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A network is a system of three or more organizations undertaken either voluntarily or by mandate that work together to achieve a purpose that none of the participating organizations could achieve independently by themselves Provan, Fish, and Sydow ; Provan and Kenis They are distinct entities with unique identities that require examination as a whole Provan, Fish, and Sydow ; Provan and Kenis ; Raab and Kenis Despite the prominence of networks in practice, their popularity as a research subject, and their relevance for society Raab and Kenis , we still tend to study individual organizations to understand the collective behavior of networks.
We call this larger, complex system an organizational field Kenis and Knoke In the classics of public administration literature, the relationship between an organization and its environment has been studied from a variety of perspectives, focusing on selection or adaption to institutional pressures and resource dependence Aldrich and Pfeffer ; Oliver An emphasis on environments is therefore not new.
Mayntz However, in order to define and examine such larger, complex systems like organizational fields, we need to understand why organizations and networks come together, cooperate, and consequently create and reproduce such a larger, complex system Kenis and Knoke ; Nowell, Hano, and Yang ; Provan, Fish, and Sydow We therefore propose that instead of focusing on an organizational network as the unit of analysis Provan, Fish, and Sydow ; Provan and Kenis , a shift to a collective of networks that is embedded in an organizational field is instructive cf.
Nowell, Hano, and Yang This means that our unit of observation shifts from one network as a separate entity with a unique identity cf. Building on Maier's system of systems approach and using Nowell, Hano, and Yang's notion of network of networks, we accordingly define a network of networks as an assemblage of networks, which individually may be regarded as subsystems that are operationally and managerial autonomous but are part of a larger, complex organizational field by many types of connections and flows Maier ; Nowell, Hano, and Yang ; Provan, Fish, and Sydow Source: Alexander Original text originates from Figure is adapted from Gabriel and Quillien Moreover, we note that often assumptions about the structure and governance of networks are used that are suspect at best for dealing with the complexity that networks bring Raab, Lemaire, and Provan ; Rethemeyer and Hatmaker Further, most network studies only employ an endogenous perspective on networks, which in some cases is bound to the performance of an individual organization, a network cluster, or a certain organizational domain e.
