Past research has clearly demonstrated that a high level of interorganizational coordination among human services agencies is extremely difficult to achieve and maintain and that the dynamics of interorganizational coordination and conflict are poorly understood. In the interest of better understanding these phenomena, this study attempted to identify measurable differences between networks of agencies that consistently coordinate well and others that consistently experience coordination problems. / The researcher used county level child protection networks as the study cases. Four networks were selected for comparison, two having a reputation for relatively well coordinated child protection services and two networks having a reputation for coordination problems. / The networks were compared based upon community demographics and workload factors, and upon network professional staff responses to survey questions. The survey sought to measure such factors as staff reported knowledge of other organizations, staff reported frequency of such activities as referral exchange, information exchange and joint meetings, as well as staff perceived quality of interprofessional communications, working relationships and services provided. / Using non-parametric, organizational level, descriptive indicators and network analysis comparisons, no patterns of differences between the "good" and "poor" coordination networks were found. Multiple Regression Correlation (MRC) analyses of individual level scores, for each survey question, did reveal a clear pattern of between group differences. These differences were interpreted as suggesting that individual professionals working in "good" coordination child protection networks tend to associate many of the independent variables more closely with the perceived quality of working relationships and perceived quality of services than do "poor" coordination network respondents. / These findings support the idea that long term patterns of "good" coordination are, to a great extent, the result of well established patterns of learned behavior that have been internalized by management and staff of the network. It was suggested that similar survey methods, once standardized, could potentially be used to evaluate the perceived quality of service coordination in other human services networks. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-11, Section: A, page: 4091. / Major Professor: Michael L. Frumkin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76534 |
| Contributors | Daly, Charles Michael., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 197 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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