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Abstract
Throughout the world, social cause organizations and independent media organizations work together, despite their differences and competition with each other for resources, toward creating civil society. This paper assesses the network dynamics of a system of cooperative competitors in Croatia. The research is framed from the theoretical perspectives of resource dependency, cooperation competition, and structural holes with results that describe the roles of various organizations in the development of civil society. Network relationships are described among 18 civil society organizations from their initial participation in the Croatian transformation in the year 2000 to a democratic nation to two years later. Results identify benefits and drawbacks of the general system structure, specific organization's network roles, and reputations associated with networking activities. Theoretical implications address the complementary contributions of using multiple theoretical perspectives to approach interorganizational relationships and their pragmatic utility with respect to building stronger networks among civil‐society partners.
Notes
Marya L. Doerfel is Assistant Professor and Maureen Taylor is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, Rutgers University. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented as a top paper at the International Communication Association's annual meeting, San Diego, CA, May 2003. Many thanks to Drs. Frank Boster, Susan Morgan, and Ron Rice for their support on this article. Correspondence to Marya L. Doerfel, Department of Communication, Rutgers University, 4 Huntington St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. Email: [email protected]