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Understanding alliance building and communication across multiple technology platforms among California's immigrant-serving NGOs

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Understanding alliance building and communication across multiple technology platforms among California's immigrant-serving NGOs

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Content i

UNDERSTANDING ALLIANCE BUILDING AND COMMUNICATION
ACROSS MULTIPLE TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS AMONG CALIFORNIA’S
IMMIGRANT-SERVING NGOS
by

Wenlin Liu

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Doctor of Philosophy
COMMUNICATION

August 2016

Copyright 2016 Wenlin Liu
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation is motivated by my long-term interests in immigrant community
building and NGO networks, and it gives me an opportunity to reflect on my overall
research program and how to move it forward. Its completion is not possible without all
the support that I received from the Annenberg community.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my doctoral program mentor and
dissertation chair Dr. Sandra Ball-Rokeach. Upon finishing my master degree in 2010, I
was fascinated by the Metamorphosis Project led by Dr. Ball-Rokeach. I knew I wanted
to work with her to investigate the transformation of urban communities and the role
played by various communication agents, especially community-based organizations. I
was fortunate enough to get admitted into the doctoral program at the Annenberg School
for Communication and work closely with her during the past six years. The
Metamorphosis Project has become my intellectual home ever since, and Dr. Ball-
Rokeach plays such an important role in shaping my entire research trajectory. Most
importantly, she has offered me tremendous support in developing my own ideas,
exploring research questions that are important both for academics and professionals. I
also appreciate the highly collegial and nurturing environment that she creates. During
my time at the Metamorphosis Project, I have been receiving constant support from
previous and current Metamorphosis members, both intellectually and personally. I am
forever grateful for such a closely knit network, and it would not have been possible
without Dr. Ball-Rokeach’s care and constant advocacy for such culture.
I am also deeply grateful for the mentorship and support from my dissertation
committee members, Dr. Peter Monge and Dr. Janet Fulk. Dr. Monge introduces me to
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the fascinating world of network science. Through multiple courses taken from him, as
well as my participation in the Annenberg Network Networks research group, I have
benefited enormously from his vision, research rigor, and great care for doctoral students.
Dr. Fulk offers me invaluable guidance throughout my dissertation project. She has
devoted her expertise to help me improve the manuscript. She always reminds me to
think about the bigger question and at the same time offers detailed advice. My
dissertation would not have come to the current stage without their help.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank all the terrific faculty and staff
members at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Dr. François Bar,
Dr. Kjerstin Thorson and Dr. Thomas Valente have offered precious guidance during my
qualifying exam. Their insights and constructive feedback have significantly shaped my
current research and my dissertation project. Dr. Aimei Yang has generously worked with
me on several research projects, and I am constantly inspired by her positivity, research
passion and energy. Anne Marie Campian, Christine Lloreda, and Imre Meszaros have all
gone above and beyond to help doctoral students like me to navigate the administrative
complexity.
I am lucky to meet a wonderful group of people at Annenberg who are both my
colleagues and friends. Nancy Chen, Rong Wang, Jieun Shin, Minhee Son, Evelyn
Moreno, Carmen Gonzalez, Katya Ognyanova, Jingbo Meng, Jinghui Hou, Li Lu, Nan
Zhao, Zheng An, Chi Zhang, Selene Hu, Poong Oh, Amanda Beacom, George
Villanueva, Garrett Broad—thanks for being my friends and collaborators. I am grateful
to know you all during my time at Annenberg.
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Last but not the least, I wish to dedicate this dissertation to my beloved families.
My father, who passed away at the second year of my doctoral program, was not able to
see me cross the finishing line. But I know he has always believed in me and his love is
always with me. My mother provides me with unconditional support and encouragement
ever since I was a child. She shows me what a strong and capable woman can achieve.
And finally, my husband, who becomes my closest friend and best companion over the
past six years. I may not be able to reach where I am now without his care, cheerleading,
and understanding—thank you for staying with me along this journey.
v
TABLE OF CONTENT
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii
List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii
Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ix
Chapter One: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1
Study I: How does community-level interdependence influence NGO alliance
partner selection? .................................................................................................... 9
Study II: Goal-attaining communication ecologies and the divergence of NGOs’
alliance networks across platforms ....................................................................... 11
Chapter summaries ................................................................................................ 15
Chapter Two: Theoretical Perspectives on NGO Alliance Ties Formation ..................... 17
Conceptualizing interorganizational alliance relationship online ......................... 17
Online platforms to study NGOs’ alliance building and communication ............. 21
Existing theoretical perspectives on interorganizational alliance formation ........ 23
Resource-dependence perspective ............................................................ 23
Institutional theory perspective ................................................................. 25
Network theory perspective ...................................................................... 27
A summary and the gaps ....................................................................................... 28
Research context: The landscape of immigrant NGOs in California ................... 31
Chapter Three: The Role of Community-level Interdependence in Alliance Formation . 36
Community ecology theory and NGO alliance building ...................................... 36
Niche overlap as a community-level source of alliance formation ....................... 42
Resource niche overlap ............................................................................. 43
Identity niche overlap ............................................................................... 48
Other mechanisms influencing alliance formation among NGOs ........................ 57
The role of geographic proximity ............................................................. 58
The role of common third party partners .................................................. 60
The role of organizational status ............................................................... 62
Chapter Four: NGO Alliance Communication across Multiple Technology Platforms ... 69
Goals associated with NGOs’ use of communication technologies ..................... 70
Information broadcasting and dissemination ............................................ 72
Community engagement and building ...................................................... 73
Accountability and legitimacy communication ........................................ 75
Technology platforms and the affordance of distinctive communication relations
............................................................................................................................... 77
Hyperlink ties as representational communication relations .................... 79
Followship on social media as communication flow relations ................. 80
vi
Goal-attaining communication ecologies and the divergence of interorganizational
networks across platforms ..................................................................................... 82
The concept of communication ecology ................................................... 82
NGOs’ Interorganizational networks as organizational communication
ecologies ................................................................................................... 85
The divergence of interorganizational tie formation mechanisms ........................ 88
The role of status seeking in tie formation across platforms .................... 88
The role of NGOs’ functional type in tie formation across platforms ...... 90
Chapter Five: Methods ...................................................................................................... 93
Overview ............................................................................................................... 93
Data collection ...................................................................................................... 95
Web-based alliance network ..................................................................... 96
Facebook-based communication network ................................................. 97
Twitter’s follower-followee network ........................................................ 98
Measures ............................................................................................................. 100
Networks data ......................................................................................... 100
Organization-level attributes ................................................................... 101
Control variables ..................................................................................... 103
Homophily measures .............................................................................. 103
Analysis .............................................................................................................. 103
Chapter Six: Results ........................................................................................................ 106
Study I: An integrative model testing California’s immigrant-serving NGO
alliance partners selection ................................................................................... 106
Preliminary analysis ................................................................................ 106
Hypotheses testing .................................................................................. 109
Study II: Comparing interorganizational networks across multiple platforms .. 115
Post-hoc analysis ................................................................................................. 125
Chapter Seven: Discussion and Conclusion ................................................................... 127
Discussion ........................................................................................................... 127
Study I ..................................................................................................... 130
Study II.................................................................................................... 135
Limitations and future research .......................................................................... 140
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 145
References ....................................................................................................................... 147
APPENDIX I: Immigrant-Serving NGOs Included in the Sample ................................ 176

vii

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Descriptive statistics of immigrant-serving NGOs’ organizational
profiles (N=104) 107

Table 2: Results of ERGM analysis predicting alliance tie formation
among California's immigrant-serving NGOs 114

Table 3: Descriptive network statistics among California’s
immigrant-serving NGOs’ website-based, Twitter
followship, and Facebook “like” interorganizational
networks 116

Table 4: The top five most active and popular NGOs emerging from
the website-based, Twitter followship, and Facebook “like”
interorganizational networks 121

Table 5: Results of ERGM analysis predicting alliance tie formation
among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs across three
platforms 124

Table 6: The level of alliance ties built by immigrant-serving NGOs
of different clientele bases 126

viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: An illustration of six types of commensalism proposed by
Aldrich and Ruef (2006). 41

Figure 2: A summary of organizational-, dyadic-, and community-
level factors predicting the likelihood of alliance ties
formation among immigrant-serving NGOs in California 68

Figure 3: An illustration of NGOs’ Facebook page and “like” function 98

Figure 4: An illustration of NGO’ Twitter profile 99

Figure 5: Geographic distribution of California’s immigrant-serving
NGOs (N=104) 108

Figure 6: The web-based interorganizational alliance network among
California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104) 110

Figure 7: The Twitter follower-followee interorganizational network
among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104) 118

Figure 8: The Facebook-based interorganizational network among
California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104) 119

Figure 9: The subset of immigrant-serving NGOs that are connected
via all three types of technology platforms (N=28) 120

ix
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this dissertation is to map the interorganizational alliance
networks among immigrant-serving NGOs in California, and identify key organizational-
and community-level factors that explain the formation of alliance ties across multiple
technology platforms, including organizational websites and two most widely-adopted
social media, Facebook and Twitter. Existing literatures on NGO alliance have taken
three theoretical perspectives to explain the formation of interorganizational ties: the
resource interdependence, the institutional theory, and the network perspective. Building
on these perspectives, the current dissertation adds a community ecology perspective by
investigating how community-level interdependence, especially the interdependence
derived from the overlap of resource and identity niche among the diverse immigrant-
serving NGO populations, may influence individual organizations’ online alliance
reporting and interorganizational communication on social media.
This dissertation consists of two studies, both of which are based on online
interorganizational data collected from 104 immigrant-serving NGOs in California. Using
descriptive network analysis and Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM), the first
study maps the web-based alliance relationships among the 104 immigrant-serving
NGOs. It identifies the significant role of mutual funders, an indicator of resource niche
overlap, in predicting the formation of alliance ties. In addition, the findings reaffirm the
importance of geographic proximity and the presence of third party partners in
establishing alliance relationships among this organizational community.
The second study contributes to the burgeoning stream of research on technology
use among nonprofit organizations for relationship building purposes. By applying the
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concept of goal-attaining communication ecology in the technology use context, it
conceptualizes the interorganizational networks emerging from each technology platform
as shaped both by the goal(s) pursued by the NGOs and the unique communication
context afforded by each technology platform. By comparing the structural divergence of
multiple interorganizational networks, and identifying the different levels of influence
from (1) status seeking and (2) NGOs’ functional type in explaining ties formation across
multiple platforms, the second study offers preliminary findings on how the nature of
interorganizational relations afforded by each technology platform may interact with the
goals pursued by NGOs in explaining the observed network divergence.
Keywords: NGO alliance building, interorganizational communication, community
ecology, nonprofit social media use
1
Chapter One: Introduction
Over the past few decades, continued waves of migration have led to the rapid
growth of immigrant-serving voluntary and nonprofit organizations (NGOs) in the United
States (Gleeson & Bloemraad, 2013). As important civil society actors, immigrants-
serving NGOs play a pivotal role in newcomers’ cross-cultural adaptation and civic
incorporation (e.g., Breton, 1964; Cordero-Guzmán, 2005; Porte, Escobar, & Arana,
2008; Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008; Zhou & Lee, 2013). The presence of these
organizations directly strengthens local communities’ capacity to reach and integrate
migrants, as a growing body of research suggests that immigrants’ connection to local
organizations can significantly improve individuals’ sense of neighborhood belonging,
collective efficacy and civic participation (Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2003; Kim, Jung, &
Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Son, 2015; Wilkin, Katz, & Ball-Rokeach, 2009). On the other
hand, by collaborating with multi-sector organizations to deliver settlement services and
engage in pro-immigrants advocacy, these organizations provide a web of instrumental
resources for immigrants to improve their legal, political, and socioeconomic status in the
host society (Ramakrishan & Bloemraad, 2008).
Within this burgeoning organizational community, interorganizational alliance
building has long been an important strategy for NGOs to access resources and achieve
goals of various kinds (Cordero-Guzmán, 2001; Cordero-Guzmán, Martin, Quiroz-
Becerra, & Theodore, 2008; Costanza-Chock, 2014; Yanacopulos, 2005). Empirically,
immigrants-serving NGOs are observed to build interorganizational alliances both within
the nonprofit sector and with organizations from public and private sectors, such as
businesses and governmental agencies (de Graauw, Bloemraad, & Gleeson, 2013;
2

Richmond & Shields, 2005). From the standpoint of organizational survival, alliance
relationships constitute a vital channel for immigrant NGOs to access otherwise
inaccessible resources, such as financial capital (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003) or normative
information to attain legitimacy (Margolin, Shen, Lee, Weber, Fulk, & Monge, 2015).
Those relationships become even more important during the events of mass mobilization.
As Cordero-Guzmán and colleagues (2008) find, the history of prior organizational
collaboration, organizational network ties, and the existing relations among organizations
in key coalitions all became the foundation for effective mobilizations during the
Immigrant Rights Movement in 2006.
With the necessity of alliance building generally recognized, the selection of
alliance partners has always been a central issue in the growing literature on
interorganizational alliance among NGOs (Atouba & Shumate, 2010; Guo & Acar, 2005;
Pilny & Shumate, 2012). The high level of selectivity exhibited in the process of alliance
building can be first explained by the significant risks and costs associated with
developing alliance ties (Gulati, 1995a). For example, an alliance relationship may bring
adverse effects if the partners are not carefully chosen, and such effects may range from
the loss of ownership of the social issue, to the potential damage to NGOs’ credibility and
reputation (Vangen & Huxham, 2003). Furthermore, compared to mainstream and
historically well-established civil society organizations, immigrant-serving NGOs are
already constrained by the lack of resources (Froelich, 1999). They are often embedded
in a more volatile environment than their mainstream counterparts (Ramakrishnan &
Bloemraad, 2008). The lean and volatile resource environment further motivates
immigrant-serving NGOs to strategically carve out their alliance building plan, as they
3

need to heavily rely on these relationships to acquire resources and guard themselves
against environment turbulence (Cravens, Piercy, & Shipp, 1996).
The first research component of this dissertation concerns the selection process of
alliance building among immigrant-serving NGOs. Among numerous factors and forces
that have been identified in the general alliance literature, this study seeks to identify a
subset of factors that best explain the alliance partner choices among the specific
organizational community under study, California’s immigrant-serving NGOs. So far,
extant literature has proposed three theoretical perspectives— the resource-dependence
perspective (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003), the institutional theory perspective (Dacin,
Oliver, & Roy, 2007; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), and the network perspective
(Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi, 1997)— to explain organizations’ alliance building behaviors
in general. While these perspectives help identify important antecedents that lead to the
formation of interorganizational alliance ties (Guo & Acar, 2005), they do not adequately
take into consideration how organizations of different forms may form interdependence
relationships, which may either encourage or constrain individual organizations’
partnership choices.
As a rather diverse organizational community, immigrant-serving NGOs studied
in this dissertation consist of a group of organizations with different social issue areas
(e.g., legal rights, health, labor, to name a few), organizational types (e.g., service
provision-oriented, social advocacy-oriented, and hybrid), and clientele bases (across
ethnic, national, and religious lines). To understand the partnership choices made by this
diverse community of organizations, the first study proposes to add community ecology
theory to the existing theoretical explanations of NGOs’ alliance partner selection.
4

Community ecology theory conceives organizations of different forms as developing
functional interdependence due to the overlap of niches (Freeman & Audia, 2006; Ruef,
2000). Niche refers to a resource space in which an organizational form can survive and
persist (Hannan & Freeman, 1977), and the overlap of niche occurs when two
organizations demand a similar mix of resources from their environments, such as when
two voluntary associations both target members from a similar sociodemographic
background (McPherson, 1983; McPherson & Rotolo, 1996), or when two newspapers
are positioned to attract a similar readership (Carroll, 1985). By conceptualizing
immigrant-serving NGOs of different types as populations that occupy overlapping niche
spaces, this perspective is uniquely positioned to take into account community-level
interdependence –that is, the extent to which one type of immigrant-serving NGOs may
compete or cooperate with another type of immigrant-serving NGOs to obtain resources
(Freeman & Audia, 2006)—in explaining individual NGOs’ alliance partner choices.
Specifically, it posits that the following three variables are likely to lead to community-
level interdependence among different types of immigrant-serving NGOs, which in turn,
may significantly influence the formation of alliance ties among the organizational dyads:
(1) shared funders, which indicates the overlap of resource niche between two
organizations; (2) shared principal activities, which indicates the overlap of functional
identity niche between two organizations; and (3) shared clientele base, which indicates
the overlap of ideology identity niche between two organizations.
What further complicates the process of alliance partner selection is the rapid
diffusion of networked communication technologies among NGOs (Lovejoy & Saxton,
2012; Nah & Saxton, 2012). Going beyond a singular online platform to communicate
5

one’s alliance relationships (i.e., websites), NGOs today have begun to incorporate
multiple technology platforms into their alliance communication repertoire, both during
the event of collective action (Segerberg & Bennett, 2011) and for everyday relationship
management purposes (Nah & Saxton, 2012; Waters et al., 2009). The adoption of social
media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, has altered traditional modes of alliance
building and communication in two important ways. First, networked technology
platforms have significantly reduced the cost of connecting with other organizations.
Through functions such as “follow” on Twitter or “like” on Facebook, an average NGO
can connect with any selected organizations, even ones with high prestige, at significantly
lowered cost compared to forging offline connections with them. These connections,
technically speaking, may also transcend geographic distance and enable remote
interorganizational communication
1
(Kotlarsky & Oshri, 2005). Second, exactly because
cost is less of a consideration, the formation of interorganizational connections on social
media would depend less on the actual distribution of resources among the organizational
community, but more on the perceived utility of such connection vis-à-vis the specific
goals sought by the focal NGOs. For example, an advocacy-oriented NGO may be more
driven to establish social media connection with an “information hub” organization
compared to a service-oriented NGOs, because such a connection is perceived to offer
significant benefit in distributing campaign or cause-related messages, and it well aligns
with the advocacy goal of the focal NGO (Thrall, Stecula, & Sweet, 2013).

1
Although research has suggested that even for online connections, geographic proximity
is still a relevant factor (e.g., Takhteyev, Gruzd, & Wellman, 2012).
6

With a growing number of NGOs simultaneously engaged in building
organizational alliances across multiple technology platforms (Curtis et al., 2010;
Gonzalez-Bailon, 2009; Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012), the central question investigated in the
second component of this dissertation is whether and how the multi-dimensional
interorganizational networks sustained by different technology platforms, specifically,
website-based alliance network versus social media-based networks from Facebook and
Twitter, may exhibit structural divergence. By structural divergence, it refers to (1) the
network-level structural differences as exhibited by each interorganizational network, and
(2) the extent to which the same tie formation mechanism may manifest itself differently
within each network. To examine such divergence is first an important empirical
question, as no published research has to date systematically made the comparison. More
importantly, there are compelling theoretical reasons to expect divergence across multiple
interorganizational networks. First, the research literature has delineated different
functions associated with each type of interorganizational relations across platforms.
Specifically, the interorganizational relations communicated through website hyperlinks
are conceptualized as “representational” in nature, meaning the goal of such relationship
is more about conveying association among actors towards a third-party or the general
public (Shumate & Contractor, 2014, p. 452). Meanwhile, the interorganizational
relations on social media, taking the form of “follow” on Twitter and “like” on Facebook,
are best conceptualized as organizational communication flow. These relationships fulfill
the function of information sharing among a community of organizations, despite their
“weak ties” nature (Granovetter, 1973) and the connections are not necessarily
reciprocated like offline alliance relationships.
7

Second, the potential divergence can be explained by the concept of goal-attaining
communication ecologies for organizations (Broad, 2015). The goal-attaining
communication ecologies refer to a web of communication resources that are actively
constructed by agents (e.g., individuals or organizations) to aid their pursuit of goals
(Ball-Rokeach, Gonzalez, Son, & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2012; Broad, 2015). Viewing NGOs
as goal-attaining entities, their decisions regarding what other organizations to connect
with on each technology platform are thus shaped by specific goals pursued by the
organizations when using certain technology (Broad, 2015). Some of the goals that have
been documented in existing literature include: information broadcasting and
dissemination (Schneider, 2003), community engagement and building (Lovejoy, Waters,
& Saxton, 2012), accountability communication (O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2006; Saxton &
Guo, 2011; Saxton, Neely, & Guo, 2014), among others.
Building on the assumption that NGOs are goal-attaining entities and
interorganizational connections across technology platforms may serve distinctive goals
for NGOs, the second study further hypothesizes two tie formation differences that are
likely to emerge when comparing the website-based versus social media-based
interorganizational networks. First, it is hypothesized that the status-seeking tendency
would have a stronger presence in the hyperlink network, compared to that in the social
media networks. Status seeking refers to the connection pattern where high-status and
high-reputation organizations are more likely to be chosen as partners (Washington &
Zajac, 2005). As website-based connections are primarily utilized by NGOs to
communicate accountability, and associating with high-status organizations is often used
as the strategy to boost one’s own accountability and reputation (Lin, Yang, & Arya,
8

2009), NGOs are thus especially motivated to publically display their connection to high-
status partners in the representational communication context.
Second, it is hypothesized that NGOs’ functional type—operationalized in the
current dissertation as whether an NGO engages primarily in advocacy, service provision,
or both types of activities—would have significantly greater influence on the likelihood
of tie formation within social media networks than in website-based alliance network.
NGOs’ functional type (which will be elaborated more in Chapter 3) is a core
characteristic that determines the types of resources an NGO relies on as well as the goals
that it prioritizes. As Minkoff (2002) argues, advocacy-oriented NGOs tend to have
“paper” membership structure and employ limited staff members (p. 385), and they rely
more on modern technologies in resource mobilization (Sommerfeldt, 2013). For
advocacy-oriented NGOs, the capacity to effectively disseminate information and
connect to the like-minded others is therefore crucial to achieving advocacy goals in
collective action (Prakash & Gugerty, 2010). Meanwhile, service provision-oriented
NGOs are more likely to operate on the “brick-and-mortar” organizing structure, and the
need to mobilize tangible resources, such as external funding and volunteer forces, is
generally prioritized over accessing information resource online. Given that
interorganizational ties built on social media align more with the goal of information
dissemination and sharing, it is plausible to assume that advocacy-oriented NGOs would
exhibit greater activity in utilizing such platforms. NGOs’ functional type, consequently,
may become a particularly significant organizational-level factor influencing the structure
of interorganizational networks that emerge from social media.
9

