dc.contributor.author	Moussa, Edie A.	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Hult, Karen M.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Dudley, Larkin S.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Khademian, Anne M.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Wamsley, Gary L.	en
dc.contributor.department	Public Administration and Public Affairs	en
dc.date.accessioned	2017-06-09T18:30:34Z	en
dc.date.adate	2011-06-27	en
dc.date.available	2017-06-09T18:30:34Z	en
dc.date.issued	2011-04-28	en
dc.date.rdate	2014-01-15	en
dc.date.sdate	2011-05-18	en
dc.description.abstract	While government contracting out its work continues to proliferate and studies about this phenomenon have increased during the past two decades, still little is known about how effective government sponsored networks are at managing broad and complex networks of primarily non-governmental entities. This dissertation reports the results of one such investigation, which examined a U.S. federal agency's contracting experiences in evidence-based health care. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is a unit of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Among other tasks, AHRQ supports the development and dissemination of evidence about current best practices in health services delivery through its Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) programs that contract out its work and operate in broad and complex network. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which AHRQ's EPC Program I was effective in supporting the translation of evidence reports and disseminating the products to the public by contracting with public and non-profit entities to do the work. This dissertation also sought to examine the extent to which the evidence reports and derivative products were publicly accessible by operationalizing the objectives articulated in AHRQ's authorizing legislation in a manner consistent with theories of representative democracy and exploring Program I's effectiveness using William T. Gormley's ideas (1989; Gormley & Balla 2003) of bureaucratic control. The results from this dissertation suggest that a decentralized network was related to overall higher translation and dissemination network effectiveness. Specifically, the findings from this study suggest that a decentralized network was related to overall higher translation and dissemination network effectiveness. Also, weak ties among the network actors when transferring complex knowledge was associated with higher translation and dissemination network effectiveness on the whole. The findings from this dissertation also contribute to network theory by extending Gormley's bureaucratic control typology (1989; Gormley & Balla 2003) to the network level, and also to the type of control that was available to the Agency over the network. Finally, the results contribute to better understanding of the dynamics that can be associated with the effectiveness of similar programs.	en
dc.description.degree	Ph. D.	en
dc.identifier.other	etd-05182011-230830	en
dc.identifier.sourceurl	http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05182011-230830/	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77973	en
dc.language.iso	en_US	en
dc.publisher	Virginia Tech	en
dc.rights	In Copyright	en
dc.rights.uri	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/	en
dc.subject	public-private partnerships	en
dc.subject	network effectiveness	en
dc.subject	control mechanisms	en
dc.subject	network management	en
dc.subject	organizational theory	en
dc.subject	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality	en
dc.title	Contracting Out in a Complex Network: An Effectiveness Analysis of EPC Program I	en
dc.type	Dissertation	en
dc.type.dcmitype	Text	en
thesis.degree.discipline	Public Administration and Public Affairs	en
thesis.degree.grantor	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	en
thesis.degree.level	doctoral	en
thesis.degree.name	Ph. D.	en

Contracting Out in a Complex Network: An Effectiveness Analysis of EPC Program I

Files

Original bundle

Collections