Strategies and Structures of Global Networks: Learning for GKP3.0
by Steve Waddell, iScale/Global Action Network Net

Commissioned by a GKP Task Force in 2009 and supported by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), this report supports an investigation into possible futures of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP). The future options are referred to as "GKP3.0".

This report "...provide(s) information about the trends in the landscape (of inter-organizational networks) that could influence choices about GKP's future and knowledge about strategies and structures of other global, multi-stakeholder networks. The goal is to provide the GKP3.0 Task Force with knowledge and options to help it in its recommendations to EXCOMM for the GKP's way forward."

The term "network" is widely used with a great variety of meanings. In organizational sciences and sociology, it refers to linkages and interactions that form patterns of relationships. Particularly important concepts are:

1. Boundaries: What is the definition of the "domain" or topic that links people? A common interest can be broad such as "health care" or narrow such as "the life cycle of the three-toed frog in the Lake Winnepesakie region".
2. Purpose: What is it that people hope to achieve by linking up: exchange of information? Policy reform? Profit generation?
3. Entry conditions: How do people join and maintain participation in the network...and how might they be forced to leave?

These are the three core questions behind networks. Ones about communications infrastructure, financing, and governance flow from the answers to these questions. Of course answers to these questions from different participants in any one network often differ slightly and change over time. This relates to particular challenges about creating room for sufficient diversity to make the network viable and dynamic, and to on-going change in strategy and structure.

This report does not aim to enlighten people about the "boundary" question, which is the topic of other work. Rather, it focuses upon questions related to purpose and entry which give rise to a series of developmental and structural issues.

It is based upon interviews with 18 people in 12 networks, and review of network documents and web-sites. Although data is presented in Table form, it was collected through interviews rather than a survey. Study Networks included in this review have two further definitional qualities in addition to the common organizational sciences ones. They are all "inter-organizational", which means they connect legally independent entities. Furthermore, they all are, or aspire to be "global"; of course this does not happen easily, and in fact they are all "more or less" global.

Published in June 2009