ABSTRACT
It is generally understood that managers operate differently in collaborative entities than in hierarchies. This has been clear from the early years of interorganizational network consciousness. Standard “line management” organizational approaches, e.g., POSDCORB, do not fit into the highly interactive cross-organization processes that seek to create a new holism out of the brokered contributions of organizational representatives operating in goal-directed networks. One groundbreaking work (Kickert and Koppenjan 1997, 47) conceptualized network management as “the steering of interaction processes". They posited steps like mobilizing, organizing, and brokering favorable conditions as mechanisms for governing joint action. Agranoff and McGuire (2001) built on these ideas by suggesting a series of four behaviors that might capture the essential steps in network management: activating, mobilizing, framing, and synthesizing. These four steps have subsequently been raised by others as a means to describe network management processes (Keast and Hampson 2007; Page 2008; Rethemeyer and Hatmaker 2008; Beach, Keast, and Pickernell 2012; Saz-Carranza 2012; Silvia 2011). Although the Agranoff and McGuire framework has been heavily cited, a complete empirical analysis that examines this four-step process in detail has heretofore not been undertaken. Here we attempt to cross that bridge.
