Promoting collaboration: the role of relational multiplexity in an interorganizational health justice network

ABSTRACT

Organizations need to collaborate to achieve complex goals. Although interorganizational relations often take the form of multiplex ties, our understanding of how multiplexity itself may facilitate interorganizational collaboration is limited. We use dynamic network analysis (SIENA) to test the role of relational multiplexity – specifically, relationships involving communication outside of coalition meetings and expertise-seeking – in promoting collaboration in a health justice coalition over three years. The results offer strong support for the role of multiplexity in the formation of interorganizational collaboration, indicating that having multiple ties between organizations facilitates collaboration, and that certain types of ties (i.e. communication relationships outside of coalition meetings) are more influential than others. We conclude that coalitions hoping to support successful interorganizational collaboration will benefit from offering opportunities for member organizations to communicate outside of group meetings, because such small acts of dyadic interaction can build into deeper levels of engagement. Additionally, our study demonstrates how network analysis can help organizational coalitions to track and suggest potential partnerships between member organizations.

KEYWORDS:

• Interorganizational collaboration
• relational multiplexity
• communication
• expertise-seeking
• dynamic network analysis

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions to this research of Sandra Evans and Rong Wang, and of all of the organizations in the California Covering Kids and Families coalition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Because this study was grounded in applied work to help the coalition, the social network survey questions used language appropriate to a lay audience – e.g., ‘communication outside of coalition meetings’ – to describe the three different types of relationships.

2. The number of informant nominations in network surveys typically ranges from five to seven (Marsden, 1987; Valente, 2010), and we chose the upper bound number, seven, with the goal of collecting more comprehensive network data.

3. In each wave of the survey, a respondent organization could report having more than one type of collaborative relationship with an alter organization, so the total percentage of the four types of collaborative relationships exceeded 100%.