In both studies, interorganizational alliance is defined as interorganizational
relationships that are voluntarily formed and communicated by immigrant NGOs, and the
primary purpose of these relationships is to advance the NGOs’ goals, mission, and
eventually facilitate organizational survival (Gray, 1989; Gray & Wood, 1991; Gulati,
1998). Conceptually, it includes a symbolic dimension that signals or directly
communicates an organization’s alignment with another organization on core mission or
issue stands (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a), and a resource exchange component that
aims to fulfill organizations’ resource needs, ranging from financial, informational, to
relational resource needs (Pfeffer & Salancik. 2003). A more detailed overview of the
two studies conducted in this dissertation follows.
Study I: How does community-level interdependence influence NGO alliance
partner selection?
To capture the organizational- and community-level factors that influence
immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance partner choices, the first study is guided by an
ecological framework informed by community ecology theory, which views
organizations as different organizational forms occupying the same resource environment
(Freeman & Audia, 2006; Hawley, 1986; Ruef, 2000). Although the definitions vary,
organizational form is the core unit of analysis in the ecological literature. It focuses on
the common features that define and distinguish one group of organizations from another
group (Weber, Fulk, Monge, 2016).
The community ecology perspective rests on the premise that resources—ranging
from financial, informational, human capital, to relational—are of central importance for
organizations, and organizations are presumably resource- seeking. Second, it
10

acknowledges the ongoing and interactive processes of resource exchange via a set of
overlapping interorganizational linkages. Through these network ties, organizations are
able to acquire resources from their partners, and maintain active exchange with the
external environment (Freeman & Audia, 2006). At the same time, the interorganizational
networks and resource environment may pose constraints on organizations’ everyday
behaviors, including their alliance partner choices. In the current research context, one
important source of community-level influence is hypothesized to derive from the
overlap of immigrant-serving NGOs’ resource and identity niche, and the identity niche
of an organization further consists of a dimension of functional identity and a dimension
of ideological identity (Dobrev, Ozdemir, & Teo, 2006).
By looking at the overall online alliance networks created by the selected
organizational populations, this study also takes a whole network approach. Whole
network here refers to a holistic examination of an interorganizational network that
“consists of multiple organizations linked through multilateral ties…and the focus is on
the structures and processes of the entire network rather than on the organizations that
compose the network” (Provan, Fish, & Sydow, 2007, p. 482). This study conceives the
immigrant-serving NGO community as a diverse group of organizations that share the
same cultural and institutional environment. Yet, due to distinct resource niche and
identity niche, the competitive or cooperative interdependence (or the absence of such)
among different sub-groups of immigrant-serving NGOs is likely to become a
community-level force to influence individual NGOs’ alliance partner choices (Shumate,
Fulk, & Monge, 2005). The hypothesized influence from the overlap of resource and
11

identity niche thus supplements the existing alliance literature by offering a community-
level explanation.
Additionally, this study combines key antecedents identified from prior alliance
literature to put forward an integrative model in explaining immigrant-serving NGOs’
alliance partner choices. Along with three sets of variables to indicate the overlap of
resource niche, functional identity niche, and ideology identity niche, the model also tests
dyadic-level and organizational-level sources of influence in predicting the likelihood of
alliance tie formation, including (1) the geographic proximity of NGOs; (2) the existence
of common third party ties; and (3) the organizational status of individual NGOs,
indicated by the structural location of an NGO within the larger interorganizational
network and whether an NGO develops partnerships with governmental organizations.
Study II: Goal-attaining communication ecologies and the divergence of NGOs’
alliance networks across platforms
The second study compares the same group of immigrant-serving NGOs’
interorganizational alliance networks across multiple technology platforms. Specifically,
it compares the website-based alliance network, a long established form of alliance
communication (Atouba & Shumate, 2010, Kropczynski & Nah, 2011), with the
followship networks formed on the two most widely adopted social media sites within the
nonprofit sector, Twitter and Facebook (SCPRC Generally Accepted Practice Study,
2012). While there is a growing body of literature on nonprofits’ utilization of social
media (e.g., Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Nah & Saxton, 2012), those studies tend to focus
on the content aspects of social media use, such as how NGOs compose tweets or
Facebook posts to educate the public about programs of service (Water, 2009), employ
12

advocacy tactics in its social media feeds (Guo & Saxton, 2014), or utilize the interactive
features of social media to promote stakeholder engagement (Lovejoy, Waters, & Saxton,
2012). Meanwhile, the relational aspect of social media use—that is, how NGOs
selectively initiate, maintain, and communicate interorganizational relationships on these
technology platforms, remains less explored.
The second study thus aims to fill in this gap by investigating how the
relationships sustained by multiple technology platforms intersect with immigrant-
serving NGOs’ goals of using these technologies. Referencing Shumate and Contractor’s
(2014) taxonomy of communication relations, it distinguishes the nature of
interorganizational relations communicated by website hyperlinks from the
interorganizational relations sustained by social media’s connective function, specifically,
the “follow” function on Twitter and the “like” function on Facebook. The alliance
relationships communicated through website hyperlinks are conceptualized as a form of
representational ties, the primary goal of which is to signal association and communicate
accountability to the third-party stakeholders (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a). Meanwhile,
the followship relations sustained by social media platforms, referred to as “flow
relations” (Shumate & Contractor, 2014, p. 453), are characterized by the exchange of
information among the organizational dyads. Functionally speaking, these relations fulfill
organizations’ information needs by facilitating information exchange with one’s
partners, helping organizations stay on top of the organizational community, and offering
ways for organizations to scan their immediate network environment (Choo, 1999).
Recognizing the distinctive nature of relationships built by each technology
platform, the second study ties together the emerging literature on social media use
13

among nonprofit organizations (Messner et al., 2013; Saxton & Guo, 2011; Guidry,
Saxton, & Messner, 2014) and organizations’ active construction of goal-attaining
communication ecologies (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2012; Broad, 2015). It first compares
whether the same group of immigrant-serving NGOs’ interorganizational alliance
networks exhibit divergence across three major technology platforms: the website,
Twitter and Facebook. It then uses the concept of goal-attaining communication
ecologies (Broad, 2015) to explore (1) whether the goal of communicating accountability
may lead to a greater status-seeking tendency in the website-based interorganizational
network than in the social media networks; and (2) how NGOs of different functional
types may prioritize the information-sharing goal differently, thereby making functional
type a more significant organizational-level factor in explaining tie formation in the
social media networks than in the website-based alliance network.
Overall, the current dissertation represents the first research effort to map the
interorganizational networks among California’s immigrants-serving NGOs. The scope
of both studies includes officially registered (under the nonprofit 501(c) code) and
currently active immigrant-serving NGOs in California, a total of 104 organizations of
various sizes, clientele profiles, organizing structures, and social issue areas. Being one of
the most diverse states, California has the highest percentage (27%) of foreign-born
population in the United States (Public Policy Institute of California, 2013). The state has
also been an active battleground for pro-immigrants social movements (Costanza-Chock,
2014), where local and national immigrants-serving NGOs are actively engaged in
coalition building activities. It therefore offers a vibrant community context to investigate
the following two sets of research questions:
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First, what are organizational-, dyadic-, and community-level factors and forces
that influence immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance partner choices? To answer this
question, the first study combines community ecology theory with existing theoretical
mechanisms identified in alliance literature to test the following hypotheses:
(1) At the community-level, the level of overlap of niche spaces among different
forms of immigrant-serving NGOs, including the overlap of resource niche
(H1a), functional identity niche (H1b), and ideological identity niche (H1c &
H1d), are likely to influence the likelihood of alliance tie formation;
(2) At the dyadic-level, geographically proximate organizations (H2) and
organizations that have common third-party partners (H3) are more likely to
form alliance ties;
(3) At the organizational-level, NGOs with higher organizational status,
operationalized as degree centrality (H4a) and governmental partnership status
(H4b), are more likely to form alliance ties with other organizations.
The second research question asks how the same group of immigrant-serving
NGOs’ interorganizational networks across different technology platforms may exhibit
structural divergence. Based on the concept of goal-attaining communication ecologies, it
further compares the magnitude of the following tie formation mechanisms across
platforms:
(1) The website-based alliance network may show a stronger tendency of status-
seeking than that in the social media networks (H5);
(2) Functional type of immigrant-serving NGOs, specifically whether an NGO
prioritizes advocacy or service provision activities, may cast a stronger
15

influence on the likelihood of alliance ties formation in the social media
networks than in the website-based alliance network (H6).
Chapter summaries
There are seven chapters in this dissertation organized as follows. Chapter 2
reviews existing literatures and theoretical perspectives on NGOs’ alliance building and
communication. It identifies three primary perspectives that offer theoretical explanations
regarding the formation of interorganizational ties, the resource-dependence perspective,
the institutional theory perspective, and the network perspective. This chapter further
synthesizes those perspectives and argues that by taking into account community-level
interdependence, we can supplement our current understanding of NGOs’ alliance
building behaviors and partnership choices.
Chapter 3 introduces the community ecology theory and reviews concepts that are
central to this framework. The overlap of resource and identity niche, one of the primary
conditions that give rise to commensalistic interdependence among different sub-
populations of immigrant-serving NGOs, is proposed as a source of community-level
influence on organizations’ partnership choices. This mechanism is also integrated and
tested with a number of existing alliance formation mechanisms, including geographic
proximity, the presence of common third party alliance partners, and organizational
status-related attributes.
Chapter 4 presents the second component of the current dissertation, which
investigates how different goals pursued by immigrant-serving NGOs of different
functional types as well as the nature of interorganizational relations sustained by each
technology platform may explain the structural divergence of interorganizational
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networks across multiple technology platforms. Based on the theoretical premises that
organizations are goal-attaining entities, and their alliance communication across
different technology platforms is driven by the communication goals that NGOs seek to
achieve from each technology platform (Broad, 2015), this study first compares the
degree of interorganizational network divergence across different technology platforms.
These networks include: (1) the alliance network that emerges from NGOs’ website
reporting, primarily through hyperlinking and name-mentioning to another
organization;(2) the interorganizational network formed by Facebook’s “like” function;
and (3) the follower-followee network among the selected NGOs’ Twitter accounts.
Chapter 5 outlines three modes of data collection, variable measurements, and
data analysis procedures employed in this dissertation. It describes how the final sample
of immigrant NGOs are identified, and ways in which three types of alliance networks
are constructed from NGOs’ website, Facebook, and Twitter presence.
Chapter 6 reports findings and interprets the results from the network analysis. It
presents a network of immigrant NGOs that are connected by collaboration, symbolic
alignment, as well as information exchange ties established through organizational
websites, Facebook and Twitter.
Chapter 7 ties together findings from both studies and concludes the dissertation
by discussing how it contributes to the overall literature on NGO alliance building and
the communication of alliance relationships using different technology platforms. It
discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the current findings, concluding by
limitations and directions for future research.
17

Chapter Two: Theoretical Perspectives on NGO Alliance Ties Formation
Conceptualizing interorganizational alliance relationship online
Interorganizational alliance in this dissertation refers to collaboration and
relational associations that are voluntarily established between organizations where the
goal is to assist organizations to gain competitive advantage, cope with environmental
turbulence, and ultimately achieve their goals or missions of various kinds (Gulati &
Gargiulo, 1999; Hardy, Phillips, & Lawrence, 2003). This type of voluntary alliance can
be distinguished from two other forms of interorganizational relationships, where
association or collaboration is (1) purchased, such as business supplier relationships
(Sheth & Sharma, 1997); or (2) constrained, such as the type of “cupid” alliance forged
between target organizations at the request of a third “cupid” organization (Stephens et
al., 2009). Under the current definition, interorganizational alliance is characterized by
mutual exchange and voluntary engagement from both parties involved in the
relationship (Heide, 1994). It is thus less centrally governed than the above two forms of
interorganizational relationships, but “negotiated in an ongoing communicative process
and that relies on neither market nor hierarchical mechanisms of control.” (Lawrence,
Hardy, & Phillips, 2002, p. 282)
One of the most studied components of interorganizational alliance is
organizational collaboration, which Gray (1985) defines as “(1) the pooling of
appreciations and/or tangible resources, e.g., information, money, labor, etc., (2) by two
or more stakeholders, (3) to solve a set of problems which either cannot solve
individually.” (p. 912) In the nonprofit context, Guo and Acar (2005) refer to nonprofit
collaboration as “what occurs when different nonprofit organizations work together to
18

address problems through joint effort, resources, and decision making and share
ownership of the final product or service” (pp. 342-343). Central to both definitions is the
resource exchange and collective problem-solving nature inherent in the process of
collaboration.
Existing literature has identified different forms of organizational collaboration,
ranging from information and knowledge sharing (e.g., Gulati, 1999; Powell, Koput, &
Smith-Doerr, 1996), joint delivery of programs (e.g., Vangen & Huxham, 2003), referral
of clients (Galaskiewicz & Bielefeld, 1998), to organizations’ co-participation in
collective events (e.g., Wang & Soule, 2012). Based on the degree of formality, Guo and
Acar (2005) further summarize eight forms of collaborative activities in the nonprofit
sector, where information sharing, referral of clients, sharing of office spaces, and
management service organization (MSO) were categorized as “informal collaboration”
(p. 343), whereas joint program, parent subsidiary, joint venture, and merger were
considered as more formal collaboration categories.
While the collaborative action component is indeed critical, an equally important
yet under-theorized aspect of online interorganizational alliance lies in its symbolic and
communicative dimension (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a; 2010b). The symbolic aspect
of alliance relationships deals with an intentional and deliberate process of
communicating desired values, messages, or legitimacy claims to an organization’s
stakeholders. And stakeholders may consist of any relevant constituency or groups that
affect or are affected by the focal organization’s activities (Freeman, 1984; Koschmann,
2008). Regarding this communicative aspect of interorganizational alliance, Shumate and
O’Connor (2010a) have more formally articulated it as “interorganizational
19

communication relationships that are symbolized to stakeholders in order to influence the
mobilization and creation of capitals.” (p. 578) They further emphasize the importance of
the communicative act in that “…Through communication, the economic, social, cultural,
and political values of capital are framed, interpreted, made meaningful, mobilized,
and/or restricted by alliance partners and stakeholders.”(p. 578)
Taking both components together, online interorganizational alliance in this
dissertation thus covers organizational collaboration based on resource exchange as well
as alliance communication relationships. For the collaboration aspect, it focuses on
behavioral indicators such as how organizations connect with other organizations through
resource sharing, participation in joint action, and collaborative program delivery, as
indicated by the online presence of these relationships. For the communication aspect, the
focus is on the signaling processes through which organizations communicate alliance
relationships to their stakeholders, utilizing online platforms such as web-based
narratives, hyperlinks, as well as technological features afforded by social media. In
operationalizing online interorganizational alliance ties, the following three modes of
connections are included, when (1) an organization expresses collaborative or symbolic
alignment with other organizations through self-reporting, such as narratives from the
organizational website or documents released by the organization; (2) the organization
creates hyperlink connection to another organization, and such a tie is used to indicate
affinity or symbolic alignment. However, it should be noted that hyperlink ties do not
always indicate affinity or positive associations. Rather, depending on the specific
communication context, certain organizational hyperlinks can mean attack or adversary
relationship (de Maeyer, 2013); and (3) an organization follows another organization
20

through the “following” and “like” function on the selected social media platforms,
Facebook and Twitter.
Following existing work on interorganizational communication systems (e.g.,
Atouba & Shumate, 2010; Fulk, Flanagin, Kalman, Monge, & Ryan, 1996; Monge et al.,
1998), the online interorganizational alliance networks in this dissertation are
conceptualized as a form of public goods. On the one hand, the online alliance networks
provide significant utilities for individual organizations to navigate in the organizational
field, such as reaching other like-minded organizations (Shumate & Lipp, 2008),
acquiring new information and tactics from member organizations (Wang & Soule,
2012), and more effectively mobilizing resources during emerging collective events
(Cordero-Guzmán et al., 2008). On the other hand, the overall online alliance networks
well represent the defining characteristics of public goods: (1) “the jointness of supply”,
meaning more organizational members in the network does not diminish the benefits that
other group members can access. As Shumate and Lipp (2008) argue, online alliance
relationships, such as in the form of hyperlinks, can be utilized by many organizations to
navigate the issue network, which does not diminish other organization’s use of them;
and (2) “the impossibility of exclusion”, that is, as long as the interorganizational
networks are established, all the members from the network can enjoy the benefits, such
as enhanced connectivity and information without being excluded (Fulk et al., 1996). For
example, Kropczynski and Nah (2011) found that the fair housing social movements
organizations can take advantage of the hyperlink ties to mobilize resources and improve
web presence, as long as these organizations are embedded in the overall hyperlink
network.
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Online platforms to study NGOs’ alliance building and communication
Although a large part of earlier alliance literature focuses on the creation and
maintenance of offline alliances, the internet has afforded new platforms to understand
how online alliances both reflect and extend the traditional form of alliance relationships.
By “reflect”, it refers to a growing body of alliance research that views web-based
alliance, such as hyperlinks, as the proxy of interorganizational collaboration or issue
alignment among organizations (Atouba & Shumate, 2010; Shumate & Lipp, 2008;
Powell, Horvath, & Brandtner, 2016). Therefore, the mechanisms that explain the
formation of traditional alliance may still be applicable to understanding online alliance
building and communication. Meanwhile, organizations’ online alliance building can be
viewed as an “extension” of their relational activities offline (Pilny & Shumate, 2012, p.
260). In other words, online alliance relationships may not perfectly match their offline
counterparts (Powell, Horvath, & Brandtner, 2016), but its network structure can be
directly influenced by offline characteristics, such as organizations’ strategic intentions or
their prior collaboration activities offline (Pilny & Shumate, 2012). Regarding this
online-offline linkage, although organizations’ online alliance networks may not exactly
match their offline counterparts, these online networks arguably offer a window for
researchers to understand organizations’ alliance building behaviors in general (Ackland
& O’Neil, 2011; Lusher & Ackland, 2011; Segerberg & Bennett, 2011).
In addition, with the increasing adoption of Internet and web-based technologies
among nonprofit organizations (Nah & Saxton, 2012), online technology platforms have
offered organizations new ways to grow their relational connections, and more important,
to more interactively communicate these connections to their stakeholders (Crane &
22

