How Do Internal and External Stakeholders Perceive Organizational Field-Nets?

Interorganizational networks within organizational fields are important structures for both internal stakeholders, who must navigate them as part of their organizational roles, and external stakeholders, who navigate them for the purposes of resource exchange. This research develops and tests a conceptual model that explains some of the differences in the ways that these two groups perceive organizational field-nets. Drawing on surveys/interviews with 200 external stakeholders and 63 internal stakeholders of the agricultural development field in Burkina Faso, this research demonstrates that stakeholders perceive organizational fields differently. In particular, these results demonstrate that internal stakeholders perceive more organizations in the field, more competitive and collaborative ties among those organizations, and more competitive ties per organization than external stakeholders. From these results, we draw implications for social network, stakeholder theory, and organizational fields’ research.