Seminar – How the Network Neighbourhood Influences Partnerships: From Handshakes to Formal Collaboration among US Fire Departments

Professor Anita McGahan, University of Toronto

An extensive body of research investigates the conditions giving rise to informal agreements and formal contracts between two partnering organisations. A largely separate body of work has addressed the emergence of ties within organisational networks. This paper contributes to the integration of insights from network theory and contract theory. Specifically, the study explores how the level of formality in an agreement between two parties depends on the broader network of exchange relationships in which they are embedded. The analysis draws on the network literature to develop a theory of governance choice that emphasises the network neighborhood. It is argued that partners’ outside ties influence the coordination, control, and information exchange within the partnership. The research tests the validity of our claims by analysing collaborative agreements among US Fire Departments between 1999 and 2010. The results indicate that the network neighborhood significantly influences the way that partners work together.

Speaker bio

Anita M. McGahan is Professor and George E. Connell Chair in Organisations and Society at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is cross-appointed to the Medical School and the School of Public Health; is Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University; is the Chief Economist in the Division of Health and Human Rights at the Massachusetts General Hospital; and is a past President of the Academy of Management. In 2014, she joined the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance. During her 2010-2015 appointment as the Director of the University of Toronto’s PhD Programme and as the Associate Dean of Research, the School’s PhD and research rankings internationally increased from 11th to fourth and 17th to third, respectively.

McGahan earned both her PhD and AM at Harvard University in two years. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she received highest academic honours as a Baker Scholar, and a BA from Northwestern University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She also spent several years at both McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley and was previously on the faculties of both Harvard Business School and Boston University. She has visited the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the London Business School, the Australian Graduate School of Management, and the Division of Social Medicine and Global Health at Harvard Medical School.

McGahan’s credits include four books and over 150 articles, case studies, notes and other published material on competitive advantage, industry evolution, and global health. Her current research emphasises entrepreneurship in the public interest and innovative collaboration between public and private organisations. She is also pursuing a long-standing interest in how firms overcome industry disruption to achieve breakthrough performance. Her recent work emphasises innovation in the governance of technology to improve global health. McGahan has been recognised as a master teacher for her dedication to the success of junior faculty and for her leadership in course development. In 2010, she was awarded the Academy of Management BPS Division’s Irwin Distinguished Educator Award. In 2012, the Academy conferred on McGahan its Career Distinguished Educator Award for her championship of reform in the core curriculum of Business Schools. In 2018, McGahan was awarded both the Inaugural Educational Impact Award and the Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society. In 2012 she was elected a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, and in 2015 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management.