Public Management and Network Specificity: Effects of colleges’ ties with professional organizations on graduates’ labour market success and satisfaction

Abstract

Research on managerial networking in the public sector reports positive effects of network activity on performance. However, little is known about which network relations influence different aspects of performance. We argue that for specific organizational goals, organizations should direct their networking activities towards specific types of organizations. We explore how different types of network relations of Dutch colleges for nursing studies affect the performance of these colleges. We analyse the effect of ties with professional organizations on: (1) graduates’ program satisfaction, (2) graduates’ wages and (3) graduates’ employment (n = 1,484 graduates). Multilevel analyses show that colleges’ ties with professional organizations positively affect graduates’ wages and employment.

Key words:

• Public management
• networking
• performance

Acknowledgements

We thank Jim Allen and ROA Maastricht for kindly allowing us to use the data on graduates. We also would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier draft. The research is part of a larger research project of the authors into inter-organizational networks and public performance. Torenvlied acknowledges financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Vidi-grant 452-06-001 and from the High Potentials program of Utrecht University.

Notes

A fourth explanation exists: network embeddedness (Uzzi, 1997). Network embeddedness is the extent to which an agency has relations with organizations that are mutually strongly related, such as in the case of cohesive subgroups. To study this explanation, we need information about all relations among all the organizations' actors in the agency's network. For ‘ego-centered’ managerial networking studies, this information is very difficult to obtain.

Thus, the present study differs from the study of Akkerman and Torenvlied (2011) in two respects. In the first place, the present study focuses on the difference between the effects of professional ties of the colleges for nursing studies in comparison with other types of ties. The 2011 study combined the different types of ties into one network ambition measure. In the second place, the present study focuses on three performance indicators at the level of the graduates of the colleges. The 2011 study analysed differences in dropout rate and diploma rate.

Network diversity differs from network multiplexity. The concept of multiplexity refers to the existence of different types of relations between the same pair of actors, while the concept of network diversity refers to the existence of relations to different types of actors.

We also tested alternative model specifications, using dummy variables and clustered standard errors. The results are not different from those presented in the results section.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Agnes Akkerman

This paper was presented at the 10th Public Management Research Conference (PMRC), Columbus, Ohio, 1–3 October 2009