Livesey, 2003). From this standpoint, interorganizational connections forged through
online platforms are more than a mere extension of offline relationships. In fact, a
growing body of literature has argued that online platforms have enabled new
relationship building practices for organizations, such as using micro-blogging platforms
to develop interactive stakeholder relationships (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009),
building issue-specific online communities (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012), and signaling
organizational legitimacy through partnership with cross-sector organizations (Shumate
& O’Connor, 2010a).
Among various online platforms used by organizations, this dissertation focuses
on the following three online platforms and the alliance networks sustained by them: (1)
Organizational website, one of the most studied online platforms where alliance can be
expressed through website narratives (Chapple & Moon, 2005) and hyperlinks to another
organization (Pilny & Shumate, 2012; Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a; 2010b). (2) Twitter,
a widely adopted microblogging service among nonprofit organizations (Lovejoy, Waters
& Saxton, 2012), where interorganizational connections take the form of follower-
followee relationships. 3) Facebook, another commonly adopted self-presentation and
public engagement platform (Cho, Schweickart, & Haase, 2014), where organizations
connect to one another through the “like” function. Recent survey suggests that Facebook
and Twitter have both risen to become the two most widely-adopted social media
platforms among organizations ( SCPRC Generally Accepted Practice Study, 2012),
which makes the alliance networks sustained by these platforms particularly important to
examine.
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Having outlined the concept of interorganizational alliance and three online
platforms to study it, the next section turns to a literature review on major theoretical
perspectives of interorganizational alliance, the resource dependence perspective, the
institutional perspective, and the network perspective. Although these theoretical
perspectives focus on alliances in general, the key mechanisms identified from these
perspectives are still applicable in understanding the formation of alliance relationships
online.
Existing theoretical perspectives on interorganizational alliance formation
While earlier alliance literature predominantly focuses on corporate actors (see
Gulati, Nohria, & Zaheer (2000) for a review), the recent years have witnessed a growing
stream of research on interorganizational alliance building in the nonprofit sector (e.g.,
Doerfel & Taylor, 2004; Miller, Scott, Stage, & Birkholt, 1995; Taylor & Doerfel, 2003;
Shumate, Fulk, & Monge, 2005). Sharing much of the theoretical underpinnings from the
corporate strategic alliance literature, NGOs’ alliance building behaviors have been
understood from three primary perspectives, the resource-dependence perspective, the
institutional theory perspective, and the network perspective (Guo & Acar, 2005). The
three perspectives offer distinct mechanisms to explain why organizations are motivated
to enter into the alliance relationships, and they place different emphases on key
antecedents that lead to the formation of interorganizational alliance.
Resource-dependence perspective
The resource-dependence theory offers one of the most influential perspectives
for understanding why organizations engage in collective action and collaborative
relationship building (Pfeffer &Salancik, 2003). This perspective gives prime importance
24

to various external resources that are essential for organizations’ daily operation and
ultimate survival, and these resources range from funding, labor and human capital, to
domain knowledge and expertise (Das & Teng, 2000). It contends that it is ultimately the
needs for resource exchange and resource interdependence that motivate organizations to
build interorganizational alliance (Pfeffer & Novak, 1976). Just as Eisenhardt and
Schoonhoven (1996) put it, alliance relationships under this framework are “driven by a
logic of strategic resources needs and social resource opportunities” (p. 137).
From the standpoint of individual organizations, the alliance relationship thus
offers a few potential benefits. First, it becomes the channel through which an
organization acquires tangible resources as well as learns from their partners. Second, the
interorganizational tie also serves as the “buffer” that guards the focal organization from
unexpected environmental turbulence or other resource-deprived situations
(Galaskiewicz, 1985a). Along this line, empirical work has suggested that greater
environmental uncertainty prompts organizations to seek out more interorganizational
partners, and these partnerships thereby become a device for organizations to cope with
environmental uncertainty (Galaskiewicz & Shatin, 1981).
The resource-dependence logic further specifies a number of factors involved in
the process of partnership selection. First, the amount of resources an organization
possesses or has direct access to plays a significant role in establishing alliance
relationships (Das & Teng, 2000). In particular, resource-rich organizations are generally
preferred as prospective partners, as associating with them would entail greater
opportunity to access and mobilize these resources (Galaskiewicz, 1979). Second, studies
have generally pointed out the importance of resource complementarity—that is, the
25

degree to which a partnering organization can offer a set of dissimilar, yet desirable
resources than what the focal organization already has (Chung, Singh & Lee, 2000;
Harrison, Hitt, Hoskisson, & Ireland, 2001; Soda & Furlotti, 2014). In the nonprofit
context, the role of resource complementarity has been particularly noted in the formation
of cross-sector ties (Austin & Seitanidi, 2012), where alliances established between
NGOs and businesses, or between NGOs and governments are primarily driven by one
party’s ability to provide complementary, yet value-adding resources to the other party.
Institutional theory perspective
The institutional theory framework shifts the focus from resource interdependence
to the governing role of normative influence, which stems from the larger cultural and
power system (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Mizruchi & Galaskiewicz, 1993). This
perspective posits that because organizational activities are embedded in the social and
normative context, the pressure to conform to the prevailing norms of this environment
significantly governs organizational behaviors (Dacin, Oliver, & Roy, 2007; DiMaggio &
Powell, 1983).
Central to the institutional theory framework is the concept of legitimacy, defined
as “the level of social acceptability bestowed upon a set of activities or actors”
(Washington & Zajac, 2005, p. 284). For nonprofit organizations, as profit generation
often comes second, the need to gain stakeholder approval and achieve legitimacy are of
primary importance (Dart, 2004). From this perspective, interorganizational alliance is
viewed as serving an important legitimation function (Dacin, Oliver, & Roy, 2007). For
instance, Sharfman, Gray and Yan’s (1991) study on the garment industry finds that
interorganizational collaboration enhances the “collective legitimacy” of the industry. At
26

the organizational level, Wiewel and Hunter (1985) similarly find that newer
organizations are able to increase their legitimacy and survival rate by establishing
affiliations with reputable organizations.
The institutional theory perspective predicts that organizations are more likely to
establish interorganizational ties to prominent, and arguably more legitimate actors in the
field in order to elevate their own legitimacy status (Podolny, 1994). This tendency has
been well validated in the nonprofit sector. Margolin and colleagues’ (2015) study on the
Children’s Rights NGOs community identifies a significant propensity for younger
NGOs to connect with older ones in the community, where interorganizational ties
become a vital channel for younger NGOs to obtain normative information and enhance
their own legitimacy status.
In addition to the status-seeking tendency as discussed above, institutional theory
also recognizes the role of mimetic influence in the process of alliance building. As one
of three forms of isomorphism proposed by DiMaggio and Powell (1991), mimetic
isomorphism refers to an imitation process where one organization follows other
organizations’ behavior in order to better cope with environmental uncertainty and
conform to institutional norms. When it comes to alliance formation, Garcia-Pont and
Nohria’s (2002) study on the automobile industry indicates that the likelihood of an
alliance between any two firms depends on the local density of alliances among the
members of their strategic groups. That is, if an organizational field overall is
characterized by active alliance building activities, individual organizations in this field
are more likely to engage in alliance building as well. This finding thus supports the
27

mimetic influence in that organizations can be expected to mitigate uncertainty by
emulating the alliances formed by other organizations in the same organizational field.
Network theory perspective
Embracing a structural explanation of organizational behaviors, the network view
of interorganizational alliance maintains that organizations are essentially embedded
within a set of overlapping networks, which could promote or constrain their everyday
social and economic activities (Granovetter, 1985; Gulati, 1995a, 1995b; Gulati, 1998;
Uzzi, 1997). Different from the resource-dependence’s focus on organizational
characteristics or institutional perspective’s focus on exogenous factors, the network
perspective of alliance places greater emphasis on the role of endogenous network
positions in shaping organizational behaviors. As Stuart (1998) argues, the formation of
alliance relationships is particularly driven by the opportunities associated with an
organization’s position in the external social network.
Regarding specific network factors related to the formation of alliance, Gulati and
colleagues’ (Gulati, 1995a; Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999) work highlights the role of prior
mutual ties, common third party ties, and the structural centrality of an organization in
breeding trust and future alliance relationships. Specifically, Gulati and Gargiulo (1999)
conceptualize the existence of prior alliance relationships as a form of “relational
embeddedness”, which represents “the effects of cohesive ties between social actors on
subsequent cooperation between these actors” (p. 1,446). Meanwhile, the indirect social
ties operated through common third parties or referrals, also impact the tendency for
organization to cooperate with one another, and they refer to this triadic effect as
“structural embeddedness” (Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999, p. 1,446). Both direct and indirect
28

ties constitute the most immediate social network where a focal organization is
embedded. These ties also become critical sources of information about the reliability and
capabilities of organizations’ prospective partners. Finally, Gulati and Gargiulo (1999)
point out the role of “structural embeddedness”, which captures the impact of an
organization’s network position in the overall structure of the alliance network on their
decision to form new ties. Their empirical analysis identifies a significant advantage for
centrally located organizations to establish new alliances, a phenomenon that is similarly
observed in Powell and colleagues (2005) study on interorganizational collaboration in
the life science industry. According to both studies, occupying the central network
position may not only enhance an organization’s ability to retrieve resources from the
network, but it also signifies elevated social status among the entire organizational
community (Podolny, 1994).
A summary and the gaps
The resource-dependence perspective, the institutional theory perspective, and the
network perspective have all significantly contributed to the current understanding of
interorganizational alliance. While each perspective focuses on different sources of
influence, their theoretical insights are actually complementary (Galaskiewicz &
Bielefeld 1998). For instance, both resource dependence and network perspective view
alliance ties as channels to acquire, share or exchange resources with one’s partners. The
institutional perspective shares this view in that alliance relationships are instrumental in
transferring important normative information (Margolin et al., 2015), and it may even
become the source of mimetic influence to encourage or constrain organizations’ alliance
building behaviors (Powell et al., 2015). The complementarity of these perspectives has
29

already been explored in Guo and Acar’s (2005) study, where the authors combine
resource dependence, institutional and network theories to test a series of factors that
influence the likelihood of developing formal versus informal collaborative activities
among a group of charitable organizations.
While recognizing the potential for integrating these perspectives, it should be
noted that a few gaps still remain. The first gap deals with the scant attention paid to the
environmental constraints in general, and specifically how the variation in the resource
and institutional environment may change organizations’ alliance building behaviors
(Galaskiewicz, 1985a). The variation of resource and institutional environment could
manifest itself across different organizational fields (e.g., different industries, or NGOs
working on different social issues), as well as across different periods of time. As
Galaskiewicz (1985a) argues, “as the resource environment becomes richer or leaner,
more or less stable, more homogenous or heterogeneous, or more concentrated or
dispersed, the options available to organizations change accordingly.” (p. 286)
There are a number of studies that have begun to investigate the interplay between
environmental factors and organizations’ alliance building activities. Taking the
institutional theory perspective, Margolin and colleagues’ (2015) study represents such
effort in that they examine how the variation of institutional environment may alter the
ways in which Children’s Rights NGOs build interorganizational connections. Using
longitudinal data spanning across 27 years, they compared the interorganizational
collaboration pattern—specifically, the extent to which older NGOs are preferred—prior
to and after a critical institutional change of the community environment, the ratification
of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Their finding
30

shows that as the institutional environment changed (i.e., with the ratification of
UNCRC), the advantage for older NGOs to attract interorganizational ties diminishes as
well. The second stream of studies that incorporate environmental factors come from the
bona fide approach of interorganizational collaboration (Cooper & Shumate, 2012; Lai,
She, & Ye, 2015; Stohl & Walker, 2002). The bona fide approach notes the importance
of environmental exigencies—including both environmental constraints posed by the
interorganizational networks and those outside of the networks (Cooper & Shumate,
2012)—in shaping the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of interorganizational
collaboration. A recent application of this perspective investigates how the occurrence of
a disastrous event Typhoon Haiyan, a major shock to the external environment, impacts
the network processes and outcomes of interorganizational collaboration among
humanitarian NGOs (Lai, She, & Ye, 2015).
A review of current literature also reveals that the communicative processes of
interorganizational alliance are downplayed (Atouba, 2016). As pointed out earlier,
relevant work on interorganizational relations has much focused on collaboration
activities and their antecedents (Galaskiewicz, 1985a; Gray & Wood, 1991; Powell et al.,
1996;) rather than adequately acknowledging how the alliance relationships are
negotiated through communicative action between organizations and their stakeholders
(Koschmann, 2008), as well as the highly strategic aspect of alliance communication
through which organizations signal legitimacy to their stakeholders (Shumate &
O’Connor, 2010a). The growing importance of alliance communication coincides with
the emergence of online technology platforms, and the latter have significantly extended
the communication modes through which interorganizational relationships are initiated,
31

kept active, and managed. In such sense, alliance communication is increasingly
mediated by various technology platforms, and it is not merely an act of displaying one’s
existing alliance relationship offline. Rather, the alliance communication networks
sustained by online platforms should be understood as a deliberate, goal-achieving
process, which is both reflective of and shaped by organizations’ goals, resource needs,
as well as communication environmental constraints.
With these gaps in mind, this dissertation thus proposes to combine organizational
and community level factors to understand immigrant NGOs’ alliance building and
communication processes. It proposes to supplement existing work by adding an
ecological perspective, where the interdependence relationships among different forms of
NGOs, particularly the commensalistic relationships, are considered as a critical source
of influence. In the following section, it introduces the specific organizational community
under study, the immigrant-serving NGOs in California, and contextualizes the resource
and institutional environment where this organizational community is embedded.
Research context: The landscape of immigrant NGOs in California
As a major “gateway” for immigrants, California is the state with the largest
number of immigrant population in the United States. For over 38.8 million residents,
27% of them were born outside the United States, about twice the national average
(Public Policy Institute of California, 2013). This rate is even higher in metropolitan
areas such as San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County, where foreign-born
individuals represent more than 35% of its local population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).
Since 1965, the most recent wave of migration also differs from prior waves in that the
32

majority of newcomers are from South American and Asian countries (Portes &
Rumbaut, 2006).
What accompanies the continuous waves of migration is the rapid growth of
immigrant-oriented civil society organizations (Cortés 1998; Cortés, Díaz & Ramos,
1999). Researchers have suggested three intertwined forces that contribute to the growth
of this particular nonprofit community, and all of these forces are strong in California.
First, the arrival of newcomer populations has prompted governments at various levels to
offer support and subsidies to immigrant nonprofits, with the goal to leverage these
NGOs as vehicles for social and political incorporation of immigrants (Chung, 2005;
Moya, 2005). As Bloemraad (2005) observes, government support in the form of funding,
technical training for immigrant nonprofit leaders, and normative encouragement, has
promoted the founding rate as well as capacity development of immigrant NGOs in North
American countries, namely Canada and United States.
Second, scholars have pointed out the importance of political opportunity
structure in shaping local immigrant NGOs community (Chung, 2005). Political
opportunity structure refers to the exogenous political and institutional factors that can
enhance or inhibit the mobilization of social movements or social issues (Meyer &
Minkoff, 2004). California is characterized by its pro-immigrant policies over the past
two decades (California Immigrant Policy Center, 2015). The introduction of several pro-
immigrant legislative initiatives at national and state levels, such as the Development,
Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) act and the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA), have further stimulated the activity of immigrant NGOs
around these initiatives.
33

The third force stems from the cultural and political capital accumulated within
the immigrant communities and their co-ethnic networks (Chung, 2005). Over the years,
as the immigrant communities in the United States expand in size, they have begun to
gain greater public visibility through direct engagement in policy debates and large-scale
mobilization events. The immigration rights movement in 2006, for example, which later
became one of the largest mass mobilizations since the Vietnam War, evidences the
presence of a cohesive network of immigrant-serving NGOs, social service providers,
and advocacy groups nationwide (Cordero-Guzmán et al., 2008; Costanza-Chock, 2014).
Despite the growth of the overall organizational sector, immigrant NGOs still
experience structural disadvantage and significant underrepresentation compared to
mainstream nonprofits (Gleeson & Bloemraad, 2013). For example, Ramakrishnan and
Viramontes’ (2006) focus group research with grassroots civic organizations in California
indicated that ethnic organizations were generally disadvantaged in relation to
mainstream ones, especially in funding support, continuity, visibility and influence in
local affairs. In terms of the overall size of immigrant NGOs community, Ramakrishnan
and Bloemraad’s (2008) study on six California cities revealed a significant
underrepresentation of immigrant-serving associations. That is, immigrant organizations
in all the study areas only make up a small fraction of the entire nonprofit groups, at a
disproportionally lower rate than the ratio of immigrants in local population.
Overall, the environment of California’s immigrant-serving NGOs is
characterized by the pro-immigrant political opportunity structure, and at the same time,
potentially fierce competition for resources. Such competition is not limited within the
heterogeneous immigrant NGOs community, but it also applies to the broader nonprofit
34

sector that consists of well-established mainstream NGOs versus the emerging ones. It is
under this environment that the alliance choices become particularly important for
immigrant NGOs to navigate their resource environment and at the same time strive to
achieve their respective advocacy or service provision goals.
In this dissertation, California was chosen as the regional focus also because of its
unique immigration history and the long presence of a vibrant immigrant nonprofit
sector. This regional focus is further made important, as a great majority of existing
research has been conducted in a single metropolitan area or major immigration gateway
cites, such as New York City (e.g., Cordero-Guzmán, 2005; Marwell, 2007), Chicago
(Sanguino, 2008), Dallas-Fort Worth area (Brettell, 2005), San Francisco Bay Area (de
Graauw, 2008; Gleeson & Bloemraad, 2013), and Los Angeles (Rivera-Salgado Rabadán,
2004; Valenzuela, 2006). A number of studies have surveyed immigrant organizations in
multiple geographic areas (e.g., Cortés, 1998; Hung, 2007; Portes, Escobar, & Arana,
2008), but they were limited by focusing on immigrant NGOs serving a particular ethnic
group. The current dissertation thus enlarges the scope to the entire state of California,
and its sample includes NGOs serving immigrants from diverse national, ethnic, and
religious backgrounds.
Thus far, this chapter has provided an overview of literature on the concept of
interorganizational alliance, clarified its collaborative act and communication
dimensions, and critically reviewed three primary perspectives that shape the current
understanding of alliance formation in general, and online alliance relationships in
particular. To contextualize the background of two empirical studies, it further presents
the immigration and institutional environment in California, where the sample of
35

immigrant-serving NGOs are collected. In the next chapter, it proposes the first study
using community ecology framework to understand how organizational-level attributes
and community-level interdependence, along with several alliance formation mechanisms
identified in prior research literature, may structure immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance
partner choices online.

36

Chapter Three: The Role of Community-level Interdependence in Alliance
Formation
Using community ecology theory, the first study examines how community-level
interdependence derived from NGOs’ niche overlap may influence immigrant-serving
NGOs’ alliance partner choices. This chapter starts by reviewing key concepts in
community ecology framework, and then identifies three types of niches that are
important in categorizing the diverse immigrant-serving NGOs community: (1) the
resource niche, (2) the functional identity niche, and (3) the ideological identity niche.
This chapter hypothesizes that the overlap of these niche spaces may lead to competitive
or cooperative relationships among different types of immigrant-serving NGOs, which in
turn becomes a source of community-level influence shaping individual NGOs’ alliance
partner choices.
In proposing an integrative model that includes organizational, dyadic, and
community-level sources of influence, this study tests three additional mechanisms that
have been identified in the extant literature to explain NGOs’ alliance partner choice: (1)
the geographic proximity of NGOs, (2) the existence of common third-party ties, and (3)
the organizational status of individual NGOs as indicated by structural centrality and
whether an NGO establishes partnerships with governmental organizations.
Community ecology theory and NGO alliance building
Developed from the tradition of human ecology, the community ecology
perspective fundamentally concerns the relationships between diverse units of social
organization and their environment (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006; Hawley, 1968). Under this
framework, organizational communities are defined as “functionally integrated systems
37

of interacting populations” (Astley, 1985, p. 234). On the one hand, different
organizational populations interact and exchange resources with one another within the
community to establish functional interdependence. On the other hand, since the entire
organizational community is an open system, organizational populations may directly
connect with the external environment. For individual organizations, it is thus implied
that they are not only bounded by interorganizational relationships inside the community,
but also that the entire organizational community is embedded in the greater environment
characterized by specific physical, social and institutional conditions (Hannan &
Freeman, 1977).
Two concepts are central to the framework of community ecology: the concept of
organizational community, and organizational form. In defining organizational
community, Freeman and Audia (2006) identify two dimensions that are differently
emphasized across diverse research literatures. The first is a functional complementarity
dimension, where community is conceptualized as “a web of functional
interdependencies among organizations or classes of organizations. ”(p. 146). An
example illustrating this dimension is the concept of “epistemic community” (Haas,
1992, p. 1), which views a community of organizations as a network of actors sharing
common interpretations of knowledge or social issues, regardless of whether these
organizations are located in the same geographic space. The second is a spatial
differentiation dimension, where the defining characteristic of a community lies in the
aggregation of a group of organizations co-locating in the same geographic space. An
example illustrating this dimension is residential community. While different theoretical
traditions may prioritize these dimensions differently, the community ecology framework
38

actually embraces both by defining organizational community as “sets of relations
between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource
space or in geography” (Freeman & Audia, 2006, p. 145).
Organizational form is the concept that recognizes heterogeneity among different
populations of organizations (Ruef, 2000; Powell et al., 2005). Although the specific
definition of organizational form varies across individual work, a common feature across
these definitions emphasizes the structural pattern or core attributes shared among a
group of organizations (Desanctis & Fulk, 1999; Freeman & Audia, 2006;). In other
words, organizational form sets the boundary between diverse types of organizations, or
those known as “organizational populations” (Audia, Freeman, & Reynolds, 2006, p.
385). Key attributes that have been used to characterize different organizational forms
include: the organizing structure, such as the distinction made between “network forms of
organization” versus organizations that rely on market or hierarchical form of organizing
(e.g., Powell, 1990, p. 295), the use of communication technologies within organizations
(e.g., Fulk & Desanctis, 1999), and the social identity embraced by organizations (e.g.,
Ruef, 2000), among others.
In the same way as different biological species cohabitate in the same resource
environment, California’s immigrant-serving NGO community consists of a diverse array
of organizational forms, ranging from nonprofit organizations working on different social
issues, the generalist organizations that serve the entire immigrant populations versus
those that only cater to a specific population group, to organizations that engage primarily
in providing social, legal, or cultural services versus those that devote exclusively to
immigrant rights advocacy. The ecological environment first includes a geographic
39

dimension, as most immigrant-serving NGOs operate in a specific geographic confine;
this environment also embodies a relational dimension, which is constituted by all the
interorganizational linkages connecting members from the same or different populations
of immigrant-serving NGOs. Because organizations in this environment are of distinctive
forms, community ecology—whose focus is on multiple organizational forms and their
interaction with the larger environment— offers a useful theoretical lens to understand
how ecological interdependence derived from different organizational forms may
influence individual NGOs’ alliance building decisions.
The community ecology perspective assumes that different forms of organizations
depend on different sets of resources known as niche resources to survive and advance
their organizational goals (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006). For example, national newspaper
chains and specialized local dailies represent two distinct forms of news organizations.
Because they are positioned to target different spectrums of audience, the resources
needed for their respective daily operation often vary considerably, ranging from the
composition of news crews to produce content, to the type of channels needed for
newspaper distribution (Carroll, 1985).
Under the framework of community ecology, the interdependent relationships
formed between organizational populations are considered as an important community-
level influence governing individual organizations’ behaviors (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006).
Two types of interdependence are of particular relevance in the context of alliance
formation, commensalism and symbiosis. Commensalism refers to the interdependence
formed when organizations of the same form make similar resource demands on their
environment (Astley & Fombrun, 1983). As Hawley (1950) defines the term,
40

commensalism, “literally interpreted, means eating from the same table.” (p. 39) When
organizations are making similar demands on the environment, the mutual dependence on
resources may lead to cooperative behaviors among the organizations, especially when
there are common interests or shared problems that can be pursued more effectively
together (Hawley, 1968). At the same time, the community ecology framework
recognizes the competitive side of commensalism. As Aldrich and Ruef (2006) point out,
commensalism can range from full dyadic cooperation to full dyadic competition (Figure
1). They further categorize six types of commensalism depending on the extent to which
the presence of one organizational population deprives or benefits the presence of another.
(1) full competition, the situation where the growth of one population detracts from the
growth of another; (2) partial competition, when two organizational populations develop
asymmetrical interdependence, with only one population having negative impact on the
other; (3) predatory competition, which refers to the expansion of one population at the
expense of the other; (4) neutrality, where two populations in the same community have
no influence on each other; (5) partial mutualism, another form of asymmetrical
interdependence with one population benefiting from the presence of the other; and (6)
full mutualism, when two populations in overlapping niches benefit from the presence of
each other (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006, pp. 245-246). Competition is generally more likely to
occur in a resource-lean environment, and when the proliferation of certain organizational
population exceeds a niche’s maximum carrying capacity (Baum & Singh, 1994)—that
is, the maximum number of organizations in a population that can be supported by the
resource environment at a given time in time (Monge, Heiss, Margolin, 2008; Ruef,
2000).
41

Figure 1. An illustration of six types of commensalism proposed by Aldrich and Ruef
(2006).

