Research Insights

View the Resource By Andrew Pilny, Michelle Shumate Many nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) instrumental collective action networks exist to produce tangible public goods. Moreover, these organizations’ hyperlinks function to express collective identity. The extent to which both types of collective action are related is unknown. To examine this gap in the research, hyperlinks from 181 NGO websites were analyzed to determine if instrumental collective action offline is related to expressive collective

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Amy O’Connor We introduce the Symbiotic Sustainability Model (SSM) as a macrolevel explanation of nongovernmental organization (NGO)-corporate alliances. The SSM presents NGO-corporate alliances as distinct interorganizational communication relationships, symbolized to stakeholders to influence the mobilization of capital. We contend that alliance partners communicatively co-construct the alliance with stakeholders in order to mobilize economic, social, cultural, and political capital. By focusing on the communication of

View the Resource By Katherine R. Cooper, Michelle Shumate This research proposes a bona fide network perspective for examining interorganizational collaboration. This perspective emphasizes that (a) network boundaries are fuzzy and membership is dynamic, (b) interorganizational networks are embedded in a complex environment that enables some configurations and constrains others, (c) interorganizational networks are multiplex and different types of relationships are mutually influential, (d) these networks are dynamically restructured over

View the Resource By Yannick Atouba, Michelle Shumate This research seeks to explain the structure of the interorganizational network of international development organizations, including international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). The study uses a multitheoretical, multilevel model to examine the endogenous and exogenous influences on the international development organization network. Results indicate that homophily, mutuality, transitivity, and centralization influence the configuration of the international development organizational network. In

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Amy O’Connor Nongovernmental organization (NGO)–corporate alliances are a strategic type of institutional positioning communication. From a sample of 155 US Fortune 500 corporations and 695 NGOs drawn from corporations’ websites, this research examines: (a) the number of NGOs with which corporations communicate alliances; (b) the patterns of communicated alliances that exist between corporations in economic industries and NGOs in social issue industries; and (c)

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Justin Lipp Nonprofit, nongovernmental organization (NGO) hyperlink networks are connective public goods, or sets of interorganizational links that enable members and nonmembers to reach like-minded organizations in order to enhance the visibility of the network’s goals. We extend collective action theory to account for both the level and structural signatures of contributions that generalist and specialist organizations make to these connective public goods. This