ABSTRACT
To increase organizational adaptiveness, institutional innovation and social equality in public health, we propose a new theory of systemic coordinated inter-organizational networks or SCIONs to replace market and state coordination where organizations tend to be risk-averse. SCIONs are defined by uniting many organizations working toward a national goal such as public health into an organizational network and creating a network coordinating organization (NCO). NGO SCIONs are compared with the variety of inter-organization relations among firms and agencies. We define four major interventions to change human behavior: mass communication, physical, human and social capital. Organizational adaptiveness is carefully compared with organizational learning and innovation. SCIONs provide a theoretical foundation for an action theory to save societies.