Meanwhile, symbiotic relationships capture the interdependence between
organizations from different populations that feed on different niche resources. In a
symbiotic relation, two organizational populations possess different niches, but they
benefit from the presence of the other (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006). Depending on how the
boundary of each organizational population is drawn, symbiosis has been used to explain
the alliance relationships developed between organizations from different sectors, such as
between NGOs and corporations (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a, 2010b). It has also been
used to explain strategic alliances developed within the same sector, such as the alliances
forged between corporations working on different industries (Astley & Fombrun, 1983),
or those of nonprofit organizations working on different social issues (Shumate & Dewitt,
2008). Similar to the rationales behind cooperative commensalism, symbiosis takes place
because such relationships can provide mutual benefits for both parties involved (Audia,
Freeman, & Reynolds, 2006).
42

Viewing immigrant-serving NGOs as diverse organizational populations
occupying overlapping niche spaces, this study tests how commensalistic and symbiotic
interdependence, as manifested through the overlap of niche spaces among different
forms of immigrant-serving NGOs, may exert influence on the formation of alliance ties
among a particular organizational community. It proposes to combine this community
ecology mechanism with other key antecedents identified in existing alliance literature.
Together, it seeks to test the degree to which three types of niche overlap predicts the
chance of alliance formation. In addition, to take into account the theoretical claims from
the resource dependence theory, network theory and institutional theory, the following
three mechanisms of alliance tie formation are also tested: (1) the geographic proximity
of NGOs; (2) the existence of common third-party ties; and (3) the organizational status
of individual NGOs.
Niche overlap as a community-level source of alliance formation
Community ecology theory posits that the overlap of niche space is the
fundamental source that leads to the formation of commensalistic relationships among
organizations of the same population (Aldrich & Ruef, 2006; Hannan & Freeman, 1977,
1989). When it comes to operationalizing an organizational niche, however, the extant
literature does not suggest consensus. Instead, depending on the specific form of
organizations investigated, current research has focused on the different dimensions of
the organizational niche. For instance, Freeman and Hannan (1983) operationalized the
niche of restaurants by using information on the variety of services they provided. Baum
and Singh (1994) studied daycare organizations, and operationalized organizational niche
by the age range of the children these daycare centers served. In the nonprofit sector,
43

similarly, McPherson (1983) measures the niche of voluntary associations through the
demographic background of the members these organizations aim to attract. In addition,
in Shumate and Lipp’s (2008) study on the NGO issue network, they define NGOs’ niche
by “the generality of the organizations’ goals” (p. 183)—that is, whether the focal NGOs
have more heterogeneous goals (categorized as “generalist organizations”), as opposed to
those more narrowly focused on a specific social issue (categorized as “specialist
organizations”).
Out of these dimensions, two niche types prove useful for categorizing different
forms of nonprofit organizations: resource niche and identity niche (Dobrev, Ozdemir, &
Teo, 2006; Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a). The following section further discusses how
resource niche and identity niche can be used to classify diverse forms of immigrant-
serving NGOs. After that, it presents hypotheses regarding how each type of niche
overlap may give rise to interdependence that ultimately influences the likelihood of
alliance formation between organizations.
Resource niche overlap
The idea of resource niche shares a resource-dependence assumption in that
resource acquisition is of fundamental importance to achieving organizational goals
(Baum & Singh, 1994; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). Indeed, nonprofit organizations rely on
resource providers to sustain their daily operation and perform tasks of various types
(Grønbjerg, 1993). Financial resources, among other kinds, are not only critical for
organizational survival, but increasingly become a yardstick to evaluate nonprofit
performance (Carroll & Stater, 2009). Froelich (1999) identifies three primary sources
that nonprofit organizations rely on to obtain financial resources. First, private
44

contributions, including funding acquired through individual or corporate donations, as
well as foundation grants. This is also the most established means for NGOs to mobilize
funds. The second is funding from governmental agencies. The “market
failure/government failure” thesis views NGOs as the third-sector solution to social
issues (Salamon, 2003), and government grants and contracts increasingly represent a
form of public-nonprofit partnership in issue education and service delivery. Research
has also documented a significant increase in governmental funding in the nonprofit
sector over the past few decades. For instance, Salamon (2003) finds that government
funding accounts for 37 percent of the nonprofit sector’s revenue in 1997, up from 31
percent in 1977. For nonprofits working on certain issues such as human service,
government funding may even become a major component of an organization’s total
revenue—as high as 50 percent (Salamon, 2003). The final primary resource is that of
commercial activities, such as funds collected through providing program services or
membership fees. Commercial activities have been considered as a more controversial yet
emerging means for nonprofits to manage financial security (Carroll & Stater, 2009).
This development coincides with the recent trend that nonprofits are becoming more
“business-like” by adopting private sector strategies to generate revenues (Dart, 2004, p.
290)
Based on the sources from which nonprofit organizations obtain financial
resources, one way to operationalize the overlap of the resource niche is through
identifying mutual funders shared among the selected nonprofit populations. As
diversifying revenue portfolios can significantly reduce organizations’ financial
volatility, a growing number of nonprofits have begun to seek funding from multiple
45

sources (Carroll & Stater, 2009; Grønbjerg, 1993), including: (1) corporate entities such
as firms or corporations, where financial support to nonprofit organizations often acts as a
form of corporate philanthropy or corporate social responsibility communication
(Galaskiewicz, 1985b; Seitanidi & Crane, 2009); (2) private grant-making foundations,
which are nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations routinely making grants for their
own mission or charitable purposes (Young, 2001); and (3) governmental agencies
(Chavesc, Stephens, & Galaskiewicz, 2004).
Regardless of the financial source type, the overall amount of resources available
is often limited. In addition, the process of distributing funds to NGOs is a highly
selective process from the standpoint of funding institutions. For example, Froelich
(1999) points out that the shrinking government spending over the past decade has made
the process of selecting NGO partners even more competitive. The same situation holds
for the process of awarding grants to NGO projects by grant-making foundations. For
corporations, Shumate and O’Connor (2010b) argue that due to resource constraints,
corporations are highly selective in their decision of providing financial support to
NGOs, as most corporations only support a few NGOs and with a single NGO in an issue
industry. Given the selective nature of funding distribution across the board, the overlap
of resource niche thus implies potential competition between the organizations,
regardless of the type of funding sources.
However, in terms of how competition affects the formation of interorganizational
alliance, existing research does not offer a uniform prediction. On the one hand,
coordination among organizations that compete for similar resources inevitably bears
additional risk, particularly the type of “relational risk” (Das & Teng, 1998, p. 25).
46

Relational risk deals with the uncertainty emerging from the process of coordination.
When two organizations depend on the same set of resources, it is more likely for them to
exhibit opportunistic behaviors towards their partners, thus violating the spirit of
cooperation. The greater risk associated with the overlap of resource niche thus may steer
organizations away from cooperative activities in the first place.
On the other hand, there is emerging empirical evidence from both for-profit and
nonprofit sectors suggesting that competition does not necessarily discourage cooperative
behaviors (e.g., Rivard & Morrissey, 2003; Valente, Coronges, Stevens, & Cousineau,
2008). First, Nalebuff and Brandenburger (1997) observe that it is common for
competing firms to adopt the “co-opetition” (p. 28) strategy and still coordinate as long as
there are mutual gains from the joint action. Co-opetition refers to the simultaneous
pursuit of cooperation and competition between firms, especially at different stages of the
production process. For example, firms may cooperate in research and development
(R&D) stage but compete in the subsequent stage of product distribution (Nalebuff &
Brandenburger, 1997). Research has shown that over 50 percent of collaborative
relations, such as strategic alliances, are established between firms within the same
industry or among competitors (Harbison & Pekar, 1998). Gnyawali and Park (2009)
further note that such a strategy is especially important for firms of small or medium
sizes and to achieve R&D goals, as R&D innovation often requires greater resources than
what small firms can afford by themselves.
Second, Rivard and Morrissey (2003) propose that trust or perceived
trustworthiness between two competing organizations may mitigate the negative
influence of competition on coordination. They test this hypothesis on a group of
47

nonprofit children’s behavioral health organizations and find that the more competing
nonprofit leaders build trust, the more their agencies collaborate on administrative
functions.
Finally, Bunger (2013) discusses a prevalent institutional logic that motivates
NGOs relying on the same financial resources to collaborate. As a growing number of
funding institutions encourage partnerships when awarding grants, the alliance
relationships established between the competing NGOs thus signal conformity to such an
expectation. This logic is similarly observed by Atouba and Shumate (2015) in their
study of interorganizational collaboration among the infectious disease INGO
community. They find organizations that receive funding from common funders are more
likely to develop collaborative relationships, and such a pattern can be attributed to the
role of common funder in “instituting similarities” (Atouba & Shumate, 2015, p. 593).
That is, through implementing common expectations and evaluative standards, providing
opportunities for greater interorganizational interactions (such as through sponsoring
meetings or conferences), and mandating collaboration among NGOs, common funders
essentially act as a “broker” that connects the diverse group of NGOs that they sponsor.
Overall, the community ecology theory hypothesizes that the mutual dependence
on resources may lead to competition, cooperation, or the existence of both (Freeman &
Audia, 2006; Popielarz & McPherson, 1995). And empirical findings similarly suggest
that when two NGOs rely on the same funding sources, the effect of mutual funders on
the formation of alliance relationships is not uniform (Atouba & Shumate, 2010; Atouba
& Shumate, 2015; Ingram & Yue, 2008). To explore the relationship between the overlap
48

of financial resource niche and alliance tie formation in the immigrant-serving NGOs
community, the current study proposes the following hypothesis:
H1a. Within the immigrant-serving NGOs community, the number of
mutual funders shared is significantly related to the formation of alliance
ties between organizational dyads.
Identity niche overlap
Identity niche is the other dimension that characterizes nonprofit organizations’
niche space (Dobrev, Ozdemir, & Teo, 2006; Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a). Hannan and
Freeman (1984) contend that an organization’s identity is constituted by a set of core
features, and these features may manifest themselves in the organization’s mission, form
of authority, core technology, and the ways in which organizations relate to external
constituencies. The reason these features define an organization, as they argue, is because
efforts to change them “raise fundamental questions about the nature of the organization”
(Hannan & Freeman, 1984, p. 156).
Meanwhile, recent work on identity niche extends beyond internal organizational
features and emphasizes how organizational identity is also externally codified and
conferred based on stakeholders’ perceptions (Pólos, Hannan, & Carroll, 2002, Hsu &
Hannan, 2005). As Pólos, Hannan and Carroll (2002) argue, an organizational form exists
only when a set of organizations can be cognitively identified as categorically similar to
each other, and different from other organizations. Organizations of the same form
develop a collective identity, which becomes the shared perception about their social
standing vis-à-vis one another and relative to other organizational populations. They
wrote,
49

“…Social actors impose cultural codes on entities through reference to
their identities and forms. These cultural codes provide default
assumptions about behavior. They circumscribe how particular entities
ought to look and behave, because these entities are expected to conform
with the cultural codes that apply to them.” (Pólos, Hannan, & Carroll,
2002, p. 111)
In a similar vein, Hsu and Hannan (2005) argue that the formation of
organizational forms depends on identities. That is, an organizational form emerges only
when a group of organizations meet the stakeholders’ “codified category” (p. 477), and it
is up to the stakeholders to evaluate whether a group of organizations meet the
membership standard of a form. They further contend that two dimensions of identity can
be especially important in gaining recognition from potential evaluators: resonance, the
extent to which organizational identities capture the distinctions along social, ethnic,
cultural, or political lines; and authenticity, the extent to which the identity appeals to the
broader social and moral expectations for how things should work (Baron, 2004).
Focusing on the external aspect of identity niche, Dobrev, Ozdemir, and Teo
(2006) investigated the ecological interdependence between two organizational
populations in Singapore’s financial industry, commercial banks that represent an
established organizational form, and financial co-ops that represent a nascent form of
financial institutions. They further delineated two types of identity niche that are pivotal
for external perceptions regarding those two organizational populations: functional
identity and ideological identity. Specifically, Dobrev et al. (2006) define functional
identity based on the primary services an organization provides on a day-to-day basis. For
50

commercial banks and financial co-ops, as their primary services similarly revolve
around providing financial lending, there is a significant overlap of functional identity
between the two organizational populations. Meanwhile, the authors regard ideological
identity as the second dimension of externally conferred identity. They argue that
financial co-ops exhibit different ideological identity from commercial banks in that the
former represent a “strong socialist conviction” through open and voluntary membership,
and democratic control, whereas the latter are “quintessential capitalist institutions”
whose goal is to maximize profit (p. 584).
Although the discussion by Dobrev and colleagues (2006) regarding identity
niche is made within the specific context of financial institutions, the notion of functional
identity and ideological identity can be extended and applied to other organizational
populations. Below, the next part explicates how functional identity and ideological
identity can be operationalized in the immigrant-serving NGOs community to identify
niche overlap among different forms of organizations.
Functional identity niche. As Dobrev et al. (2006) suggest, functional identity
inheres in the principal services or activities an organization undertakes on a regular
basis. Teegen, Doh, and Vachani (2004) similarly argue that the type of activities an
NGO prioritizes would determine its role and the ways in which it is perceived in the
civil society. They further classify NGOs into three functional types based on
organizations’ primary activities: (1) The advocacy NGOs, the main goal of which is to
defend or promote social causes, raise public awareness, and lobby policymakers for
social change. Advocacy activities are more specifically defined as those “aimed at
influencing the social and civic agenda and at gaining access to the arena where decisions
51

that affect the social and civil life are made” (Schmid, Bar, & Nirel, 2008, p. 582). The
advocacy activities of NGOs can take multiple forms, ranging from conducting research,
holding conferences, monitoring and exposing actions, disseminating information to key
constituencies, developing codes of conduct, to directly getting involved in protests and
other forms of collective action (Hudson, 2002); (2) The service-provision NGOs, and the
primary activities of this type of NGOs revolve around delivering social and human
services (Minkoff, 2002). The range of service activities include relief efforts provided
during disasters, legal, language, or cultural assistance provided to under-served
populations, as well as the routine provision of information or other material goods to the
targeted communities. Finally, Teegen and colleagues (2004) proposed (3) the integrated
and hybrid NGOs. This category captures a growing population of nonprofits that
incorporate both advocacy and service provision functions, and they tend to prioritize
both types of activities equally. Regarding the emergence of such a hybrid organizational
form, Minkoff (2002) traces its historical development within the specific community of
women and racial-ethnic minority organizations. The author argues that the hybrid form
represents a reflective effort to borrow from the two dominant forms—the advocacy form
and the service provision form. At the same time, Minkoff (2002) contends that hybrid
NGOs constitute a unique type of their own, as they “must negotiate a niche that blends
population boundaries, finding ways to articulate a multidimensional identity and clarify
the form’s boundaries and sources of accountability.” (p. 383)
Following the functional typology outlined above, the immigrant-serving NGOs
community can be categorized into three different populations. The overlap of functional
identity niche is thus operationalized as two organizations of the same functional type.
52

Although the ecological framework posits that the overlap of niche in general may lead to
either competitive or cooperative behaviors, empirical evidence suggests that the overlap
of identity niche is more likely to lead to alliance than competition (Dobrev et al., 2006;
Shumate & O’Connor, 2010b). For example, research has documented a homophily
tendency based on functional type—that is, NGOs of the same functional identity are
more likely to form collaborative relationships (Atouba & Shumate, 2015).
The cooperative, rather than competitive interdependence based on functional
type can be explained by the structural compatibility argument (Chung, Singh, & Lee,
2000). That is, due to different priorities placed on advocacy versus service delivery,
NGOs of a different functional identity niche often exhibit a distinct organizational
structure, rely on different funding sources, and live up to different standards of
accountability (Yaziji & Doh, 2009). Therefore, the compatibility developed between
NGOs sharing the same functional identity is likely to facilitate the formation of alliance
ties among the organizational dyads:
H1b. Within the immigrant-serving NGOs community, the dyads sharing
the same functional identity are more likely to develop alliance
relationships than those of dissimilar functional identity.
Ideological identity niche. Within the specific community of financial
institutions, Dobrev and colleagues (2006) coined the term “ideological identity” to
distinguish how commercial banks are perceived differently from financial co-ops in
terms of their capitalist versus socialist orientations. Due to the inherent difference
between the immigrant-serving NGOs community and the community of financial
institutions, the capitalist-socialist distinction used in the latter does not directly apply to
53

the former. Alternatively, the current study uses NGOs’ clientele base to indicate the
ideological orientation espoused by the diverse immigrant-serving NGOs populations.
NGOs’ clientele base has been used in several existing studies to distinguish
different niche spaces occupied by the organizations (McPherson & Rotolo, 1996;
Popielarz & McPherson, 1995). For instance, McPherson and Rotolo (1996)
operationalized niche space using organizational members’ sociodemographic
characteristics, specified by the mean and standard deviation of members’ age and
educational level. They argue that the variation in members’ characteristics would
determine the social space each organization occupies, as well as the degree to which
such space overlaps. Following this line of reasoning, the current study focuses on a
specific dimension of clientele base that is salient for the immigrant-serving NGOs
community, the ethnic and cultural composition of members that an immigrant-serving
NGO claims to serve. Specifically, a key distinction is made between organizations that
serve the general immigrant community and have a more inclusive and heterogeneous
clientele base (they are called “generalist” NGOs hereafter); versus those that explicitly
claim to serve a specific immigrant population, such as immigrants from certain national
origins, (pan) racial/ethnic groups, or certain religious backgrounds (this type of NGOs is
called “specialist” hereafter).
Coming from the community ecology tradition, the resource partitioning theory
has long recognized the distinction between the generalist and specialist organizations
(Carroll, 1985; Carroll & Swaminathan, 2002), particularly with regard to their distinct
patterns of resource utilization. Generalist organizations are those that feed on a wide
range of resources and produce output in a variety of domains, such as the mass-market
54

producers of beer (Carroll & Swaminathan, 2000). On the other hand, specialist
organizations are those that depend on a specific environmental condition and produce
output in a narrow range of domains, such as microbreweries that only appeal to
consumers on a small scale (Carroll, 1985). When generalist and specialist organizations
co-exist in the same resource environment, the community ecology theory predicts that
generalist organizations are more likely to occupy the large center of the resource
distribution, whereas specialist organizations tend to thrive at small isolated niches in the
periphery (Carroll & Swaminathan, 2002; Shumate & Lipp, 2008).
In the context of immigrant-serving NGOs community, generalist and specialist
organizations demonstrate distinct ideological identities in the following ways. First, with
a heterogeneous clientele base, generalist immigrant-serving NGOs strive to appeal to a
diverse range of stakeholders in order to demonstrate accountability (Kirk & Nolan,
2010). Therefore, generalist NGOs are more likely to engage in social causes that exhibit
universal value claims, such as promoting immigrant rights as human rights (Fujiwara,
2005). They also seek to unite immigrant groups from disparate backgrounds for
collective benefits as opposed to advancing a particular group’s interests (Cordero-
Guzmán et al., 2008). On the other hand, specialist immigrant-serving NGOs operate on
particularized group interests (Uslaner & Conley, 2003). Instead of seeking to bridge
across different immigrant populations, specialist immigrant-serving NGOs are
predisposed to promoting ethnic and cultural solidarity within the specific community
that they serve (Pantoja, Menjívar, & Magaña, 2008).
Second, the distinct ideological identity also manifests itself in generalist and
specialist immigrant-serving NGOs’ orientations toward preservation versus assimilation
55

(Hung, 2007). For specialist immigrant-serving NGOs, since a large part of their mission
is to preserve cultural heritage and immigrants’ connections to their homelands, they are
more likely to affiliate with homeland organizations and engage in issues concerning the
country of origin (Portes, Escobar, & Radford, 2007). By contrast, generalist immigrant-
serving NGOs exhibit greater assimilation orientation. They establish a greater affinity
with local constituencies and are oriented towards issues affecting the host society. For
example, one of the generalist immigrant-serving NGOs, California Immigrant Policy
Center (CIPC), expresses such an assimilation orientation by connecting immigrant
interests with that of local community members. As its mission statement states:
“CIPC advances inclusive policies that build a prosperous future for all
Californians, using policy analysis, advocacy and capacity building to
unlock the power of immigrants in California.” (California Immigrant
Policy Center, 2016)
Regarding how immigrant-serving NGOs’ ideological identities may affect the
alliance building process, the current study tests the following two hypotheses. First,
whether the ideological niche overlap—operationalized as two organizations both serving
the general clientele or both serving the same specific clientele—are more likely to
establish alliance relationships than those that have dissimilar ideological identities. First,
the overlap of a clientele base means that two organizations are more likely to develop
shared visions in terms of whom they represent and serve. The same-ethnic alliance is
especially likely to form when the group interests are threatened. For example, the 2006
Immigrant Rights Movement witnessed a surge of alliance formation among Latino
immigrant-serving groups, due in large part to the passing of the Sensenbrenner bill that
56

criminalized undocumented immigrants, which affected the Latino immigrant community
the most (Pantoja, Menjívar, & Magaña, 2008). Second, sharing a clientele base indicates
the potential to provide matching resources to one another (Chung, Singh, & Lee, 2000).
Such compatibility further facilitates alliance building between the organizational dyads.
This hypothesis as formally stated is:
H1c: Within the immigrant-serving NGOs community, the dyads sharing
the same ideological identity are more likely to develop alliance
relationships than those of a dissimilar ideological identity.
In addition, the current study compared to NGOs that serve a specific immigrant
group, generalist NGOs are in a more advantageous position to gain alliance partners.
This is first based on the assumption of community ecology theory that generalist
organizations, as they enjoy the central position in the resource environment and the
advantage associated with economies of scale, are more likely to survive during the
process of competition. As Carroll and Swaminathan (2002) find, even when the smaller
generalists fail (in their case, the breweries), the successor organizations tend to be other
generalists, and these organizations often become larger and more general in their
product domains. Similarly, as generalist immigrant-serving NGOs can provide a broad
range of services and appeal to a diverse array of donors, they have greater opportunities
to access financial and other forms of resources (Kirk & Nolan, 2010). The greater access
to resources, therefore, better supports the creation and maintenance of multiple alliance
ties among the generalist NGOs.
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Second, Shumate and Lipp (2008)
2
argue that since generalist NGOs seek to
advocate for a variety of different issues, they often have greater incentive to build
alliances with other generalist organizations that are like-minded; furthermore, they are
also more likely to be selected as alliance partners, as “generalists are viewed as more
ideologically cooperative to the outside population” (p. 184). Taking the above
mechanisms together, this study proposes the following:
H1d: Generalist immigrant-serving NGOs are more likely to gain alliance
ties compared to specialist immigrant-serving NGOs.
Other mechanisms influencing alliance formation among NGOs
Based on the theory of community ecology, the above section has discussed how
community-level interdependence derived from the immigrant-serving NGOs’ niche
overlap may influence the process of alliance building and NGO partner selection.
However, the community ecology framework alone is not able to capture the full
spectrum of forces associated with the complex process of alliance building. To put
forward an integrative model that synthesizes community ecology theory and the three
theoretical perspectives on alliance formation, the following proposes three additional
mechanisms: (1) the role of geographic proximity informed by the theory of resource
dependence; (2) the role of common third-party partners informed by the theory of
network theory; and (3) the role of organizations’ legitimacy status informed both by the
resource dependence and the institutional theory.

