Collaboration as organizational empowerment: a network perspective

ABSTRACT

Inter-organizational collaboration is central to Organizational Empowerment theory. It enables organizations to strengthen their capacity and to take collective action to achieve empowerment at multiple levels. Despite the growing significance of inter-organizational collaboration in addressing complex issues in our society, little is known about what facilitates or hinders collaboration between local organizations involved with community development in a neighborhood. By applying theories of organizational networks and Institutional Collective Action Framework (ICA), and Exponential Random Graph Modeling, this study analyzes the collaboration networks between 167 local organizations in Chicago in 2016. The results suggest that these local organizations are more likely to collaborate when they are the same type of organization and have a more diverse board of directors. It was also found that organizations built a bonding structure to cope with a challenging period for neighborhood organizations in Chicago. Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of empowerment literature by extending ICA and organizational network theories and a statistical approach to network analysis to describe mechanisms of organizational empowerment.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational empowerment
• inter-organizational collaboration
• exponential random graph modeling
• institutional collective action

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the anonymous peer-reviewers’ insightful and thorough feedback, which greatly improved the quality of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

This study used the publicly available dataset shared in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37364.v1.

Notes

1. It is possible that the diversity of board members may simply be reflective of the size of the board. Due to the absence of the data, this study could not examine the potential effect of the board size. However, to address this limitation, we have included the organizational size in the analytical model, measured by the number of employees and the size of annual budget. This inclusion allows us to partially address the potential influence of board size on the relationship between board diversity and organizational collaboration, as board size is commonly associated with organizational size (J. I. Siciliano, 1996).