Governing Public Sector Interorganizational Network Infrastructures-The Importance of Formal and Legal Arrangements

Government agencies increasingly enter into interorganizational alliances to accomplish common goals. Alliances to create and maintain shared IT infrastructures for communication, coordination, and collaboration among agencies are an especially important phenomenon. This article examines three perspectives on the governance of interorganizational alliances (interpersonal interactions, financial ownership, and legal forms) and evaluates their applicability to interorganizational network infrastructures on the basis of theoretical arguments and the analysis of a single case study. Even combined, the three perspectives do not address the full range of issues involved in the case, because they do not pay sufficient attention to the varied formal and legal arrangements by which interorganizational network infrastructures are governed. The conclusion is that the conceptualization of governance for interorganizational network infrastructures remains problematic and that future theoretical development as well as empirical research is needed to resolve the open questions.