Greater collaboration among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) after disasters is important in helping them deliver services, share information, and avoid resource duplication. Following a disaster, numerous NGOs, including a large number of faith-based NGOs, typically offer disaster assistance. But to what extent do these NGOs providing disaster assistance collaborate with each other? Does organizational homophily prevail? Or is the need to acquire resources an incentive for collaboration? Are collaborations characterized by relationships of dependency? To answer these questions, we analyze collaboration between international NGOs, local NGOs, faith-based organizations, and other organizations providing disaster assistance in Haiti in the 3-year period following the 2010 earthquake. Data on these organizations and their networks were analyzed using social network analysis methods. The major findings are that most organizations collaborate within sectoral boundaries and that homophily is one of the main drivers of collaboration, illuminating power relationships in disaster assistance networks.

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This article compares and contrasts two classical decision-making approaches used in outsourcing specific public services. We perform content analysis of semi-structured interviews with public managers who are engaged in contracting for different public services, and find that incremental or small step-by-step decision-making is more likely to be observed in the outsourcing of “soft” or human services. Rational decision-making on the hand is more likely for “hard” services including janitorial services, public works, bridge design, street striping, parks maintenance, strategic planning, refrigeration experts, and food services. Our findings also indicate that some services can be outsourced using both decision-making approaches in certain cases. Using comparative analysis, we identify three factors associated with incremental decision-making across the organizations in our sample. All organizations that outsourced services using incremental models of decision-making had a for-profit business partner, experienced managers, and exhibited desire for cooperation and coordination.

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