Ebb and Flow in Collaborative Networks: A Longitudinal Analysis of Network Formation and Evolution

Despite the growth in network research over the past decades, there is still little work focused on understanding (i) the evolution of collaborative relationships over time, (ii), the specific nature and type of these collaborative relationships, and (iii) the main motivations and drivers of collaboration at the micro-level. This study aims to contribute to filling these gaps in the literature by analyzing the formation and evolution of emergency management collaborative networks. The main purpose of this research is to understand (1) the effects of exposure to large-scale disasters and external shocks on tie formation across time, (2) the specific type and nature of collaborative activities in emergency management, and (3) the motivations and factors that lead to and sustain collaboration across agencies. To answer these questions, I use an administrative dataset on formal interlocal agreements and qualitative data collected through interviews with public managers responsible for emergency management functions. First, I modeled the evolution of the emergency management networks using stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to examine how actor attributes and structural factors influence the network’s evolution from year to year. Given the results of the quantitative analysis, I reviewed and coded all the emergency management agreements during the last 15 years to identify the purpose and nature of those collaborative relationships. Finally, I used interview data to identify the main motivations and collaboration arrangements actors use to prepare, respond, and recover from large-scale disaster events. Overall, this research contributes to the identification of i) the factors that increase the likelihood of collaboration given the exposure to large-scale disaster events, ii) the specific types of collaborative activities that bring together actors in the emergency management domain, and iii) the main motivations and institutional arrangements actors use to collaborate across time.