THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMBEDDEDNESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIAL PERFORMANCE IN A COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH NETWORK UNDER MANAGED CARE

Abstract

This dissertation offers an empirical examination of a mental health service delivery network in Phoenix area and Maricopa County, Arizona. While services are provided mostly by nonprofit agencies, the system is monitored and funded by for-profit managed care. In this situation, nonprofit organizations are entrenched in the professional norms of client-centered cooperation, which may run counter to the funding mechanism in for-profit managed care. This dissertation examined the relationship between organizational embeddedness and organizational social performance (indicated by trust, reputation, and influence) in this a centrally governed network.Data were collected on 35 network service providers in 2000. A comprehensive network survey and field interviews were employed to collect data. Standard network analysis and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression were used for data analysis.This dissertation sought to determine the extent to which the social performance implications of organizational embeddedness can be generalized from decentralized networks to a managed multi-sector network. Based on a literature review of organizational networks, organizational embeddedness, and organizational social performance in the business and nonprofit sector, I proposed a model of embeddedness-based organizational social performance in a managed multi-sector network.I found that organizational embeddedness was contingent on the degree of formality of a tie and the sectoral affiliation of network organizations. I also found that organizational embeddedness was positively and significantly related to trust, reputation, and influence in the purely public and nonprofit sector network, but bore little relationship to trust and reputation in the mixed-sector network, which included for-profit organizations. These results suggest that social capital was maintained in the public sector network, notwithstanding the administrative control of managed care. Theoretical and policy implications of the results are discussed.