, we develop two hypotheses regarding the nature of the resources used and their likely impact on network structure. We use network analytical methods to test these ideas in a publicly funded health and human services network.

RESOURCE DEPENDENCIES

Resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978) argues that resources are critical for organizational survival and that through interorganizational ties, which increases dependencies, organizations can gain the resources they need while reducing environmental uncertainty. It follows that network organizations will interact with those other network members that control access to the resources they need. In mental health services, as in many other publicly funded health and human services, providers not only need material resources like funding and clients but also rely on other types of less tangible, knowledge-based resources to operate effectively in settings that have few objective ways to measure outcomes. For instance, one type of nonmaterial, tacit resource is information about clients' conditions and effective treatment. Researchers have noted that community-based nonprofit providers of social services often develop a wealth of local knowledge in their particular service areas (e.g., Alexander, Nank, and Stivers 1999; Frnmkin and AndreClark 2000). In a fragmented health and human services network where there are few definitive answers regarding client needs and treatment, information sharing will contribute to the delivery of responsive and effective services.

Another less tangible resource is reputation. As discussed by Granovetter (1985), reputational effects can be a powerful force for controlling behavior in a social system like a network. For instance, an organization's reputation for high-quality services will diffuse throughout its network of related providers, thus building knowledge of its excellent performance. The important role of reputation in the competitive business world has been studied empirically by Fombrun (2001). His recent work at the Reputation Institute was consistent with the findings of a group of University of Kansas professors, who examined the relationship between market value, book value, profitability, and reputation for all the firms rated in Fortune magazine's "Most Admired Companies" survey between 1983 and 1997. They found that a one-point change in reputation was associated with an average of $500 million in market value, thus reinforcing the importance of reputation for attraction of other needed resources.

In the...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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