Two-Level Effects of Interorganizational Network Collaboration on Graduate Satisfaction

Abstract

In the public management literature, network effects are studied primarily at two levels: (a) the level of the interorganizational network as a whole and (b) the level of individual organizations’ networking behavior. This article combines the two levels within one theoretical framework and derives hypotheses about network effects on organizational performance for each level of analysis. The hypotheses are tested on a data set of five interorganizational networks in Dutch higher education. Within these five intercollege networks, we study graduates’ satisfaction with the educational program offered by 91 colleges for cohorts in the years 2002 to 2005 ( n = 18,159). The results show that intercollege networks with clear patterns of coordination have significantly more satisfied graduates than networks of colleges characterized by either highly dense or sparse relations. For individual colleges, the results indicate that colleges’ participation in subnetworks positively affects graduate satisfaction, whereas colleges’ networking activity (the number of relationships with other colleges) does not affect graduate satisfaction.