Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
Public managers engage in networking relationships with a wide variety of external actors and organizations from which they can draw different types of support to the core agency. They thus face a...Show morePublic managers engage in networking relationships with a wide variety of external actors and organizations from which they can draw different types of support to the core agency. They thus face a wide array of possible actions and strategic choices with regard to their potential networking behaviour. Most empirical studies on managerial networking, however, merely expose different levels of networking activity, as if it were a uni-dimensional concept. This inadequacy potentially obscures information on the actual patterns to be found in networking behaviour itself. To make up for this theoretical-empirical incongruence, this paper accordingly uses Mokken-Scaling to expose different dimensions of managerial networking. By demonstrating how public managers differentiate between different external actors and organizations, it thus facilitates the environmental complexity in which public management takes place. The research context for this analysis is found in the recent shift from central to local authority marked by the Social Support Act (SSA/WMO).Show less
