Networks and Inter-Organizational Management: Challenging, Steering, Evaluation, and the Role of Public Actors in Public Management

This article provides a brief overview of the literature on networks and looks at what it has to tell us about policy processes and public management. In essence the literature on networks and inter-organizational relations challenges some existing aspects of public management that are taken for granted. It stresses the interdependency of various organizations in realizing policy initiatives, it challenges the central position of public actors in decision making and implementation processes and it challenges the way policy processes are managed and evaluated. This article tries to explain the growth in popularity of the network concept. It provides an overview of the findings that two decades of network research have delivered. It also devotes attention to the main concepts that are used in network research. It focuses on networks as prescriptive theory and discusses the role of public manager in this perspective and the available strategies.