How Do Performance Pressures and Public Participation Demands Affect a City Agency’s Network Behavior? An Analysis of Interagency Networks in Seoul Metropolitan Government

Abstract

Over the past decades, government agencies have been under increasing institutional pressures to improve performance while engaging the public in decision-making processes. This study aims to explore how agency managers perceive institutional pressures and how these pressures shape their network behaviors for interagency collaboration. Specifically, this research focuses on structural holes, which refer to network positions that connect otherwise-disconnected agencies. Drawing on the literature of public management, citizen participation, and social networks, this research develops a theoretical model of an agency’s network position and proposes hypotheses. This research tested two hypotheses using network and survey data collected from agency managers in the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2009. The results of the study showed that agencies under greater performance pressure tended to locate themselves in interagency networks with structural holes, while agencies facing greater citizen participation demands tended to embed themselves in interagency networks with fewer structural holes. This implies that performance pressure drives city agencies to seek competitive structural positions in interagency networks, while citizen participation demands lead agencies to locate in dense interagency networks.

Keywords:

• interagency collaboration
• management reform
• performance
• public participation
• structural holes

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the SMG for their support of this research project, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. I would also like to extend a special thank you to Dr. Soonhee Kim for allowing me to use the data and offering her thoughtful comments on an earlier version. As the principal investigator of this research project, her guidance was invaluable. An earlier version of this research was presented at 2019 Public Management Research Conference.

Notes

1 One crucial characteristic of network closure is the presence of mutual third parties. When an agency is embedded in cohesive networks, it increases the possibility that am agency and contacts are connected through mutual third parties (Gulati, 1998; Reagans & McEvily, 2003). Although agencies compete with one another to pursue their self-interests, they are often willing to or forced to collaborate with others to achieve collective interests such as coordinated response to public participation demands (Fountain, 2013). But there is uncertainty about whether other agencies are cooperative. In this situation, mutual third-party agencies play an important role in securing cooperative behavior. This cooperative behavior is shaped by reputation and reciprocity norms (Coleman, 1988; Granovetter, 1985). Agencies are aware that if they do not cooperate, news of their uncooperative behavior will quickly spread to other agencies in cohesive networks, ruining their reputation. Potential loss of reputation is likely to discourage the agencies from getting involved in inappropriate and unethical behaviors (e.g., reluctant to share useful information with other agencies) and constrains their ability to collaborate with them in the future (Krackhardt & Stern, 1988). As social sanctions, potential loss of reputation forces agencies to comply with the norms of reciprocity (Ahuja, 2000) (e.g., information sharing). In this case, mutual third parties play an effective means of monitoring and constraining the agency’s opportunistic behavior (Gargiulo & Benassi, 2000). Thus, the agency embedded in cohesive networks is likely to enjoy lowering the possibility of betrayal and building trust relationships with other agencies, which lubricates interagency collaboration (Coleman, 1988; Johansen & LeRoux, 2013).

2 The survey items used to measure performance pressure and public participation demand were not originally developed for the purpose of this research and thus, create a construct validity issue. To my limited knowledge, the concepts of performance pressures and public participation demands have not been well defined and measured in previous studies. Therefore, there are limited proven measures for both. The concept of performance pressure in this research reflects the source and nature of institutional pressure (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). From a government agency perspective, the major source of performance pressure is political executives such as a City Mayor as an external force The nature of pressure is to change existing management practices to achieve desirable goals such as improving performance. In a similar vein, the source of public participation demand is an external force and the nature of pressure is to change existing practices to foster public participation in a democratic society and achieve its values. The major criteria for selecting survey items used in this research were to capture the source and nature of institutional pressures.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jooho Lee

Dr. Jooho Lee is an associate professor at School of Public Administration at University of Nebraska at Omaha. His research focuses on public management, collaboration, social networks, information technology use in public organizations.