The role of social capital in interorganizational alliances

In response to increasing demands for greater coordination and collaboration among community institutions, interorganizational alliances (IAs; i.e., coalitions, collaboratives, coordinating councils) have emerged as a popular mechanism for strengthening the capacity of a community system to respond public and social issues. While there is ample theory and conceptual arguments present in the literature to suggest that the nature of relationships among stakeholders may constitute a form of social capital that can facilitate the functioning and effectiveness of IAs, there is a dearth of knowledge about what types of relationships are most important in the context of IAs and what role relationships among members actually play in influencing IA effectiveness. This study has sought to address this gap by using key informant interviews and social network analysis techniques to operationalize social capital within the context of one prominent form of IA---domestic violence coordinating councils (DVCCs)---and empirically examine its relationship to indicators of DVCC effectiveness.;Social network and survey data were collected from 638 members belonging to 48 different DVCCs located across the state of Michigan. Results found that the overall amount of social capital among DVCC stakeholders was indeed a significant and positive predictor of the extent to which a DVCC was perceived to be effective at both improving the level of coordination among organizations within the existing community system as well as making needed changes to the infrastructure of the community response system itself. However, results indicate that the role of social capital in the context of DVCCs is not the same for coordination as it is for system change outcomes. Specifically, findings suggest that systems change outcomes may be more strongly impacted by the overall level of social capital among stakeholders relative to coordination outcomes. Further, the types of relationships that are most important also differ between coordination and systems change outcomes. In particular, the extent to which stakeholders perceive one another to share a common philosophy concerning what domestic violence is and how it should be addressed appears to be uniquely and strongly related to systems change. Overall, findings suggest that when the work of a DVCC calls for not just improving how information and resources flow through the existing domestic violence response system, but rather actually making changes to the infrastructure of the system itself, the DVCC will likely need to foster stronger relationships among participating stakeholders than may have been needed for improving coordination. These relationship-building efforts should focus particular attention to identifying what differences in philosophy may exist among members about the issue of domestic violence and work toward building more shared frameworks of understanding.