2
It should be noted that Shumate and Lipp (2008) operationalize generalist NGOs
differently than the current study does. They operationalize NGOs’ generalist-specialist
type based on the range of goals pursued by the NGOs. Nevertheless, their arguments and
research findings are relevant and applicable in the current context.
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The role of geographic proximity
Geographic proximity has long been viewed as a significant antecedent leading to
the formation of alliance relationships among organizations (Shaw & Gilly, 2000;
Sternberg, 1999; Oerlemans & Meeus, 2005). There are a number of intertwined
processes through which geographic proximity facilitates the exchange of resources,
thereby promoting the formation of interorganizational alliance. First, geographic
proximity facilitates more frequent social interactions between organizations (Shaw &
Gilly, 2000). These interactions, either planned or serendipitous, reduce uncertainty and
offer opportunities for organizations to gain familiarity with one another, which is
essential for the exchange of resources and developing interdependence (Gulati & Sytch,
2008; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Second, geographic proximity can reduce costs at
various stages of alliance building (Ring & van de Ven, 1994). For example, at the initial
stage to explore and identify alliance partners, searching local information is generally
less costly than searching globally (Rosenkopf & Almeida, 2003). In the long-term
maintenance of alliance relationships, the cost associated with coordination and
interorganizational communication is also significantly lower between local partners
compared to geographically dispersed teams (Oerlemans & Meeus, 2005). The reduced
cost, therefore, may further motivate organizations to select localized over geographically
distant partners in resource exchange. Finally, from the perspective of community
ecology theory, Audia and Kurkoski (2012) contend that with the overlap of niche space,
geographically distant organizations experience primarily constraints arising from
competition, whereas geographically proximate organizations are more likely to
experience both competition and resource exchange opportunities. Geographic proximity
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thus alleviates the negative impact of competition by facilitating resource exchanges,
thereby encouraging alliance building.
Extensive empirical evidence has further lent support to the idea that
organizations generally prefer building a localized alliance, and geographical proximity
can significantly increase the likelihood of alliance tie formation. Reuer and Lahiri
(2014), for example, investigated the role of geographic distance on the formation of
R&D collaboration, a specific form of interorganizational alliance for the purpose of
sharing resources related to research and development. They conducted an empirical
analysis on the semiconductor industry, an industry uniquely characterized by a high
level of geographic clustering (Almeida & Kogut, 1999). The analysis showed that even
within the same geographic cluster, proximity still significantly increases the likelihood
of R&D collaboration, and such effect is even stronger when the firms do not have prior
alliance ties, operate in different product markets, or possess different levels of
technological resources.
Shumate, Fulk and Monge (2005) examined the interorganizational alliance
network within the HIV-AIDS NGOs community, which contrasts with the
semiconductor industry and represents a globally dispersed organizational community. In
testing the role of geographic proximity, operationalized as the headquarters of various
NGOs’ located in the same region, this study identifies a similar pattern where alliance
relationships are more likely to take place between organizations that are geographically
proximate.
Across studies conducted on organizational communities of different scales,
geographic proximity is consistently found to contribute to the formation of alliance ties.
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Based on these robust findings, the current study hypothesizes that immigrant-serving
NGOs operating in the same geographic area are more likely to develop alliance
relationships. Geographically, as immigrant-serving organizations concentrate in major
metropolitan areas (Hung, 2007), the current study first identifies individual immigrant-
serving NGO’s geographic locations based on their headquarters, before coding their
locations into one of three major metropolitan areas in California, following the regional
categories made in Gleeson and Bloemraad (2012): 1) Southern California area extending
from Los Angeles to San Diego; 2) The Central Valley area including cities from
Sacramento to Stockton and Modesto; and 3) the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area. The
specific hypothesis proposed is:
H2: Within the immigrant-serving NGOs community, organizational dyads
operating in the same geographic area are more likely to develop alliance
relationships than those operating in different geographic areas.
The role of common third party partners
The network perspective has particularly emphasized the presence of common
third party ties in improving the chance of alliance formation among organizational dyads
(Ahuja, 2000; Chung, Singh, & Lee, 2000; Gulati & Gargiulo, 1999). First, as an
endogenous structural signature, transtivity is commonly exhibited in many affinity
networks at both the individual and organizational levels. Transtivity denotes the
structural tendency for one actor to connect to its indirect ties (Monge & Contractor,
2003). It is rooted in the balance theory, which posits that if a is a friend of b, and b is a
friend of c, the friendship between a and c would be anticipated based on a balance
schema (Heider, 1946). At the organizational level, forming alliance ties (as opposed to a
61

conflictual, or no tie) with a common third party thus reflects the focal organization’s
preference for a congruent cognitive structure (Krackhardt & Kliduff, 1999). Second, the
presence of common third party ties serves as an important referral mechanism in
identifying prospective alliance partners. Gulati (1995a) argues that due to information
asymmetry in the markets, it is often difficult or costly for an organization to directly
evaluate the resource endowment, reliability, and competence of potential partners. The
common third party partners thus not only supply the focal organization with convenient
information about the potential partners, but they also reinforce a reputation
mechanism—that is, because either party’s adverse behaviors can be reported to the
common partners, and indirect ties serve as an effective deterrent to adverse behaviors
(Gulati, 1995a). Furthermore, because the prospective partner’s reliability has already
been scrutinized by the third party actor, the focal organization can more confidently
extend its trust to their partner’s partners (Uzzi, 1997).
The significant association between the presence of common third party ties and
the increased likelihood of alliance formation has been identified in multiple industry
fields and also across the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. In particular, studies have noted
that when the environment becomes more uncertain, organizations tend to rely more
heavily on such third party referrals as opposed to using independent sources to select
alliance partners (Chung, Singh, & Lee, 2000). Viewing indirect ties as an important
structural mechanism, Gulati (1995a) tested the role of common third party partners in
explaining alliance formation among firms across multiple industry fields between 1980
and 1989. The longitudinal analysis confirms that previously unconnected firms are more
likely to enter into alliances if they have common partners. A study on a cross-sector
62

collaboration network composed of public and private nonprofit community
organizations similarly identifies the significant association between common third party
ties and the formation of interorganizational collaboration relationships (Lee, Lee, &
Feiock, 2012).
Given the significant effect corroborated in existing literature, the following
hypothesis tests the degree to which common third party ties, regardless of the
organizational type of these ties, influence the formation of interorganizational alliance
among the immigrant-serving NGOs community.
H3: Within the immigrant-serving NGOs community, the greater the number of
common third party ties shared, the more likely the organizational dyads will
form alliance ties.
The role of organizational status
Last, both resource dependence and insitutitional theory highlights the importance
of organizational status in shaping one’s alliance partner choice (Atouba & Shumate,
2015; Lin, Yang, & Arya, 2009; Stern, Dukerich, & Zajac, 2014). Viewing the
organizational community as a stratified system, Podolny and Phillips (1996) define
organizational status as the relative position or standing of an organization in relation to
other members in the community. As they further explicate, the status of an organization
can derive from both intrinsic and extrinsic sources. First, status is closely associated
with the merit or quality of outputs produced by an organization. As “status carries with it
the attribution of superior quality” (Podolny & Phillips, 1996, p. 455), organizations that
demonstrate past success in producing quality goods—ranging from products, services, to
other forms of contribution— enjoy elevated status. Second, status can derive from the
63

social judgement made by external arbiters or validating groups (Sauder, Lynn, &
Podolny, 2012). For example, Perrow’s (1961) study on competiting hospitals shows that
when it comes to definining a hopsital’s status, extrinsic factors such as appearance, labor
practices, and political leanings, matter more than the intrinsic quality of the health care
in shaping the judgements of external arbiters. Consistent with what Washington and
Zajac (2005) claim, status in such a sense is “socially constructed, intersubjectively
agreed-upon, and accepted ordering or ranking of individuals, groups, organizations, or
activities in a social system.” (p. 284)
In organizational alliance partner selection, high-status organizations make
attractive alliance partners for a number of reasons. From a resource-based view, as
organizational status signals quality (Podolny & Phillips, 1996), high status organizations
are generally perceived as more competent in generating or accessing resources. Indeed,
empirical findings identify a strong association between NGOs’ status and their ability in
obtaining financial grants, as public agencies and grant-making foundations often prefer
organizations with established credentials (Grønbjerg et al., 1995). Galaskiewcz,
Bielefeld, and Dowell’s (2006) study similarly finds that community-based charitable
organizations with high status grow faster than their low status counterparts. Institutional
theory also recognizes the importance of connecting to high status organizations to gain
social approval and establish legitimacy (Podolny & Page, 1998). Organizations of high
status are often perceived as more legitimate than those with low status, and are thus in a
better position to confer their own legitimacy on their partners (Atouba & Shumate, 2015;
Bitektine, 2011; Johnson, Dowd, & Ridgeway, 2006). Finally, collaborating with high
64

status organizations would generally involve less risk and uncertainty (Gulati et al.,
2012), as the external community has already judged the prospective partners favorably.
Previous studies examining the role of organizational status have operationalized
it in multiple forms, such as reputation or prestige (Lange, Lee, & Dai, 2011; Shenkar &
Yuchtman-Yaar, 1997), the size of an organization (Kimberly, 1976), or the relative
position of an organization in a market (Li & Berta, 2002). Given the specific nature of
the nonprofit sector, the current study focuses on two dimensions of this construct: First,
a social-structural dimension that emphasizes the network location of an individual
organization within the larger interorganizational network, indicated by an organization’s
degree centrality in the overall interorganizational network (Podolny, 1998; Powell,
Koput, Smith-Doerr, & Owen-Smith, 2005). Scholars have specifically referred to this
dimension as “network status” (Lin, Yang, & Arya, 2009, p. 924). Second, a social-
cultural dimension of status that deals with the cultural or historical legacy of an
organization, often operating as the endorsement from the external arbiters on the basis of
an organization’s conformity to social norms (Washington & Zajac, 2005). For the
immigrant-serving NGOs community, an important indicator of one’s social-cultural
status is whether an NGO establishes cross-sector ties with governmental organizations,
either in the form of funding or inter-agency collaboration (Brinkerhoff, 2002). Below,
two indicators of organizational status, structural centrality, and governmental
partnership are elaborated in details.
Structural centrality. Structural centrality denotes the degree to which an
organization is connected to other members in the community, and is measured by the
number of organizational ties established (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Across the
65

alliance literature, degree centrality has been an established indicator of network status
(e.g., Grønbjerg et al., 1995; Powell et al., 2005). The primary reason is that central
network location affords the focal organization a significant advantage in accumulating
resources and getting exposed to multiple streams of information (Galaskiewcz,
Bielefeld, & Dowell, 2006). As Powell, Koput, and Smith-Doerr (1996) put it, network
centrality “shapes a firm’s reputation and generates visibility, producing access to
resources via benefit-rich networks” (p. 121). With greater access to resources,
organizations with high degree centrality are thus better equipped to producing quality
outcome and acquiring competitive advantage (Grønbjerg et al., 1995). They therefore
make attractive partners because of such advantages.
To formally test the degree to which network status influences NGOs’ alliance
partner choice, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H4a. The higher the level of degree centrality of an immigrant-serving
NGO, the greater the likelihood the NGO will attract future alliance ties
within the community.
Governmental partnership. In addition to network status, the extent to which an
organization receives endorsement or recognition from external validating groups
indicates the socio-cultural dimension of status (Perrow, 1961). Depending on sector and
industry type, external validating groups, also known as “external arbiters” (Saunder,
Lynn, & Podolny, 2012, p. 268), can range from professional associations that calibrate
industry standards to public regulatory bodies, such as the Food and Drug Administration
in the case of the pharmaceutical industry (Kim, 2012). In the nonprofit sector, Atouba
and Shumate (2015) propose that consultative status, a special status acquired when
66

developing collaborative relationships with international governmental organizations
(IGOs), can elevate international NGOs’ legitimacy status. They argue that because IGOs
represent a nation-state’s power in the international system, collaborating with them
grants NGOs international recognition, as well as potential opportunities to impact
policy-making processes.
Following a similar line of reasoning, partnership with governmental
organizations is used as an indicator of externally conferred status in the current study.
For immigrant-serving NGOs, it is a rather prevalent practice for them to establish
partnership with governmental organizations, and such partnership can take the form of
financial grants, contracted work, or direct collaboration on projects and service delivery
(Young, 2000). However, given the disproportionally large number of NGOs, the
opportunity to partner with governmental organizations is far from being evenly
distributed. Research has shown that public agencies are highly selective in the types of
NGOs that they support (Suárez, 2010). Being able to receive such parternship
consequently signals the official endorsement of an NGO, and it often represents the
recognition of an NGO’s expertise in a given social issue area (Brinkerhoff, 2002).
The following hypothesis tests the role of having governmental partnership, an
external status indicator, in predicting NGOs’ alliance partner selection:
H4b. Immigrant-serving NGOs that form partnerships with governmental
organizations are more likely to attract alliance ties than those that do not
have such partnership.
Thus far, this chapter has proposed a set of hypotheses derived from the
community ecology theory, and it synthesizes three other correlating factors as suggested
67

by the diverse strands of literature on NGOs’ alliance formation, particularly the three
theoretical perspectives as reviewed in Chapter 2. Figure 2 presents an integrative model
that aims to test various sources of influence on immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance
building and partner selection process: First, the overlap of the resource niche, functional
identity niche, and ideological identity niche represent the influence proposed by the
community ecology theory. As immigrant-serving NGOs consist of diverse
organizational populations that feed on overlapping sets of resources, the cooperative or
competitive relationships developed between different organizational populations are
likely to influence individual immigrant NGO’s alliance partner choice. Second, the
model includes two dyadic-level sources of influence, the degree to which two
organizations operate in the same geogrpahic space, and the presence of common third-
party partners among two organizations. It hypothesizes that both geographic proximity
and the presence of common partners would significantly increase the chance of alliance
formation between the organizational dyads. Finally, two status-related organizatioal
attributes are included in the model. It investigates the status of an individual NGO,
indicated by the degree to which an organization occupies the central location in the
alliance network and whether an organization acquires partnership status with
governmental organizations, in predicting the chance of establishing alliance ties with
other organizations in the community.

68

Figure 2. A summary of organizational-, dyadic-, and community-level factors predicting
the likelihood of alliance ties formation among immigrant-serving NGOs in California

69

Chapter Four: NGO Alliance Communication across Multiple Technology
Platforms
Moving beyond a singular platform to study immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance
partner choices, the second component of this dissertation focuses on how multiple
technology platforms, specifically organizational websites versus two social media
platforms—Twitter and Facebook, afford different communication spaces for NGOs to
initiate and maintain interorganizational connections. Combining the literature on the
technology use by nonprofit organizations (e.g., Nah & Saxton, 2012; Treem & Leonardi,
2012) and the concept of goal-attaining communication ecologies (Ball-Rokeach et al.,
2012; Broad, 2015), this study conceptualizes NGOs’ interorganizational networks across
multiple technology platforms as overlapping organizational communication ecologies
constructed to fulfill different goals, including (1) the goal of information broadcasting
and dissemination; (2) the goal of community building and engagement; and (3) the goal
to communicate accountability towards NGOs’ stakeholders. It posits that as each
technology platform is equipped with varied capacities to fulfill these goals, and NGOs of
different functional types prioritize each goal differently, the emerging
interorganizational networks across multiple technology platforms are thus likely to
exhibit structural divergence, defined as (1) the extent to which multiple
interorganizational networks exhibit different patterns of network structure; and (2) the
extent which the same tie formation mechanism may cast varying levels of influence
across the multiple networks.
This chapter starts by reviewing the growing literature on the adoption and
utilization of communication technologies among NGOs, identifying three major goals
70

associated with the use of communication technologies by nonprofit organizations. After
distinguishing the nature of interorganizational ties built through organizational websites
versus those formed on social media platforms, it argues that the website-based alliance
ties align with the goal of accountability and legitimacy communication, whereas the
social media-based interorganizational relations align with the goal of information
sharing and dissemination. Furthermore, it proposes to use the concept of goal-attaining
communication ecologies (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2012; Broad, 2015) to explain why
multiple interorganizational networks may exhibit structural divergence. The
communication ecology concept posits that the web of relational connections built by an
organization is essentially reflective of the goals pursued by the organization, and the
composition of this resource network is influenced both by the communication context
where the organization is embedded and the goal(s) pursued by the organization (Broad,
2015). Viewing immigrant-serving NGOs as agents prioritizing different goals, and each
technology platform representing a distinct communication context, this study further
tests the role of status seeking logic—a tie formation pattern where organizations are
motivated to connect with high-status partners in order to signal legitimacy and
accountability (Washington & Zajac, 2005) and the role of NGOs’ functional type—an
organizational-level attribute that directly affects NGOs’ goal priority— in differently
shaping the likelihood of ties formation across multiple technology platforms.
Goals associated with NGOs’ use of communication technologies
The rapid proliferation of communication technologies among the nonprofit
sector has drawn considerable scholarly attention over the past decade (e.g., Bortree &
Seltzer, 2009; Briones, Kuch, Liu, & Jin, 2011; Curtis et al., 2010; Lovejoy & Saxton,
71

2012; Nah & Saxton, 2012; Treem & Leonardi, 2012; Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas,
2009; Waters & Jamal, 2011). More than maintaining an active online website, NGOs
today have begun to incorporate multiple technology platforms, ranging from websites
and microblogging services to various social networking sites to achieve advocacy goals
during campaigns (Goldkind & McNutt, 2014), to engage with the stakeholder
communities (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009), and to manage strategic alliance
relationships with partners (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012). In a survey with over 9,000 small
to medium-sized nonprofits in the United States and Canada, the Nonprofit
Communication Trends report (2014) found that over 90% of nonprofits are currently
using at least one type of communication technology platform— with Facebook being on
top of the list—in their everyday communication of organizational causes. The utilities of
using these technology platforms include attracting financial donations, engaging
organizational clientele, building brand awareness, among others (Nonprofit
Communication Trends Report, 2014)
3
.
Focusing on the adoption of social media technology among the nonprofit sector,
Nah and Saxton (2012) propose a theoretical model that examines three important facets
of NGOs’ social media utilization: (1) adoption, (2) the frequency of use, and (3) the
dialogic capacity as exhibited in organizational communication with stakeholders. Based
on the empirical analysis of 100 large U.S. nonprofit organizations’ social media use
behaviors, they identify four sources of influence that govern how NGOs use social
media: first, the strategic mission of an NGO matters. Specifically, organizations that
focus more on acquiring funds from external funders are more likely to adopt social

