As public agencies have implemented programs to respond to natural disasters, alleviate poverty, provide food security, and address other wicked problems, the organizational structuring of public sector program management has changed in response. The federal agencies responsible for U.S. foreign policy, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have embraced multi-organizational, cross-sector network collaboration as part of their core missions. The strategic transition of USAID to an increased use of network models for program implementation raises questions concerning the ability of the agency, through its partners, to foster organizational learning in this network setting. Ensuring the ability to utilize knowledge and ways of knowing generated through program activity is a critical factor to sustaining the long-term capacity of government agencies and their partners to pursue solutions for these complex global problems. The research reported in this dissertation focuses on network administrative organizations (NAOs) delegated official responsibility for the management of government-funded multi-institutional programs, to understand how organizational learning for innovation takes place in an NAO-led network. This research explored the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research program focusing on two comparable case studies representative of NAO-led goal-directed networks, the Integrated Pest Management and Horticulture Innovation Labs. The Crossan et al. (1999) 4I framework on organizational learning served as the primary theoretical foundation for addressing how NAOs enable, manage, and leverage organizational learning associated with the boundary work of their program team representatives to innovate as networks. In the two cases studied, the findings indicated that learning practices flowed as anticipated within and across the program network for program and administrative related knowledge, but flowed in a number of different directions for knowledge related to addressing novel problems. Additionally, the NAOs' ability to institutionalize knowledge generated through the work of program teams and individual members followed unpredictable patterns and was influenced by the presence of knowledge and learning boundaries within the network. The research contribution includes a theorized two-part role for NAOs associated with managing situational learning on behalf of the network and a proposed expansion of the 4I framework that incorporates a network level of learning, organizational boundaries, and two new processes introduced as a result of the findings. Finally, the research concludes with a proposed a preliminary framework beneficial to NAO practitioners tasked with managing organizational learning in similar goal-directed network environments. / PHD / As public agencies have implemented programs to respond to natural disasters, alleviate poverty, provide food security, and address other wicked problems, federal agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have embraced multi-organizational, cross-sector collaboration, through an increased use of network models for program implementation. This raises questions concerning the ability of the agency, through its partners, to foster organizational learning in a network setting. Ensuring the ability to utilize knowledge and ways of knowing generated through program activity is vital to sustaining the long-term capacity of government agencies and their partners to pursue solutions for global problems. The dissertation focuses on network administrative organizations (NAOs) delegated official responsibility for the management of government-funded multi-institutional programs, to understand how organizational learning for innovation takes place in an NAO-led network. This research explored the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research program focusing on two comparable case studies representative of NAO-led goal-directed networks, the Integrated Pest Management and Horticulture Innovation Labs. The Crossan et al. (1999) 4I framework on organizational learning served as the primary theoretical foundation for addressing how NAOs enable, manage, and leverage organizational learning associated with the boundary work of their program team representatives to innovate as networks. In the two cases studied, the findings indicated that learning practices flowed as anticipated within and across the program network for program and administrative related knowledge, but flowed in a number of different directions for knowledge related to addressing novel problems. Additionally, the NAOs’ ability to institutionalize knowledge generated through the work of program teams and individual members followed unpredictable patterns and was influenced by the presence of knowledge and learning boundaries within the network. The research contribution includes a theorized two-part role for NAOs associated with managing situational learning on behalf of the network and a proposed expansion of the 4I framework that incorporates a network level of learning, organizational boundaries, and two new processes introduced as a result of the findings. Finally, the research concludes with a proposed preliminary framework beneficial to NAO practitioners tasked with managing organizational learning in similar goal-directed network environments.

Networks are an increasingly common aspect of administrative life in almost any policy arena. In 1999 the health care industry created the National Quality Forum, a network administrative organization, whose founding mission was to improve American healthcare through endorsement of consensus-based national standards for measurement and public reporting of healthcare performance data that provide meaningful information about whether care is safe, timely, beneficial, patient-centered, equitable and efficient. The NQF is representative of a network administrative organization because it was created to address issues of health care quality in a new way by bringing together organizations from the public and private sectors and providing them with a forum to discuss and debate measures of quality, and ultimately, to effect change. The NQF thus represents a major administrative experiment in addressing health policy issues. In spite of the popularity of networks, little is known about a network manager's or, more appropriately for this dissertation, a network entrepreneur's critical tasks in creating a network administrative organization. The purpose of this dissertation is to present the results of an empirical study of the critical leadership tasks of the NQF's President and CEO during the NQF's formative stages. This dissertation identifies and conceptualizes three critical leadership tasks of the NQF's President and CEO: defining the NQF's mission, building and maintaining the NQF's social base, and creating the NQF's Consensus Development Process. In addition, this dissertation proposes a series of testable hypothesis based on these three critical tasks that can be used for exploring leadership in other NAOs. The findings indicate that leadership is crucial to the formation of a network administrative organization and fills a gap in our understanding of network management by developing the concept of network leadership and exploring the critical tasks a leader undertakes during the formative stages of building an NAO like the NQF. / Ph. D.