How Network Routines and Practices Structure Interorganizational Collaboration

• In Event: 3483 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. The Medical Profession: Training, Culture, and Moral Authority

Abstract

What are the barriers and channels to interorganizational collaboration, and how do they influence collaborative processes? Using the case of a hospital psychiatric service, this three-year ethnography analyzes the multiple dimensions of interorganizational collaboration surrounding the practice of patient referral. Patient referrals depend on the inter- and intra- organizational networks and behavior of pluralistic actors (patient, provider, team and administrative system) who shape the process beginning with diagnosis/assessment and environmental scan (for provider collaborators), followed by contact with those providers, and ending with patient service utilization. This study extends work on multi-dimensional interorganizational collaboration by examining the barriers and channels shaping healthcare collaboration during the referral process. I show that at various levels, resources, relationships and rules (e.g., patient resources, interprofessional relationships, and administrative policy) structure the conditions under which collaboration takes place. Findings have implications for research devoted to the question of how actors situated in diverse but interconnected environments create structures in the form of routines and practices that shape collaboration and impact organizational outcomes.

Author

• Matthew E. Archibald, Hornby Zeller Associates