3
http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/resources/2014-nonprofit-communications-
trends-report/
72

media, and they demonstrate greater activity in using these platforms too. Second, the
amount of resources an NGO possesses, or what the authors call “organizational
capacity” (Nah & Saxton, 2012, p. 5), is positively related to an NGO’s social media
adoption and use. Third, the governance structure of an NGO emerges to become an
important factor. Specifically, the authors find that non-membership NGOs, those with
large board sizes, and those with a more efficient program-spending ratio are more likely
to adopt social media. Finally, organizations’ dependence on external resource
environment plays a significant role. When NGOs depend more on external stakeholders,
as indicated by the revenues collected from public contributions and government
fundings, they are more often motivated (or pressured) to use social media in stakeholder
communication.
The growing stream of research also identifies three major goals associated with
NGOs’ use of technology platforms. The following discusses these goals in details.
Information broadcasting and dissemination
One of the most articulated goals for using online communication technologies is
to disseminate information about NGOs’ mission and programs of service (Schneider,
2003). As a long-standing technology platform, the website of an NGO can carry
narratives, and increasingly interactive multimedia content, for the purpose of displaying
program and event information. In addition, organizations can also utilize hyperlinks,
which provide a greater issue context and external content, to educate the public about
the greater issues that they advocate for (e.g., social justice, environmental issues, or
health care issues). Presenting such information on the website not only provides NGOs
with a less costly means (compared to brochures and other offline means of presentation),
73

but it also gives greater control on the type of self-presentation an organization intends to
deliver to the public (Kent, Taylor, & White, 2003).
In terms of program broadcasting and information dissemination, networked
communication tools such as social media are observed to fulfill a similar function, but
through a different set of information diffusion mechanisms. For example, Waters (2009)
interviewed 39 nonprofit leaders about their organizations’ social media use, and a
number of top functions nominated included streamlining organizations’ internal
management, communicating with volunteers and members, and promoting
organizational programs and services among the targeted audience. Meanwhile,
compared to the use of websites, scholars have noted the enhanced efficiency of using
social media to broadcast organizational information, primarily due to social media’s
capacity to diffuse information through large-scale, decentralized networks (Lovejoy &
Saxton, 2012). This quality has made social media a highly desirable platform for NGOs
to disseminate information, especially when immediacy becomes a priority, such as
during the event of coordinated protests or crises. During the Occupy Wall Street
movement, for instance, Twitter and Facebook were widely used by advocacy NGOs to
broadcast their organizational mission and event-related updates towards the general
public (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012).
Community engagement and building
In addition to broadcasting one-way messages, online technology platforms have
been investigated for their potential in forging interactive engagement with the public and
stakeholder communities. Such an engagement goal has been interchangeably referred as
the “community building” function, which focuses on the activities that technology
74

platforms perform to “interact, share, and converse with stakeholders in a way that
ultimately facilitates the creation of an online community with its followers” (Lovejoy &
Saxton, 2012, p. 343). It is also similar with the notion of “dialogic communication”, a
relational communication process essential to “enable organizations and stakeholders to
interact, fostering understanding, goodwill, and a shared view of reality.” (Taylor &
Kent, 2014, p. 391).
Central to the goal of community engagement is the concept of interactivity.
Sundar, Kalyanaraman, and Brown (2003) propose two dimensions of interactivity that
are of great relevance in understanding how technology platforms can fulfill the
community engagement function between NGOs and their stakeholder communities. The
first dimension is functional interactivity, which deals with specific technological
features of the sites that enable the public to directly interact with the focal organization;
the second dimension, contingency interactivity, is the ability to enable individuals, or
“interactants” to switch roles and interact with one another (Sundar, Kalyanaraman, &
Brown, 2003, p. 35). Lovejoy and colleagues (2012) have more specifically noted about
social media’s ability to enhance contingency interactivity. For instance, the
technological features of Twitter support contingent interaction in a way that users can
interact with one another through “mention” and “reply” functions in tweets. By inviting
multiple users to engage with the messages sent out by the focal organization, and
hosting interaction among a network of users, technology platforms thus have the
potential to strengthen the connections among multiple stakeholders of an NGO.
After critically evaluating the engagement performance of technology platforms,
however, recent scholarship indicates that most NGOs have yet to unleash the interactive
75

potential (Cho, Schweickart, & Haase, 2014). Among them, Bortree and Seltzer’s (2009)
study of environmental activists’ Facebook use showed that social media sites have
predominantly broadcast one-way messages. Lovejoy, Waters, and Saxton (2012)
analyzed 73 nonprofit organizations’ tweeting activities and following behaviors, and
their findings similarly show that less than 20% of NGOs’ tweets demonstrate
conversations, and only 16% of total tweets show indirect connections to specific users.
Accountability and legitimacy communication
The nonprofit literature has identified accountability and legitimacy
communication as another important goal associated with the use of technology platforms
(O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2006; Saxton & Guo, 2011; Saxton, Neely, & Guo, 2014). When
defining accountability in the nonprofit context, existing literature has emphasized two
important aspects of it, financial accountability and social accountability (O’Dwyer &
Unerman, 2006). Financial accountability deals with the “tracking and reporting on
allocation, disbursement, and utilization of financial resources.” (Brinkerhoff, 2001; p, 10)
Saxton and colleagues (2014) argue that because the “marketization” of the nonprofit
donation has intensified since the 1990s, nonprofit donors have now placed greater
emphases on the “return on investment” than merely “good intentions” from NGOs that
they provide funds (Saxton, Neely, & Guo, 2014, p. 1). To make organizations’ financial
performance transparent, therefore, becomes an important way for NGOs to communicate
financial accountability towards their donors (Hodgkinson & Nelson, 2001).
Meanwhile, scholars have pointed out the general moral responsibility carried by
the nonprofit sector, especially social justice-oriented NGOs (Kent, Taylor, & White,
2003; O’Dwyer & Unerman, 2006). In such a sense, nonprofits are not only expected to
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exhibit accountability towards direct funders, but they also need to embrace the broader
expectation coming from the general society. As Saxton and Guo (2011) argue, there is
an increasing need “for greater downward accountability to clients and other affected
constituents, particularly the need for organizations to strive for responsiveness in their
accountability mechanisms by ensuring that governance arrangements and strategic-level
decisions accord with the demand of a broad range of stakeholders.” (p. 272)
Based on these two aspects of accountability, Saxton and Guo (2011) further
develop a two-dimensional view of web-based accountability communication, where
disclosure and dialogue are included as two central components. Specifically, disclosure
includes a series of web-reporting practices that NGOs undertake in disclosing financial
information and performance indicators on online platforms such as websites (Saxton,
Neely, & Guo, 2014). This component partially overlaps with the goal of program
broadcasting and information dissemination, but it concerns more specifically the
information shared about an NGO’s performance and organizational output. The
component of dialogue, meanwhile, overlaps with the goal of promoting community and
stakeholder engagement. This dimension states that the dialogic process is not only
conducive in uniting the stakeholders community, but the interaction itself can signal
social accountability and NGOs’ willingness to solicit stakeholder inputs in its
governance.
As a highly related concept of accountability, NGOs’ legitimacy is defined as “the
extent to which an organization searches for justification for its existence from its
environment.” (Ganesh, 2003, p. 565) The use of technology platforms to communicate
legitimacy has long been recognized in the nonprofit literature (e.g., Ganesh, 2003;
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Young, 2013), and central to this legitimacy communication process is the practice of
building alliance ties to peer organizations in the community. In particular, the research
literature has identified the behavior of connecting to those of high-status in order to
elevate one’s own legitimacy (Margolin et al., 2015; Young, 2013). For instance, driven
by the goal of legitimacy enhancement, Young (2013), found that claims-maker
organizations (e.g., advocacy NGOs) are motivated to establish hyperlinks to others that
are more tenured, professionalized, and/or popular in the network.
In understanding how various goals are related to NGOs’ use of technology
platforms, the majority of existing research is focused on the content aspect of platform
use. That is, through analyzing the content of websites, tweets, or Facebook posts
(Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Lovejoy et al., 2012; Park, Rodgers, & Stemmle, 2013),
researchers inductively make inferences about how and why NGOs utilize certain
platforms. The relational aspect of using technology platforms—that is, the strategic act
of forming connections with other organizations across multiple technology platforms—
is generally less examined from the standpoint of achieving organizational goals. To
bridge this gap, the next section makes explicit the argument that the relational building
outcome—that is, the interorganizational alliance networks emerging from multiple
technology platforms—represent the strategic goal-achieving intentions of NGOs,
particularly (1) the goal of information dissemination, and (2) the goal of accountability
and legitimacy communication.
Technology platforms and the affordance of distinctive communication relations
Like many nonprofit organizations, immigrant-serving NGOs are observed to
connect with peer organizations by simultaneously using multiple technology platforms,
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including 1) organizational websites, (2) Twitter, and (3) Facebook. The emerging
interorganizational networks surrounding this community therefore extend beyond a
singular form to include a set of multi-dimensional and overlapping networks (Curtis et
al., 2010; Gonzalez-Bailon, 2009; Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012).
In terms of fostering interorganizational connections, all three platforms enable
NGOs to connect with selected others through directional links. The directionality of
connection is an important feature distinguishing online interorganizational relationships
from the offline counterparts, as the latter are more often mutual and symmetrical in
nature (Park & Thewall, 2003). Specifically, directionality can be best understood to
reflect sender organizations’ connecting intention. Organizations that initiate more ties
with other organizations are considered as active actors in online relationship building,
either because these organizations are better motivated to grow their relational
connections through a particular technology platform (Thrall, Stecula, & Sweet, 2014); or
they have greater resources at disposal to support the regular maintenance of virtual ties.
On the other hand, organizations that receive more incoming links are often those with
great prestige, high organizational status, or exhibiting specific characteristics that appeal
to the potential partners (Knoke, 1998).
Although multiple forms of online networks are intrinsically linked to NGOs’
offline activities (Ackland & O’Neil, 2011; Pilny & Shumate, 2012), one needs to
recognize the distinct modes of connection afforded by each technology platform—such
as connecting through “following” on Twitter, “like” on Facebook, versus creating
hyperlinks on the organizational website; and how the variation of connecting mode may
have implications to the nature of interorganizational relations built. Before making any
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systematic comparison of these online interorganizational networks, it is crucial to first
develop a more nuanced understanding regarding the nature of interorganizational
relations sustained by organizational websites versus by social media platforms.
Hyperlink ties as representational communication relations
On the platform of organizational websites, hyperlinks are the primary connective
device among a community of organizations (Ackland & O’Neil, 2011; Park & Thelwall,
2003; Shumate & Lipp, 2008). As Park and Thelwall (2003) maintain, hyperlinks are not
merely a technological capability that enables websites to randomly connect with one
another; they are often “designed, sustained, or modified by websites’ creators to reflect
their communicative choices and agendas” (p. 6). In the context of interorganizational
alliance, the hyperlinking decision is highly indicative of organizations’ strategic
considerations. For example, Shumate and O’Connor (2010a, 2010b) find that in
selectively linking to cross-sector partners, both corporations and NGOs “co-construct
the alliance with stakeholders in order to mobilize economic, social, cultural, and
political capital” (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a, p. 577). For corporations, hyperlinks to
NGOs act as a form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication, whereas
NGOs’ links to corporations are driven by a similar logic of communicating legitimacy to
their stakeholders. Along this line of reasoning, the authors further posit that
organizations’ linking decisions, as well as the structure of the emerging web of
interorganizational relations, are likely to be shaped by a set of mechanisms different
from those that shape traditional offline alliance relationships, such as resource
interdependence (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003), organizational trust (Vangen & Huxham,
2003), or structural complementarity (Harrison et al., 2001).
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In further elaborating on the nature of hyperlink connections within the context of
multidimensional networks, Shumate and Contractor (2014) propose that the taxonomy
of communication relations consists of four types, where hyperlink connections are
conceptualized as the type of “representational relations” (p. 452). As they contend,
representational ties are about communicating an association among actors towards a
third party or the general public. In other words, the process of selectively building a
hyperlink connection is about making visible certain relationships that an organization
perceives as desirable or advantageous to communicate. Shumate and Contractor (2014)
further differentiate representational ties from “flow relations” (p. 451)—the type of ties
characterized by the exchange or transmission of information and resources; and from the
“affinity relations” (p. 453)—the type of relations that are more enduring, and often rely
on substantial investment from both parties.
Overall, website-based interorganizational network can be best conceptualized as
a form of representational communication network. The targeted audience for this form
of communication is not the partnering organization(s), but the greater stakeholder
communities external to the organizational dyads.
Followship on social media as communication flow relations
The interorganizational relationships on social media are formed through the
“follow” and “like” function on Twitter and Facebook respectively. Although Twitter and
Facebook are unique social media platforms, the connecting mechanism of these two
platforms operates in a similar way. With one organization “following” or “liking”
another organization’s social media account, the two organizations establish an informal
yet stable information-sharing mechanism where the following organization (i.e., the
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organization initiates the “follow” or “like”) becomes a regular recipient of messages sent
by the followed organization (i.e., the organization that receives “follow” or “like”).
Given a great majority of content posted by NGOs on social media platforms are about
organizational information, such as organizational events or programs of service
4

(Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012), the extent to which such followship relations enable
information exchange and sharing can be rather significant.
The following function on social media thus enables an NGO to actively acquire
information from selected sources. In addition to accessing one’s original posts, the
diffusion features such as “retweet” or “share” (i.e., directly quoting other users’ posts
and sharing them in one’s own followship network) further enable the focal organization
to access content from their partners’ social networks (Lerman & Ghosh, 2010). In such a
sense, the following relations on social media have the potential to expose the focal NGO
to a wide spectrum of information, ranging from the news events that concern the
organizational community to instrumental information such as grants or fundraising
opportunities.
Meanwhile, the act of “following” serves as a form of information surveillance at
the interorganizational level (Miller & Jablin, 1991). That is, in order to reduce
environmental uncertainty, organizations are motivated to scan the most immediate
environment and engage in constant monitoring of their partners or competitors’
behaviors (Choo, 1999). By establishing the “follow” or “like” relationships,

4
In Lovejoy and Saxton’s (2012) content analysis of 100 nonprofits organizations’
tweets, the percentage of tweets they identify as “disseminating organizational
information” is about 60%.
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organizations thus create an ongoing information feed that keeps them informed about
their partners and the greater environment.
Taken together, the followship networks formed on social media platforms can be
best conceptualized as a communication flow network, characterized by the exchange and
sharing of information among the organizational dyads (Shumate & Contractor, 2014).
Functionally speaking, it fulfills organizations’ information needs by facilitating
information exchange with one’s partners, enabling an organization to stay on top of the
organizational community, and offering ways for an organization to scan their immediate
network environment.
Goal-attaining communication ecologies and the divergence of interorganizational
networks across platforms
Having distinguished the nature of interorganizational relations across different
technology platforms, this section introduces the concept of goal-attaining
communication ecologies (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2012; Broad, 2015) and discusses how
this construct can help identify and explain the structural differences emerging from
NGOs’ multiple interorganizational alliance networks across technology platforms.
The concept of communication ecology
Ball-Rokeach and colleagues (2012) proposed the concept of communication
ecology and define it as a network of communication resources constructed by an agent
(it could be an individual or an organization) in pursuit of goals, and in the context of a
specific communication environment. The term “ecology” is used to capture the
interactive and evolving relationships among a set of communication resources selected.
The concept of communication ecology shares important theoretical underpinnings from
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the media system dependency (MSD) theory (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1998; Wilkin, Ball-
Rokeach, Matsaganis, & Cheong, 2007). The MSD theory concerns the relationship
between individuals and media systems, and it posits that individuals depend on different
media sources at varying degrees in order to achieve particular goals, such as
understanding, orientation, entertainment, or health-related goals (Ball-Rokeach, 1998).
The communication ecology concept expands the scope of MSD in that it can be applied
at both individual and organizational levels of analysis (Broad, 2015). It also considers
multiple forms of communication resources including mediated, organizational, and
interpersonal connections (Broad, Ball-Rokeach, Ognyanova, Stokes, Picasso, &
Villanueva, 2013) as opposed to only media sources in the MSD framework.
There are two important premises that the concept of communication ecology is
built on: First, individuals and organizations are “agentic” and goal-driven (Ball-Rokeach
et al., 2012, p. 2). These terms mean the specific goal(s) sought by an agent may directly
influence the type of communication resources selected. This proposition, however, by no
means suggests that fulfilling goals is the only force driving the formation of
interpersonal, mediated, or organizational connections. Rather, it posits that the emerging
resource network is reflective of the specific goals pursued by the individual or
organization. When the goal changes, the emerging resource network may shift
accordingly to respond to such a change (Wilkin et al., 2007). Second, the composition of
a resource network can be influenced by the communication context where individuals or
organizations are embedded. As Broad (2015) argues, “…the communication ecologies
are always constructed from within broader networks of communicative interaction, and
they are fundamentally shaped by a variety of external environment and socio-cultural
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forces, forces which can serve to either constrain or enable an agent’s pursuit of a
particular goal.” (p. 26)
The concept of communication ecology has been applied in a number of empirical
contexts to understand how an agent achieves goals of various kinds. At the individual
level, Wilkin, Ball-Rokeach, Matsaganis, and Cheong (2007) investigate how residents
from diverse ethnic and neighborhood backgrounds construct communication ecologies
to stay informed about community issues. By mapping the networks of communication
sources reported by residents, the study identifies significant variations in individuals’
communication ecologies, particularly along geographic and ethnic lines. Gonzalez
(2013) applies the communication ecology concept in the health information-seeking
context by comparing the communication ecologies constructed by Latina women when
dealing with different hypothesized health conditions. A comparison of the representation
of communication ecologies identifies a divergence in the ways in which Latinas
construct their health information networks, depending on the specific health problem
that they are addressing. For example, Gonzalez (2013) finds that the ecologies
constructed for the general health scenario include almost an equal distribution of
interpersonal, organizational, and professional resources, whereas the ecologies of a
women’s heath scenario include mostly interpersonal and organizational resources.
Wilkin et al. (2007) and Gonzalez’s (2013) research both suggests that individuals’
communication ecologies are not only shaped by specific goals pursued, but certain
individual characteristics (e.g., ethnic background) and the external communication
context (e.g., the neighborhood context) can also influence the composition of
communication ecologies that emerge.
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The application of communication ecology also includes an organizational level,
which concerns different ways in which organizations establish connections to various
resources. Using focus group and thematic analysis, Broad and colleagues (2013)
examined the communication ecologies constructed by South Los Angeles-based
community organizations. Their research identifies three primary communication
connections built by these organizations in advancing different goals: the interpersonal
connections with local residents and families for the purpose of trust building,
connections built with local media for the purpose of gaining information and raising
public awareness of their work, and interorganizational connections with other like-
minded organizations for collaboration on shared issues. Along a similar line, Broad
(2015) used an ethnographic approach to understand the evolving process of constructing
a communication ecology by a leading food justice organization in Los Angeles,
Community Services Unlimited (CSU). Broad’s (2015) work not only unfolds this
organization’s current communication ecology for everyday community organizing—
such as building organizational alliances and strategic media relations, but it also traces
how the socio-political transformation revolving around the food justice issue has driven
the evolution of CSU’s communication ecology over time.
NGOs’ Interorganizational networks as organizational communication ecologies
The current study proposes that the concept of goal-attaining communication
ecology can be used to understand immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance relationship
building across multiple technology platforms. Through the lens of communication
ecology, NGOs’ alliance building behaviors on each technology platform can be
conceptualized as an active construction of resource networks within a specific
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communication context (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2012). First, individual immigrant-serving
NGOs are goal-attaining agents. The overarching goal of this organizational community
is to advance the socioeconomic, political, and cultural status of immigrant populations in
the host society (Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008). Meanwhile, as the community
consists of heterogeneous organizational populations, the specific goals and goal
priorities may vary across different types of NGOs, particularly across NGOs of different
functional identities. Second, the process of establishing online connections with selected
partners can be viewed as an active process of constructing resource networks, as these
organizational ties allow the focal organization to access symbolic and information
resources from its partners. On the aggregated level, the overall interorganizational
networks thus can be conceptualized as the communication ecologies constructed by the
entire immigrant-serving NGOs community. Finally, just like different residential spaces,
each technology platform can be viewed as a distinctive communication environment that
encourages or constrains NGOs’ access to particular types of resources. As previously
argued, organizational websites are well equipped to mobilize symbolic resources for
NGOs through identity presentation (Bravo, Matute, & Pina, 2012), performance
disclosure (Ebrahim, 2003), and interorganizational alliance communication (Shumate &
O’Connor, 2010a; Shumate & O’Connor, 2010b). It is less effective, on the other hand, to
facilitate direct information exchange between an organization and its partners.
Meanwhile, social media platforms can better facilitate the mobilization of information
resources for NGOs. That is, the connective mechanism on social media enables an
organization to receive timely updates from its partners; Furthermore, the expansive
networks formed on social media can facilitate effective information dissemination,
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allowing an NGO to broadcast messages to a broader spectrum of audience than its
immediate membership base (Greenberg & MacAulay, 2009).
To combine the goal-attaining nature of NGOs’ use of communication technology
in relationship building, and the distinctive nature of interorganizational relations
afforded by each technology platform (i.e., websites versus social media platforms), it is
plausible to expect that the configuration of the website-based interorganizational
networks may show structural divergence from the social media-based
interorganizational networks. First, the representational nature of website-based
interorganizational relations makes this platform well suited for the purpose of
communicating accountability and legitimacy. Meanwhile, the followship networks
sustained by social media platforms better facilitate the goal of mobilizing information
resources and maintaining everyday communication with one’s peers in the community.
The varied capacities in facilitating the pursuit of different goals, therefore, constitute the
first source of influence that may lead to different levels of utilization of these platforms
among NGOs. Second, as previously noted, the immigrant-serving NGOs community
consists of heterogeneous organizational populations, and such heterogeneity may further
lead to the diverging practice of using technology platforms to build interorganizational
relations. For example, immigrant-serving NGOs that organize their everyday activities
around research, policy advocacy, and coalition building may be more motivated to
utilize social media platforms, as these platforms afford greater opportunities for NGOs
to share information and connect with coalition members, compared to the platform of
website. Meanwhile, NGOs that focus on delivering offline services to the immigrant
communities may be less motivated or savvy in utilizing social media platforms to build
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relationships, as service delivery goals may require a different set of relational resources
than what social media can offer.
To empirically test this proposition within the community of immigrant-serving
NGOs, the following research question is proposed:
RQ1: For California’s immigrant-serving NGOs community, the website-
based interorganizational alliance network is likely to diverge from the
social media-based interorganizational networks from Twitter and
Facebook.
The divergence of interorganizational tie formation mechanisms
To further compare how tie formation logics—that is, the underlying mechanisms
driving the process of interorganizational tie formation— may vary between the website-
based alliance network and the social media-based alliance networks, the following
identifies two mechanisms that are likely to exhibit varying levels of influence: (1) the
mechanism of “status seeking” (Lin, Yang, Arya, 2009, p. 921), which describes a
connection pattern of favoring high-status organizations in the community; and (2) the
role of NGOs’ functional type in predicting the formation of interorganizational ties. As
NGOs of different functional types—specifically advocacy-oriented versus service
provision-oriented— may prioritize different goals when utilizing communication
technology, the attribute of functional type may become a salient factor in predicting the
likelihood of tie formation.
The role of status seeking in tie formation across platforms
As discussed in Chapter 3, organizational status is an important attribute that
indicates different levels of social standing among a community of organizations
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(Podolny & Phillips, 1996). During the process of building alliance relationships, status
seeking has long been identified as a significant mechanism driving organizations’
partnership choices (Lin, Yang, & Arya, 2009; Powell et al., 2005). Specifically,
organizations are observed to favor partners that enjoy greater prestige, reputation, and
legitimacy status (Washington & Zajac, 2005). Such a tendency of connecting to high-
status organizations is best explained by the institutional perspective (Margolin et al.,
2015; Young, 2013). The institutional perspective stresses the importance of abiding by
existing norms and establishing legitimacy within the larger organizational field (Carroll
& Hannan, 2000; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), and one way for organizations to enhance
their own legitimacy is to build affiliations with those that are already established and/or
with high organizational status (Podolny & Page, 1998). As organizations of high-status
are perceived as more legitimate than those with lower status, they are thus in a better
position to confer their own legitimacy on their partners (Atouba & Shumate, 2015;
Bitektine, 2011; Johnson, Dowd, & Ridgeway, 2006).
Status seeking has been found as a significant mechanism driving the formation of
alliance ties across both offline and online context (e.g., Atouba & Shumate, 2015;
Powell et al., 2005). However, this tendency can be particularly strong when web-based
alliance ties serve as the vehicle of representational communication. That is,
organizations utilize web-based alliance ties, such as hyperlinks, to communicate
accountability and legitimacy (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a, 2010b). Specifically, the
current study hypothesizes that the tendency of connecting with peer organizations with
high-status—indicated by an organization’s degree centrality and its partnership status
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with governmental organizations—is likely to be particularly stronger in this network,
compared to the same group of organizations’ social media-based networks.
H5: Status seeking tendency is likely to manifest itself more strongly in the
website-based alliance network than in the social media-based
interorganizational networks.
The role of NGOs’ functional type in tie formation across platforms
In addition to the mechanism of status seeking, another factor that may show
varying degrees of influence across multiple technology platforms is immigrant-serving
NGOs’ functional type. Based on the principal activities that an NGO partakes in, the
immigrant-serving NGOs community can be further categorized as three different
organizational populations: (1) the advocacy-oriented NGOs that engage primarily in
issue or policy-related advocacy; (2) the service provision NGOs that focus on delivering
a particular program of services to the targeted populations; and (3) the hybrid NGOs that
are committed equally to both types of activities (Minkoff, 2002).
From a communication ecology perspective, the functional type of an NGO
constitutes an important factor that may lead to different configurations of the resource
networks. First, NGOs of different functional types often demand different sets of
resources. For example, as service provision activities are viewed more “resource
intensive” than advocacy activities (Minkoff, 2002, p. 385), service provision-oriented
NGOs would rely more heavily on tangible resources, such as funding, volunteer force,
and the presence of physical infrastructure in order to fulfill their everyday activities. On
the other hand, advocacy-oriented NGOs, whose activities revolve around providing
information and raising public awareness, depend less on tangible resources than
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symbolic resources, such as identity and discourse, in order to gain visibility and public
attention (Gamson, 1992). The dependence on different types of resources (i.e., tangible
versus symbolic resources) thus likely motivates NGOs of different functional types to
take advantage of technology platforms to different degrees. Specifically, advocacy-
oriented NGOs may have greater incentive to actively utilize technology platforms, as
evidenced by the emerging practice of “online advocacy” among the nonprofit sector that
consists of online petitions, blogs, and social media-based advocacy campaigns (Almog-
Bar & Schmid, 2014, p. 22).
Second, NGOs of different functional types may prioritize different goals
regarding the building of alliance relationships. In particular, it is plausible to expect that
advocacy-oriented NGOs may prioritize the goal of information exchange and
dissemination more so than their service provision counterparts. As previously argued,
social media platforms are uniquely equipped to facilitate speedy and large-scale
information dissemination, and their connecting mechanism allows an organization to
stay in close contact with one’s partners. Given that advocacy-oriented NGOs tend to
prioritize the goal of information exchange and dissemination, and the particular
affordance of social media platforms aligns with such a goal, it is likely that advocacy-
oriented NGOs may take greater advantage of social media platforms in building
alliances than the service-oriented NGOs do.
To compare the extent to which NGOs’ functional type may differently influence
the likelihood of ties formation across platforms, the last hypothesis is proposed as
follows:
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H6: The functional type of immigrant-serving NGOs is likely to have
greater influence on the likelihood of ties formation within the social
media-based interorganizational networks than within the website-based
alliance network.

