Network Form, Network Structure, and Boundary Management

In Chapter 4 we addressed our third research question: How did the environment influence the form of innovation diffusion network to emerge at each of the seven project sites? Two general network diffusion patterns were evident. The first was an interorganizational pattern in which the diffusion process was initiated directly by dispersing resources to each participating hospital of the network, to enable each to adopt a multidisciplinary treatment strategy. The second pattern was an interpersonal pattern in which diffusion occurred indirectly. Networks whose strategy approximated this model tended to centralize the network resources at the headquarters, and encouraged participating physicians to accept the content of the innovation by referring patients to the headquarters for those aspects of treatment that were not available in their own hospitals. One or the other of these two patterns was more or less approximated by each of the seven network programs.