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Inter-organizational agreements (IAs) are a new form of mandate, designed for coordinating services in the community. They were introduced by policy makers as an intermediate step between a contract and a mandate. Organizational agreements are mandates that allow local administrators to open discussion with their mandated counterparts and specify the nature and extent of the relationship. Four different coordinating mechanisms: contracts, mandates, inter-organizational agreements (IAs), and voluntary ties are explored at two periods of time. Data about the importance and effectiveness of each of these relationships were collected from administrators as the IAs were introduced. Four years later the same questions were again asked of these administrators to evaluate whether the IAs influenced the pattern of relationships in their community.

We report on the use of a highly portable computer for collecting precise and accurate data concerning specific social network ties. Our experience confirmed that a highly portable computer, when loaded with a flexible database management program, is a useful tool for such a task. Data entry can be done during the interview and information retrieval can provide immediate and useful information for the respondents. The use of the computer with semistructured interviews changes the dynamics of the interview situation. A three-way interaction is created between the interviewers, the respondents and the information in the database. We found that there were great benefits from having two or three respondents in the session, and that it was desirable to have two interviewers.

We propose a general procedure for locating the boundary of a network and a second, related, procedure for discerning the boundaries within a network. The first is an expanding (snowball) selection procedure. The second requires the specification of two critical parameters: the value of k for a k-core and the threshold, w, for the quantitative magnitude of network ties. The use of these parameters generates a sequence of nested cores. Single sector and multi-sector social service inter-agency networks are used to illustrate the procedures.

The delivery of social services takes place in a network of agencies linked by ties that include client referrals, provision of services, information exchanges, transfers of funds, and sharing resources. These networks can be described in terms of a small number of key network concepts that provide the foundation for designing and evaluating system interventions. Empirical examples are provided.

Voluntary agreements, mandates, and contracts integrate networks of social service organizations, allowing them to function as coordinated wholes. The author reviews the history of contracting and mandating in the public sector. It is hypothesized that contracted relationships formalize agreements between local organizations dependent on others. Mandated relationships are perceived to be important by policy-makers at a state or federal level. The differential acceptance and rejection of these relationships in the community is explored. Data from social service agencies are used to compare administrators' assessments of the effectiveness of mandated and contracted relationships used to coordinate a group of agencies delivering services to children. When a mandated relationship has been formalized into a contract by a local administrator the perceived effectiveness of that relationship is higher than any other relationship in the community. If the mandated relationship has not been formalized by a contract this relationship is perceived to be the least effective. Important mandated inter-organizational ties without monetary incentives are less likely to work. Local administrators having developed the contracted ties see these ties as producing a higher level of performance.

Two ways of collecting network data are discussed in the context of interorganizational networks among social service agencies. One method proceeds with a fixed agency list while the other uses a snowball selection procedure. We find that: 1.(i) the agencies included in the two selection procedures differ;2.(ii) network-based indicators for agencies (such as centrality) differ;3.(iii) the substantive contents of the included ties differ; and4.(iv) the structure of the networks differ. The two methods are fundamentally different and cannot be used as surrogates for each other. When data are gathered at multiple points in time, the differences between the methods are more acute. Interagency networks change through time: agencies leave the network while other agencies join. Snowball selection can respond to these changes while fixed list selection does not.