Network Effectiveness in Education

Interorganizational partnerships often emerge as a strategy for responding to complex social problems in a community, such as improving educational outcomes. There are two strategies for organizing such partnerships. At one end of the spectrum are highly organized, networks operated by network administrative organizations. In education, one example of this approach is collective impact networks. Collective impact represents a structured approach to inter-organizational collaboration in which partners share a common goal and common approach to measurement, coordinate their activities, and are convened by a supporting organization. At the other end of the spectrum are self-organized networks operating with participant-led, shared governance. In education, one example of this approach is self-organized networks based around common activities (i.e., early childhood coalitions, and school service provider networks). Some of these networks wax and wane based on the cyclic availability of grant funding. Although a more structured network approach is theorized (Provan & Kenis, 2008) to be beneficial in improving outcomes at the community level, empirical research has yet to study a large set of these networks in comparison. The goals of this research were to:1) examine differences in the structures of planned and emergent inter-organizational networks, 2) determine how planned and emergent networks inform the diffusion of information across a community, and 3) explore the influence of planned and emergent networks on organizational, network, and community-level outcomes, including whether planned networks result in different community outcomes than emergent networks.