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Chapter Five: Methods
Overview
In this dissertation project, the term immigrant-serving NGOs refers to a group of
currently active, tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations that register under the U.S. IRS
501(c)(3) tax code. These organizations must provide a service or engage in advocacy
activities primarily on behalf of immigrants, including documented or undocumented
immigrants, immigrants from a broad or specific national, ethnic, or religious origins, as
well as asylum and refugee seekers. To maintain the geographic boundaries, only
organizations registered in the State of California with current operation in this
geographic region were selected. The final sample included local, statewide, and national
organizations whose headquarters are based in California. The overall selection criteria
were adapted from Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad (2008). For an NGO to qualify, it must:
(1) direct their primary activities to the immigrant populations, and (2) have a substantial
proportion of clientele, members, and leadership from the immigrant groups.
Aside from the selection criteria, the following two types of organizations were
eliminated to ensure the sample represented the very core of the immigrant-serving NGO
community: First, informal or grassroots associations that do not have official registration
status; Second, certain religious, social service, and educational associations that may
have immigrants as their clientele, though the overall mission and activities of the
organizations target the general, non-immigrant populations. For example, the Parent-
Teacher Association (PTA) at various levels, although they may establish local branches
to target immigrant parents, such as “the Santa Clara County Vietnamese PTA” (Gleeson
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& Bloemraad, 2013, p. 354); these organizations were generally excluded due to their
parent organizations’ mainstream, non-immigrant orientation.
The organizational community of interest thus includes a core body of currently
active, officially registered 501(c)(3) organizations whose primary activities are directed
toward the immigrant communities in California. Given there is no single source or
existing directory that provides an exhaustive list, a roster was created by taking the
following steps. It followed the “name-based technique” as used in Cortés (1998) and
Gleeson and Bloemraad (2013) by starting the search in the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service’s (IRS) public database, which is a well-accredited source for NGO identification
(Gleeson & Bloemraad, 2013; National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2008; Suárez,
2011). Although the limitations of using IRS database, such as the undercount of less
formal, grassroots organizations, are discussed in a number of scholarly works (e.g.,
Gleeson & Bloemraad (2013)), it is still one of the most widely used sources to identify
NGOs of various kinds. In addition, because the sample of this dissertation consists of
only officially registered NGOs, the undercount issue minimally affects the final sample
obtained.
As all the 501(c)(3) organizations file their annual application for tax-exempt
status and nonprofit tax returns with the IRS, a search with keywords including
“immigrant(s)”, “migrant(s)”, and “refugee(s)” returned the first batch of organizations.
To triangulate the search, the same keywords were used in the following national and
state-level databases, including the California Registry of Charitable Trust
(http://rct.doj.ca.gov/), the national nonprofit database from the National Center for
Charitable Statistics (NCCS: http://nccs.urban.org/) and The California Database of the
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Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management (Orend, O’Neill, & Mitchell, 1996).
Multiple rounds of searches identified the first batch of 87 organizations.
The second step involved going over the list and manually verifying each NGO’s
organizational profile through an internet search. After this procedure, 11 organizations
were removed from the list because they were not currently active (N = 2), turned out to
provide only commercial citizenship or naturalization services (N = 7), or the actual
activities of these organizations were anti-immigration or irrelevant (N = 2).
Because many immigrant-serving organizations may not have the above
keywords in their names, the third step took place along the process of identifying the 76
seed organizations’ web-reported partners. Out of the partners list, an additional 28
immigrant-serving NGOs were included that met the pre-specified criteria, but were not
identified from the prior name-based keywords search. Organizations identified from the
above three steps constituted the final roster of 104 organizations. Appendix 1 provides
the complete list of these 104 organizations.
Data collection
Online archive information stored on each organization’s website were examined,
as well as digital trace data from NGOs’ Facebook and Twitter accounts. Human coding
and automated data collection techniques were used to construct three forms of
interorganizational networks. The following details the procedures taken to collect data
from each technology platform.
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Web-based alliance network
The identification of web-reported organizational alliance took several steps.
First, a list of 104 NGO website URLs was fed into VOSON
5
, a web crawler that mines
hyperlink data among websites (Ackland, 2010). This step allows the researcher to
identify organizations that have documented any connections/relationships to each other
on their websites. The obtained hyperlinks were further utilized as indices to help locate
relevant partnership information, especially those reported in text or image format. This
automatic step is necessary, since many large organizations have multi-layered websites
that are difficult for human coders to navigate. Second, the researcher visited each
hyperlink, read the linked web pages or documents, and manually coded the types of
interorganizational alliances based on the information included in texts or images. Based
on major types of alliance relationships identified in the prior research (Austin, 2000;
Guo & Acar, 2005), the current study synthesized these types and collected the following
four types of alliance relationships:
(1) Financial support relationships, which involve one organization providing
funding or donations to another organization;
(2) Collaboration relationships, including hyperlinks or statements that indicate
two NGOs working on the same projects, providing joint programs, engaging
in clientele referrals, and participating in the same collective events;

5
The VOSON System is an online hyperlink crawling software developed by Robert
Ackland and colleagues at the Australian National University. It is part of the Virtual
Observatory for the Study of Online Networks Project. More information can be found at
http://voson.anu.edu.au/homepage
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(3) Symbolic support relationships. Different from financial support or
collaboration relationships, symbolic support may not involve a tangible
exchange of resources. It is often communicated under NGOs’ “supporters” or
“allies” webpages, as well as specific expressions of symbolic alignment with
other organizations;
(4) Organizational membership, where organizations are connected through
mutual affiliations with a parent organization, or one organization serves as
the parent (e.g., founding, steer committee) or child organization of another.
Within the community of 104 immigrant NGOs, a total of 188 alliance
relationships were identified from website-based reporting, including 12 dyads of
financial support relationships (6.38%), 99 dyads of collaboration relationships (49.75%),
26 dyads of symbolic support relationships (13.83%), and 51 dyads of shared
membership (27.13%).
Facebook-based communication network
82 (78.85%) immigrant NGOs were identified to have active Facebook accounts.
Different from individual accounts, organizations’ Facebook presence takes the form of a
Facebook page (Facebook, 2015). A Facebook page allows an organization to list profile
description, send out updates, and post events information. It also supports the
networking function through its “like” feature, similar to the “following” function of
Twitter. By “liking” an organization, the focal organization is able to access that
organization’s profile, event calendar, and receive regular updates from the organization
being liked.
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The Facebook-based followership network was constructed by content coding 82
NGOs’ “like” lists. A total of 306 connections were identified from the 82 organizations.
Figure 3 shows the list of organizational pages “liked” by Asian Law Alliance, an
immigrant-serving NGO in the sample.
Figure 3. An illustration of NGOs’ Facebook page and “like” function

Twitter’s follower-followee network
Among 104 immigrant-serving NGOs, 67 (64.42%) were identified to have active
Twitter accounts. The Twitter follower-followee network was constructed by using a
script in the Python programming language from the Twitter search API (Application
99

Program Interface) in January 2016. Using the set of 67 organizations’ Twitter accounts
as seeds, the researcher crawled all other Twitter accounts that each seed organization
followed. This process yielded a total of 30, 351 pairs of follower-followee relationships
that involved the 67 sample organizations. Followership internal to the immigrant NGO
community was further extracted by identifying a total of 574 following relationships
among the 67 immigrant NGOs. Figure 4 shows the interface of an immigrant NGO,
Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de (IDEPSCA)’s Twitter page. In addition to
collecting NGOs’ following networks, the study also collected the number of tweets sent
by the organization (as of the date the current data were collected), the number of
accounts followed by the organization (“following”), the number of accounts following
this organization (“followers”), as well as the time the organization joined in Twitter.
Figure 4. An illustration of NGO’ Twitter profile

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Measures
Networks data
Web-reported alliance network. The hyperlink ties were first stored in the form
of network edgelist, and it was then converted into a 104 by 104 adjacency matrix. As
described in the previous section, if two NGOs have (1) financial support, (2)
collaboration, (3) symbolic support, or (4) membership/affiliation relationship, a
directional and binary network tie was created between the organizational dyad. It should
be noted that the strength of alliance relationship is not calculated, and this decision was
made based on the following consideration: when organizations report alliances on the
website, they do not consistently specify the type of alliances or whether multiple forms
of alliance are present with their partners. Therefore, the online self-report is not able to
establish a valid measure of alliance tie strength
Facebook-based communication network. NGOs’ “like” relationships on
Facebook were similarly stored in the form of network edgelist. It is then converted to a
104 by 104 directional adjacency matrix.
Twitter-based followership network. Following the same data preparation
procedure, the Twitter-based followship adjacency matrix was created based on the
network edgelist. It is also a directional network.
Shared funders matrix. 422 financial support relationships were identified from
104 immigrant-serving NGOs’ web reporting, including multi-sector organizations such
as NGOs, governmental agencies, and private for-profit organizations. The affiliation
network was later converted to a 104 by 104 non-directional, valued adjacency matrix to
map all the immigrant-serving organizational dyads that shared the same funders. If two
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immigrant-serving NGOs had N common funders, the value of N was assigned in the
corresponding cell in the matrix. The number of common funders shared ranged from 0
to 4.
Shared alliance partners matrix. A list of 896 unique collaboration partners
were identified from 104 immigrant-serving NGO’s web reporting, and it included a
range of multi-sector organizations such as immigrant-serving NGOs from states other
than California, non-immigrant NGOs, governmental or public agencies, and for-profit
organizations such as corporations and law firms. The affiliation network was converted
to a 104 by 104 non-directional, valued adjacency matrix. If two NGOs reported to share
a total of N partners, the value N was assigned in the corresponding cell in the matrix.
The number of common alliance partners ranged from 0 to 6.
Organization-level attributes
Immigrant NGOs’ functional type. Depending on the primary activities an
NGO engages in, the 104 immigrant NGOs were coded under three functional types: 1)
advocacy-oriented NGOs, (N = 19, 18.27%), whose primary activities included only
immigrant rights/community advocacy or policy research; 2) service-provision NGOs (N
= 46, 44.23%), with primary activities focused on providing legal, social, or cultural
services; and 3) hybrid NGOs (N = 39, 37.5%), whose primary activities included both
advocacy and service provision. Although an NGO’s activities may span across multiple
domains, the current scheme is developed to capture the primary type of activities that an
NGO is committed, as identified from its mission statement.
Generalist immigrant NGOs. Generalist immigrant NGOs in this dissertation
are defined as NGOs serving immigrants from a broad spectrum of national, ethnic and
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religious origins, regardless of immigrants’ demographic or legal status. Based on NGOs’
mission statements, 48 (46.15%) organizations were categorized as “generalist”. Among
the other 56 organizations, 5 (4.81%) NGOs exclusively serve African immigrants, 28
(26.92%) NGOs are positioned to serve Asian immigrants (major ethnic groups include
Korean, Chinese, and Filipino), 16 (15.38%) NGOs serve Latino immigrants, 3 (2.88%)
NGOs serve European immigrants, and 4 (3.85%) NGOs serve immigrants of Islamic
background.
Governmental support received. The amount of government support was coded
from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) form 990 in 2014. 28 (26.92%) immigrant-
serving NGOs received government funding in 2014, and the amount ranged between
$14,379 and $1,731,445 (M= $444,372.72, SD = $417,696.2). Due to the skewness of
this variable, the log-transformation was performed (i.e., using the natural logs of the
values of the variable) before entering the variable into the final model.
Control variables
Immigrant NGOs’ revenue. As an important indicator for NGO performance,
the total annual revenue of each NGO was coded from the IRS form 990 (Sloan, 2009).
Ranging between 0 and $14,357,809, the average annual revenue of immigrant-serving
NGO was $1,170, 309.96 SD = $ 2,120,771.18).
Immigrant NGOs’ employee size. NGOs’ employee size was obtained from the
IRS form 990, where NGOs were asked to report the number of paid employees in the
previous tax year. The size of paid employees ranged from 0 to 196 (M= 21.73, SD =
33.22).
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Immigrant NGOs’ age. Organizations’ founding year information was collected
via organizations’ self-reports on their official websites, such as through the “history” or
“about us” webpage or organizations’ annual reports. Age was calculated by subtracting
each organization’s founding year from 2015. The average age of selected organizations
was 22.17 years (SD = 19.84), with the youngest NGO established only a year ago, and
the oldest NGO with 121 years’ history.
Homophily measures
Geographic proximity. The headquarter city of each NGO was first collected
from organizational website. In terms of geographic concentration, the San Francisco and
Los Angeles metropolitan areas are populated by the largest number of immigrant-
serving organizations. The location of each immigrant NGO was further coded under the
following three metropolitan areas: 1) Southern California area extending from Los
Angeles to San Diego (N = 44, 42.31%); 2) The Central Valley area including cities from
Sacramento to Stockton and Modesto (N = 8, 7.69%); and 3) San Francisco-Oakland Bay
Area (N = 52, 50%).
Analysis
Upon completing the construction of the overall interorganizational alliance
network that consists of all immigrant NGOs, as well as their public and private partners,
a descriptive network analysis was first performed. Specifically, the stage of analysis
identified key characteristics of the network, such as the extent to which the given
network is centralized (centrality), as well as any centrally located organizations from
each network cluster.
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To test the hypotheses, statistical network analysis ERGM (Exponential Random
Graph Models) was used to test the organizational and community-level factors that are
hypothesized to impact NGOs’ alliance choices. ERGMs, also known as the p* models,
are a family of probability models that use simulation techniques to make inferences
about whether the hypothesized process may shape the observed network configurations
(Goodreau, 2007; Robins, Pattison, Kalish, & Lusher, 2006). In simple terms, the ERGM
views the observed network as one realization from a set of possible networks with
similar characteristics, or “the outcome of some (unknown) stochastic processes” (Lusher
et al., 2013, p. 175). By comparing the propensity of a network structure in the observed
network to the propensity that would occur at random, the ERGM results are able to
inform whether the hypothesized process does indeed shape the observed network pattern.
The ERGM method has been increasingly applied in recent organizational
communication research (e.g., Ackland & O’Neil, 2011; Atouba & Shumate, 2010; Lee
& Monge, 2011; Shumate & Palazzolo, 2010). One notable advantage of the ERGM
method, which makes it particularly fitting to test key hypotheses, lies in its capacity to
simultaneously test how multiple relationships in the network, nodal attributes (e.g.,
organizational size, type, or service area), and multiple network structures (e.g.,
reciprocal or transitive network structure) may explain the existing alliance building
pattern. In addition, compared to traditional linear or logistic regressions, ERGMs are
better equipped to model network mechanisms because they account for the network data
interdependency issue in modeling (Shumate & Palazzolo, 2010).
In an ERGM model, the dependent variable modeled is the statistical odds of tie
presence between a random dyad of organizations. The model estimation procedure
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consists of the following steps. First, based on theory-driven hypotheses, the researchers
constructed variables corresponding to each hypothesis and included them in the model.
After specifying the model composition using the ERGM package in R, the program runs
a series of network simulations and produces both parameter estimate and standard error
for each variable. The interpretation of these parameters is similar to that of a logistic
regression, where the parameter value stands for the log ratio of the given variable in
predicting the likelihood of network tie formation. In ERGM, statistical significance is
similarly assessed by dividing the parameter estimate by its standard error, and any t-
value greater than 1.96 suggests a significant relationship, thus meaning the hypothesized
process is likely to exist and also significantly predicts the observed network
configurations.
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Chapter Six: Results
This chapter presents findings from the two studies outlined in Chapter 3 and
Chapter 4. In the first study, it starts by summarizing the background information of the
104 immigrant-serving NGOs, such as the distribution of organizational type, clientele
base, organizational age, and the status of receiving governmental support among the
selected sample. It then maps the interorganizational alliance networks among this
organizational community, identifies centrally located organizations and reports major
network-level characteristics. ERGM analysis results testing H1 to H4 are presented in
the hypothesis testing section. The second study follows a similar reporting procedure by
first presenting network descriptives of the three interorganizational networks identified
from the organizational websites, Twitter, and Facebook. It then presents specific results
regarding RQ1, H5 and H6.
Study I: An integrative model testing California’s immigrant-serving NGO alliance
partners selection
Preliminary analysis
The sample includes 104 currently active immigrant-serving NGOs registered in
the state of California. The complete sample list is included in Appendix I. The 104
organizations differ considerably with regard to organizational demographics, functional
type, clientele base, as well as the state of receiving governmental financial support. To
provide a general background of these organizations, Table 1 presents a descriptive
summary that includes the range, mean, and standard deviation values on key
organizational demographic variables. The percentage of each type of organization based
on functional type, clientele base, and governmental funding status is also included.
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Table 1.
Descriptive statistics of immigrant-serving NGOs’ organizational profiles (N = 104)
Min Max Mean SD
Demographics
Formal employees size 1 728 39.39 115.71
Volunteers size 0 1,000 65.36 173.80
Age as of 2014 1 120 21.17 19.84
Annual revenue as of
2014

0

$95,574,874

$3,245,136

$14,074,599
Governmental funding
received as of 2014

0

$13,030,345

$543,388

$2,139,186

Advocacy-oriented Service provision-
oriented
Hybrid
Functional type 18.27% 44.23% 37.50%

Clientele base “Generalist” Pan-Asian Latino African Other
45.71% 26.92% 15.38% 4.76% 7.23%

Received support Did not receive support
Governmental support
status as of 2014

26.92%

73.08%

Consistent with what prior research suggests (e.g., Hung, 2007), California’s
immigrant-serving NGOs are heavily concentrated in major metropolitan areas, most
notably the greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco-Oakland bay area. Using
each NGO’s headquarter location, Figure 5 maps the geographic distribution of this
organizational community, identifying three significant location clusters: (1) the Southern
California cluster, which extends from the city of San Diego to Santa Barbara. Within
this cluster, Los Angeles county alone hosts 31 (29.81%) immigrant-serving NGOs from
the sample; (2) the Central Valley cluster including Sacramento, Fresno, and a number of
neighboring cities; (3) the San Francisco-Oakland bay area cluster. This is another
heavily concentrated area where about half of the sample organizations are located.
Figure 5. Geographic distribution of California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104)
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Gephi is used to visualize the interorganizational alliance network established
within the 104 organizations (Figure 6). A total of 31 NGOs are identified as “isolates” in
the network, meaning these organizations did not report any other sample organizations
as alliance partners, nor did other organizations in the sample nominate them. Within the
remaining 73 NGOs that are connected, the top three organizations with the highest out-
degree centrality—measured by the total number of alliance ties sent by the focal
organization— are Services & Immigrant Rights & Education Network (SIREN) (Out-
degree Centrality = 25), California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC) (Out-degree
Centrality = 22), and Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) (Out-degree Centrality =
13). While out-degree centrality indicates the extent to which an organization is active in
initiating connections, in-degree centrality indicates the level of popularity or emergent
leadership status of an organization in the network (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005). Based
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on the total of number of ties received by the focal organizations, the analysis identifies
the top three NGOs that enjoy the highest in-degree centrality: California Immigrant
Policy Center (CIPC) (In-degree Centrality = 8), National Immigration Law Center
(NILC) (In-degree Centrality = 8), and Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates of
Southern California (KIWA) (In-degree Centrality = 7).
Hypotheses Testing
Hypotheses from H1 to H4 are tested in a single ERGM model. Table 2 provides
estimates, standard errors, statistical significance, and the conditional odds ratio obtained
from a converged ERGM model, with all parameters’ convergence t-ratios well below the
critical value of .1 (Handcock et al., 2015). In this model, basic structural parameters
such as edges and reciprocity, as well as two selected demographic variables of NGOs,
including age and annual revenue, are included for the purpose of control. Hypotheses are
indicated by corresponding nodal and edge-level parameters
6
.

