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Bridging and Bonding Capital in Two‐Mode Collaboration Networks
Author(s) -
Berardo Ramiro
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
policy studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1541-0072
pISSN - 0190-292X
DOI - 10.1111/psj.12056
Subject(s) - bridging (networking) , business , government (linguistics) , mode (computer interface) , public relations , economics , knowledge management , political science , computer science , computer network , philosophy , linguistics , operating system
Public management and policy scholars have empirically demonstrated that in complex policy arenas, governments depend on the collaboration of policy actors outside their direct control to produce needed goods and services. Government‐sponsored shared‐cost programs are one of the premier mechanisms to foster such cooperation, yet little is known about the inner patterns of participation in such programs and whether they are conditional on specific resource needs that partners may have. In this article, I study the participation of organizations in projects seeking funds from the Cooperative Funding Initiative, a program sponsored by the S outhwest F lorida W ater M anagement D istrict that finances projects dealing with the management of water resources. Through the estimation of a series of E xponential R andom G raph M odels in the networks that form when organizations participate in projects (two‐mode networks), I show that centralization around popular organizations results in greater bridging network capital, which facilitates the flow of nonoverlapping information from project to project. I analyze the implications of these findings and discuss how the formation of these bridging structures may enhance the capacity of the program to find innovative solutions to the problems the projects are designed to deal with.