This article examines the road that network scholarship has followed in Public Administration. We look at the historical drivers of the use of networks in practice and scholarship in the field and discuss how that has shaped the current literature. The body of the article focuses on the current challenges that network scholars face in the discipline, specifically basic theoretical issues, knowledge about formal networks, knowledge about informal networks, and methodological issues. We close the article with a look to the future and some suggestions for the future of network scholarship in Public Administration.

Widespread government contracting for nonprofit social service delivery has resulted in extensive reliance on networks of service providers, which involve complicated accountability dynamics. The literature has tended to emphasize formal aspects of accountability in contract relationships, focusing on the specification of contract terms, performance measures, reporting relationships, and stipulated consequences. Far less attention has been focused on the interorganizational and interpersonal behaviors that reflect informal accountability. This article examines the informal norms, expectations, and behaviors that facilitate collective action and promote informal accountability among nonprofit network actors. The data are based on in‐depth interviews with nonprofit senior administrators in four major metropolitan areas. Based on this research, the authors propose a preliminary theory of informal accountability that links (1) the shared norms and facilitative behaviors that foster informal accountability for collective outcomes, (2) the informal system of rewards and sanctions used to promote and reinforce behavioral expectations, and (3) the challenges that may undermine informal accountability.

Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures for accountability and performance in recent years, both from their funding entities as well as the public. The adoption of performance measurement systems assumes that managers will use performance information to make better decisions. However, little research has focused on performance information use in the nonprofit sector. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature. Using survey data from several hundred nonprofit social service organizations in the United States, this article examines the extent to which reliance on various performance measures improves strategic decision making within nonprofit organizations. Authors find a positive relationship between the range of performance measures used by nonprofits and their level of effectiveness in strategic decision making. Other factors that also contribute to strategic decision making within nonprofits include effective governance, funding diversity, and education level of the executive director.

Analyses of local government contracting increasingly focus on understanding how the transaction costs created by service attributes limit opportunities for external service production. However, the institutional collective action framework suggests that networks among local government actors help to offset these costs for intergovernmental contracting decisions. We use data describing service production arrangements of cities in Michigan to examine the proposition that service production decisions are conditioned by the communication networks created through institutional linkages in addition to the transaction characteristics of services. We examine three different production options: (1) internal production, (2) joint or complete contracting with another government, and (3) production by a private or nonprofit organization, and find strong support for the expected role of transaction costs in these production choices. We also find that some types of networks created by institutions increase the likelihood that local governments will rely on intergovernmental service arrangements.

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