MEASURING PERFORMANCE FOR COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT USING NETWORK ANALYSIS METHODS AND TOOLS

Social network analysis and centrality measures are used with the UCINET software program to analyze the outcomes of an evolving collaborative network through the relationship structures and processes of an interorganizational governance network. The study data were collected from content analyses of newspapers, situation reports, and organizational documents. In the context of disaster response networks, the structure and performance of the planned networks are compared to the actual networks. The results indicate that the September 11 response network's performance differed from that of the Federal Response Plan network and that the outcomes of the Hurricane Katrina response network showed different structures from those of the National Response Plan. The insights generated about the structural differences between these formal versus informal and planned versus actual networks demonstrate the utility of the measurements of network performance outcomes discussed here.