The behavior of coalitions as interorganizational structures: an exploratory study using a grounded theory approach

Abstract

This study is one of four exploratory studies concerned with coalitions of organizations that are formed to plan and develop social welfare programs within the local community. Although each study was conducted independently, taken together their major purpose was to develop some insights and knowledge into the behavior of organizations and the ways in which they interact as they work together to develop community programs. They are, then, exploratory studies of inter-organizational behavior. Each of the studies had a different focus. One study attempted to identify the present areas of agreement and disagreement regarding inter-organization behavior by systematically reviewing the literature over the past ten years. Another focused on the stages of development of the coalition, attempting to determine if organizational coalitions seemed to follow similar developmental patterns as has been reported in the literature on small groups. Another focused on the decision-making patterns in the coalitions by first reviewing the literature and constructing a decision-making model and then "testing" the model against a set of case histories. This study, following a grounded theory approach, attempted to identify a set of common variables or analytical categories which seemed to be present in a number of coalitions. Although each of these exploratory studies was conducted independently with a different emphasis and analytical focus, they each utilized the same set of case histories of coalitions. Consequently, each of the studies utilized a common set of data but viewed the data from quite different analytical perspectives.