How Do Performance Pressures and Public Participation Demands Affect a City Agency’s Network Behavior? An Analysis of Interagency Networks in Seoul Metropolitan Government

Abstract

Over the past decades, government agencies have been under increasing institutional pressures to improve performance while engaging the public in decision-making processes. This study aims to explore how agency managers perceive institutional pressures and how these pressures shape their network behaviors for interagency collaboration. Specifically, this research focuses on structural holes, which refer to network positions that connect otherwise-disconnected agencies. Drawing on the literature of public management, citizen participation, and social networks, this research develops a theoretical model of an agency’s network position and proposes hypotheses. This research tested two hypotheses using network and survey data collected from agency managers in the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2009. The results of the study showed that agencies under greater performance pressure tended to locate themselves in interagency networks with structural holes, while agencies facing greater citizen participation demands tended to embed themselves in interagency networks with fewer structural holes. This implies that performance pressure drives city agencies to seek competitive structural positions in interagency networks, while citizen participation demands lead agencies to locate in dense interagency networks.