Managerial Networking

• Date: 01 November 2005
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399705277142
• Published date: 01 November 2005
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0095399705277142ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2005Meier, O’Toole / MANAGERIAL NETWORKING

MANAGERIAL NETWORKING

Issues of Measurement and Research Design

KENNETH J. MEIER

Texas A&M University

LAURENCE J. O’TOOLE, JR.

University of Georgia

The study of networks is a growtharea in public management. This article argues that small-

nstudies of networks need to be supplementedwith large-nstudies that permit one to include

more theoreticallyrelevant control variables and to deal with issues of causality. Using sur-

veydata from several hundred agency heads, this article presentsa reliable measure of man-

agement network activities that has demonstrated substantial empirical import. If the right

networknodes are selected, contact information on only a limited number of nodes is needed.

Who initiates contacts within the network is also shown to be important.

Keywords: management; networks; public organizations; measurement

Public policies are often executed in networks of multiple organizational

actors that are interdependent with each other. Whether in the United

States (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003; Mandell, 2001; Milward & Provan,

2000; O’Toole, 1997) or elsewhere (Bogason & Toonen, 1998; Bressers,

O’Toole, & Richardson, 1995; Klijn, 1996; Peterson & O’Toole, 2001;

523

AUTHORS’NOTE: This article is part of an ongoing research agenda on the role of public

management in complex policy settings. We have benefited from the helpful comments of

George Boyne, Stuart Bretschneider, Amy Kneedler Donahue, H. George Frederickson,

CarolynHeinrich, Patricia Ingraham, Eric Gonzalez Juenke,J. Edward Kellough, Laurence

E.Lynn, Jr.,H. BrintonMilward, Sean Nicholson-Crotty,David Peterson, Hal G. Rainey,and

Bob Stein on various aspects of this research program.Needless to say, this article is the

responsibility of the authors only. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-

dressed to Kenneth J.Meier, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University, Col-

lege Station, TX 77845; phone: (979) 845-4232; fax: (979) 847-8924; e-mail: kmeier@

politics.tamu.edu.

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 37 No. 5, November 2005 523-541

DOI: 10.1177/0095399705277142

© 2005 Sage Publications

Rhodes, 1997; Salminen, 2003; Scharpf, 1993), the network theme has

emerged as an important component of research on public management

and policy implementation. In the United States at the national level, even

formal policy frequently encourages or requires networked arrangements

during execution (Hall & O’Toole, 2000, 2004). Networks can involve

multiple agencies, governments, and/or sectors—public, nonprofit, and

for-profit—in patterns of client sharing, coproduction, support building,

and other forms of collaborative effort.

Most standard treatments of public management have regarded these

sorts of institutional arrangements as relatively marginal to the field (Rainey,

2003), but as the research literature on this topic mushrooms, a number of

questions become increasingly salient. How do network structures and

networking behavior influence public program performance? Is the pub-

lic-managerial challenge fundamentally different in complex network set-

tings than it is in relatively straightforward hierarchies? Do some types of

networks impede effectiveexecution of public policy? Do others facilitate

performance by leveraging collaborative effort in innovative ways?

Answering any of these and related questions, however, requires finding

ways of measuring networks and behavior in them and then relating these

measures to other relevant indicia. This challenge in turn raises issues of

research design.

In this article, we develop some of the research design considerations

for the study of public management in network settings. We suggest rea-

sons why large-nstudies must be a part of the research agenda on this sub-

ject even as this approach also benefits from complementary small-n

investigations. We offer evidence on the reliability and validity of one

approach to tapping managerial networking behavior, an approach ame-

nable for use in large-nsettings. Finally, we offer related suggestions for

the further development of systematic empirical research on networking

and public management.

DOES SIZE MATTER?

HOW LARGE THE NIN NETWORKING RESEARCH?

Research on networks and public management has produced useful

and stimulating results on some significant questions including the com-

plexity and richness of network settings (Provan & Milward, 1991; van

Bueren, Klijn, & Koppenjan, in press), the development of performance

measures at the network level (Provan & Milward, 1995), analyses of the

524 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / November 2005