6
Specifically, the terms nodefactor (for categorical variable) and nodecov (for continuous
variable) are used to test the role of organizational-level attributes, including degree
centrality (H4a) and the governmental partnership status of an NGO (H4b). The term
nodematch is used to test the role of homophily. For example, the effect of functional identity
overlap (H1b), clientele base overlap (H1c), and geographic co-location (H2) are all tested by
using this term. Finally, the term edgecov is used to test the role of dyadic-level ties in
predicting the likelihood of alliance ties formation. H1a regarding the presence of mutual
funders and H3 regarding the presence of common third-party partners are both tested by
using nodefactor (for categorical variable) and nodecov (for continuous variable) are used to
test the role of organizational-level attributes, including degree centrality (H4a) and the
governmental partnership status of an NGO (H4b). The term nodematch is used to test the
role of homophily. For example, the effect of functional identity overlap (H1b), clientele base
overlap (H1c), and geographic co-location (H2) are all tested by using this term. Finally, the
term edgecov is used to test the role of dyadic-level ties in predicting the likelihood of
alliance ties formation. H1a regarding the presence of mutual funders and H3 regarding the
presence of common third-party partners are both tested by using the edgecov term (for
detailed glossary and computational specification of ERGMs, see Handcock et al., 2015).

110
Figure 6. The web-based interorganizational alliance network among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104)

Note: Node size indicates degree centrality. Please refer to Appendix I for the abbreviations of organizations.
111
H1a tests the role of resource niche overlap in predicting immigrant-serving
NGOs’ alliance partner choices, where resource niche overlap is operationalized as two
NGOs receiving funding from the same corporate, governmental or foundation
organization. This hypothesis is supported with positive statistical significance (Estimates
=. 53, p <. 05). Specifically, the finding suggests that the existence of one common
funding organization between NGO A and NGO B would increase the likelihood of
having alliance ties between this organizational dyad by 69%.
H1b posits that immigrant-serving NGOs engaged in the same principal activities,
which indicates the overlap of functional identity niche, are more likely to form alliance
relationships than those that engage in different types of principal activities. This
hypothesis does not receive empirical support based on the ERGM results. Furthermore,
the model results indicate that immigrant-serving NGOs’ functional type—that is,
whether an NGO engages primarily in advocacy, service provision, or both types of
activities, does not significantly affect its likelihood of forming alliance ties with other
immigrant-serving NGOs in the community.
H1c explores the role of the ideological identity niche overlap in shaping
immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance relationships, with ideological identity operationalized
as an NGO’s generalist versus specialist orientation based on its clientele base. This
hypothesis is tested by assessing whether “generalist” NGOs, as well as three sub-types
of “specialist” NGOs serving Asian, Latino and African immigrants, are more likely to
form alliance relationships with those of the same clientele base. The model results
suggest that while generalist immigrant-serving NGOs do not significantly prefer other
generalist NGOs (Estimates =. 26, p >. 05), the alliance selection process is more
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complicated among the specialist immigrant-serving NGOs. In particular, Asian
immigrant-serving NGOs are found to exhibit a significant tendency to partner with other
Asian immigrant-serving organizations (Estimates = .57, p < .01), whereas the same
tendency was not found among the Latino (Estimates =. 04, p >. 05) or African
immigrant-serving NGOs (Estimates =. 23, p >. 05). Finally, in terms of whether
generalist immigrant-serving NGOs are more likely to attract alliance partners (H1d), the
finding does not support this hypothesis (Estimates =-. 20, p >. 05).
H2 tests the degree to which geographic proximity, operationalized as two NGOs
co-locating in the same geographic cluster in California, increases the likelihood of
alliance formation. This hypothesis is supported with great statistical significance
(Estimates = 1.14, p < .001). The result suggests that when two NGOs are located in the
same geographic cluster, they are over three times more likely (312%) to form alliance
relationship than those that are located in different geographic clusters.
Meanwhile, the presence of common third-party partners (H3) emerges as a
significant predictor of alliance relationships among immigrant-serving NGOs (Estimates
= .74, p < .001), which supports H3. The presence of one common partner increases the
likelihood of having an alliance relationship between an organizational dyad by 112%.
Finally, H4a and H4b hypothesize that NGOs with high organizational status,
indicated by degree centrality and their partnership status with governmental
organizations respectively, are more likely to establish alliance relationships than those
that do not enjoy such status. The results support H4a, but not H4b. It shows that
centrally located NGOs are significantly more likely to attract partners (Estimates = .11,
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p < .001), whereas having partnerships with governmental organizations does not affect
an NGO’s likelihood of forming alliance ties (Estimates =. 08, p >. 05).
In terms of the two control variables, the annual revenue of an NGO and its
organizational age, both variables turn out as highly significant in predicting an NGO’s
chance of forming alliance ties. Specifically, older (Estimates = .43, p < .05) and
financially better-off NGOs (Estimates = .22 p < .001) tend to attract greater partnership
ties than their younger and less resourced counterparts.

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Table 2.
Results of ERGM analysis predicting alliance tie formation among California’s
immigrant-serving NGOs.

Estimates s.e. Odds ratio
Structural Effects
Edges -3.53 1.07 34.12 ***
Reciprocity 0.58 0.34 1.78

Community-level interdependence
Resource niche overlap (H1a) 0.53 0.24 1.69 *
Functional identity overlap (H1b) 0.18 0.18 1.20
Advocacy-oriented 0.41 0.32 1.51
Service provision-oriented -0.48 0.33 1.62
Hybrid 0.22 0.33 1.24
Ideological identity overlap
Generalist homophily (H1c) 0.26 0.19 1.29
Specialist-Latino homophily (H1c) 0.04 0.20 1.04
Specialist-Asian homophily (H1c) 0.57 0.20 1.77 **
Specialist-African homophily (H1c) 0.23 0.39 1.26
Generalist (H1d) -.020 0.14 1.22

Geographic proximity (H2) 1.14 0.18 3.12 ***

Common third party ties (H3) 0.74 0.21 2.10 ***

Organizational status
Structural status (H4a) 0.11 0.01 1.12 ***
Governmental partnership status (H4b) 0.08 0.14 1.08

Organizational background (control)
Annual revenue as of 2014 0.21 0.06 1.23 ***
Age 0.35 0.21 1.42
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Study II: Comparing interorganizational networks across multiple platforms
The first research question explores whether and how the same group of
immigrant-serving NGOs’ website-based alliance network exhibits structural divergence
from its social media-based interorganizational networks. To answer this question,
network-level descriptives are first compared across the three networks (Table 3).
Network density indicates the extent to which all the nodes in the network are
interconnected. The Twitter followership network exhibits the highest level of density
(5.33%), followed by the NGOs’ Facebook “like” network (2.77%) and the website-
based alliance network. The higher level of network density in the Twitter followship and
Facebook “like” network suggests that NGOs are generally more active in establishing
connections on social media platforms than through hyperlink or alliance reporting on the
website. In terms of network reciprocity, which indicates the percentage of network ties
that are reciprocated in the network, the Twitter followership network again exhibits a
much higher level of reciprocity (42.75%) than that of the Facebook (28.02%) and
website-based alliance network (13.51%). Additionally, the Twitter network is
characterized by a higher level of transtivity (48.15%) than the other two networks,
which measures the percentage of transitive ties in the network. Finally, in-degree and
out-degree centralization measures the degree to which a directional network is
centralized. The comparison between the three networks reveals that the level of out-
degree centralization is similar between the website-based alliance network (22.92%) and
the Twitter followership network (25.01%), suggesting that the percentage of active
NGOs is similar across these two platforms. However, the level of in-degree
centralization of the website-based alliance network (6.26%) is significantly lower than
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that of the Twitter followship network (28.93%) and the Facebook “like” network
(17.78%). As in-degree centralization measures the relative proportion of “influential”
organizations in the network, such a significant difference thus indicates that the
tendency for a few influential NGOs to monopolize the great majority of connections is
more pronounced on the social media platforms than that on the organizational websites.
Table 3.
Descriptive network statistics among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs’ website-
based, Twitter followship, and Facebook “like” interorganizational networks
Website
Hyperlink
Twitter Followership
Network
Facebook “Like”
Network
Edges 179 571 297
Density 1.67% 5.33% 2.77%
Reciprocity 13.51% 42.75% 28.02%
Transitivity 23.87% 48.15% 32.32%
Indegree Centralization 6.26% 28.93% 17.78%
Outdegree Centralization 22.92% 25.01% 12.89%

Figure 7 and Figure 8 visualize the same organizational community’s Twitter
followship and Facebook “like” network. Forty-five isolates are identified from the
Twitter followship network, and 37 of them do not operate an official Twitter account.
Meanwhile, the Facebook “like” network includes 51 isolates, 22 of which do not operate
a Facebook account.
When comparing the overlap of organizational dyads across the three networks,
the analysis reveals that only a small fraction of organizations maintain connections via
two types of technology platforms, and the size is even smaller for NGOs that are
simultaneously connected via all three types of platforms. Among a total of 756 unique
ties identified across all three networks, 58 dyads of organizations are connected via both
organizational websites and Facebook, 91 dyads are connected via both organizational
websites and Twitter, and 190 dyads of organizations are connected via both Facebook
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and Twitter. Only 44 organizational dyads (which consist of 28 unique organizations)
maintain connections across all three platforms, and this subset of the network is
visualized in Figure 9.
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Figure 7. The Twitter follower-followee interorganizational network among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104)

119

Figure 8. The Facebook-based interorganizational network among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs (N=104)

120

Figure 9. The subset of immigrant-serving NGOs that are connected via all three types of
technology platforms (N=28)

To further compare whether the central organizations emerging from each
interorganizational network represent the same or different subgroup of organizations,
Table 4 presents the top five most active (based on out-degree centrality) versus most
popular organizations (based on in-degree centrality) from each interorganizational
network. California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC), National Immigration Law Center
(NILC) and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of LA (CHIRLA), three generalist
and advocacy-oriented immigrant-serving NGOs are consistently located at the center
across all three networks. These organizations appear to be both active in terms of
initiating connections, and influential in terms of receiving connections across multiple
platforms.
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Table 4.
The top five most active and popular NGOs emerging from the website-based, Twitter
followship, and Facebook “like” interorganizational networks
Top Five Most Active
NGOs
Out-degree
Centrality
Top Five Most Popular
NGOs
In-degree
Centrality

Website-
based
Alliance
Network
Services & Immigrant Rights
& Education Network
25 California Immigrant
Policy Center
8
California Immigrant Policy
Center
22 National Immigration Law
Center
8
Chinese for Affirmative
Action
13 Korean Immigrant Workers
Advocates of Southern
California
7
Chinese Progressive
Association
11 Coalition for Humane
Immigrant Rights of LA
7
Dream Team Los Angeles 11 Mujeres Unidas y Activas 6

Twitter
Followship
California Immigrant Policy
Center
31 Refugee Relief
International Inc.
35
NAKASEC

23 National Immigration Law
Center
34
A Pan-Asian & Pacific
Islander Immigrant Youth-
Led Org in LA
21 California Immigrant
Policy Center
33
International Institute of the
Bay Area
20 National Day Laborer
Organizing Network
33
National Immigration Law
Center
19 Coalition for Humane
Immigrant Rights of LA
29

Facebook
“Like”
Network
Coalition for Humane
Immigrant Rights of LA
16 Coalition for Humane
Immigrant Rights of LA
21
A Pan-Asian & Pacific
Islander Immigrant Youth-
Led Org in LA
16 National Day Laborer
Organizing Network
19
California Immigrant Policy
Center
13 National Immigration Law
Center
16
Services & Immigrant Rights
& Education Network
12 California Immigrant
Policy Center
16
National Day Laborer
Organizing Network
12 Asian Law Caucus 16
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To test the last two hypotheses, the same ERGM model employed to test H1 to
H4 is run on the Twitter followship network and the Facebook “like” network. After
obtaining three converged ERGM models, parameter estimates and significance levels of
major variables are compared (see Table 5). The following variables emerge as
consistently significant across all three models: First, in terms of role of ideological
identity niche, indicated by NGOs’ clientele base, the results identify a significant
tendency for Asian immigrant-serving NGOs to build same-ethnic alliance ties across all
three platforms. Second, geographic proximity, the presence of common third party ties,
as well as an NGO’s structural status all consistently predict the likelihood of alliance ties
formation across all three platforms. Finally, NGOs’ annual revenue, one of the control
variables in the model, also turns out to positively predict NGOs’ alliance ties formation
across all three types of technology platforms.
Meanwhile, certain mechanisms associated with the formation of website-based
alliance ties do not extend such influence to the social media platforms. For instance, the
overlap of resource niche (H1), operationalized as the presence of common funding
organizations, only significantly predicts the formation of alliance ties on organizational
websites. Furthermore, organizational age is only positively associated with the formation
of website-based alliance ties. Specifically, while older NGOs are more likely to form
alliance ties on the website (Estimates = 1.53, p < .05), they do not necessarily enjoy
greater interorganizational connections on the platform of Twitter or Facebook.

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H5 posits that due to the representational nature of website-based alliance ties,
and NGOs’ goal of using websites to communicate accountability, status-seeking logic is
likely to manifest itself more strongly in the website-based alliance network than in the
social media-based networks. A comparison of parameter estimates across the three
ERGM models does not lend support to this hypothesis (see Table 5). In fact, the
tendency to connect to high-status organizations in the community, as indicated by
structural centrality, stands out as a significant trend across all three types of technology
platforms. The partnership status with governmental organizations, on the other hand,
does not bring in additional advantage in attracting alliance partners in any of the three
interorganizational networks.
H6 hypothesizes that NGOs’ functional type is likely to have a greater influence
on the structure of NGOs’ social media networks than on their website-based alliance
network, and this hypothesis is partially supported. In the website-based alliance network,
functional type variables do not significantly affect the likelihood of alliance ties
formation. Meanwhile, in the Twitter followship network, the results suggest that hybrid
NGOs—that is, NGOs engaged in both advocacy and service provision activities—are
significantly more likely to form interorganizational connections than those with other
functional types (Estimates = .81, p < .05). The modeling results from the Facebook
“like” network identify a similar pattern, where advocacy-oriented NGOs are
significantly more likely to establish connections with other organizations in the
community (Estimates = .29, p < .05), and hybrid NGOs (Estimates = .65, p < .05)
are also significantly more active in forming connections compared to the service
provision-oriented counterparts.
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Table 5.
ERGM analysis predicting alliance tie formation among California’s immigrant-serving NGOs across three platforms

Website-Based Alliance Twitter Followship Facebook “Like” Network
Estimate
s
s.e. Odds
ratio
Estimates s.e. Odds
ratio
Estimates s.e. Odds
ratio

Structural Effects
Edges -3.53 1.07 34.12 *** -3.73 0.81 41.72 *** -4.25 2.06 69.90 ***
Reciprocity 0.58 0.34 1.78 1.72 0.19 5.58 *** 1.45 0.25 4.27 ***
Community-level interdependence
Resource niche overlap (H1a) 0.53 0.24 1.69 * 0.45 0.19 1.57 0.38 0.21 1.46
Functional identity overlap (H1b) 0.18 0.18 1.20 0.16 0.12 1.17 0.02 0.15 1.02
Advocacy-oriented 0.41 0.32 1.51 0.70 0.32 2.02 0.29 0.97 1.33 *
Service provision-oriented -0.48 0.33 1.62 0.13 0.31 1.14 0.64 0.97 1.89
Hybrid 0.22 0.33 1.24 0.81 0.32 2.24 * 0.65 0.37 1.92 *
Ideological identity overlap
Generalist homophily (H1c) 0.26 0.19 1.29 0.13 0.12 1.14 0.07 0.15 1.08
Specialist-Latino homophily (H1c) 0.04 0.20 1.04 0.13 0.13 1.14 0.28 0.15 1.32
Specialist-Asian homophily (H1c) 0.57 0.20 1.77 ** 0.62 0.12 1.86 *** 0.82 0.16 2.27 ***
Specialist-African homophily (H1c) 0.23 0.39 1.26 0.06 0.24 1.06 0.24 0.34 1.28
Generalist (H1d) 0.53 0.24 1.69 * -0.10 0.09 1.10 -0.31 0.21 1.36
Geographic proximity (H2) 1.14 0.18 3.12 *** 0.87 0.11 2.38 *** 1.01 0.14 2.76 ***

Common third party ties (H3) 0.74 0.21 2.10 *** 0.42 0.18 1.52 * 0.53 0.22 1.70 **

Organizational status
Structural status (H4a) 0.11 0.01 1.12 *** 0.07 0.00 1.07 *** 0.11 0.01 1.11 ***
Governmental partnership status (H4b)
0.08 0.14 1.08 -0.13 0.09 1.13 -0.03 0.12 1.03
Organizational background (control)
Annual revenue as of 2014 0.21 0.06 1.23 *** 0.19 0.04 1.21 *** 0.16 0.05 1.18 ***
Age 0.35 0.21 1.42 0.19 0.12 1.21 0.23 0.15 1.26
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Post-hoc analysis
Regarding the unique partner selection pattern among the Asian immigrant-
serving NGOs, a post-hoc analysis was conducted to compare the overall level of alliance
building as well as the extent to which each group of immigrant-serving NGOs build
internal (i.e., same-ethnic interorganizational ties) versus external (i.e., cross-ethnic
interorganizational ties) alliance ties.
Table 6 presents the overall alliance level and the external versus internal ties
ratio (i.e., E-I index) of immigrant-serving NGOs with different clientele bases. The E-I
index indicates the extent to which a group of actors makes in-group versus out-group
network ties. It is calculated by the number of out-group ties subtracting the number of
in-group ties, and divided by the total number of network ties (Hanneman & Riddle,
2005; Krackhardt & Stern, 1988).
A mean comparison of NGOs’ alliance ties levels suggests that the generalist,
Asian, and Latino immigrant-serving NGOs do not significantly differ in terms of
building alliances with other organizations in the community (F (4, 99) = .89, p = .47).
However, the negative E-I index of Asian immigrant-serving NGOs confirms that they
create a greater number of same-ethnic than cross-ethnic interorganizational connections.
Meanwhile, the high E-I index of Latino immigrant-serving NGOs’ suggests that,
different from their Asian counterparts, the Latino immigrant-serving NGOs are more
active in reaching out to build a greater number of cross-ethnic interorganizational
connections.

Table 6.
The level of alliance ties built by immigrant-serving NGOs of different clientele bases
N (%) Outdegree Indegree Degree E-I Index
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M (s.d.) M (s.d.) M (s.d.)
Generalist 48 (46.2%) 1.46 (2.02) 2.00 (5.03) 3.46 (6.25) -.05
Asian 27 (26.0%) 2.04 (1.87) 1.93 (3.39) 3.96 (4.51) -.15
Latino 16 (15.4%) 2.31 (2.12) .94 (1.65) 3.25 (3.42) .83
African 5 (4.8%) .80 (1.10) .40 ( .55) 1.20 (1.64) .33
Others 8 (7.7%) .25(.46) .38 ( .74) .63 (.74) .20

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Chapter Seven: Discussion and Conclusion
Discussion
The current dissertation focuses on the interorganizational alliance building and
communication practices that take place amid a rapidly emerging yet under-studied
organizational community, California’s immigrant-serving NGO community. By
mapping the interorganizational alliance networks that emerge from multiple technology
platforms and modeling the role of different mechanisms in shaping the structure of these
networks, this dissertation contributes to the growing literature on nonprofit alliance
building and communication (e.g., Galaskiewicz & Bielefeld, 1998; Guo & Acar, 2005;
Kropczynski & Nah, 2011; Pilny & Shumate, 2012), and the goal-attaining nature of
utilizing different communication technologies for the purpose of managing alliance
relationships among NGOs (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2012; Broad, 2015).
In understanding how NGOs engage in the everyday practice of alliance building,
the first study synthesizes the community ecology theory and existing theoretical
perspectives on NGO alliance building. It uses social network analysis modeling to
empirically test an integrative model that incorporates various sources of influence from
different theoretical perspectives in explaining the formation of alliance ties within a
community of 104 immigrant-serving NGOs in California. The advantage of using an
integrative theoretical model to understand NGO alliance building is significant. First, it
takes into account the very assumption that individual organizations are embedded in the
greater relational environment, where the interdependence formed between organizations
of different forms constitutes an important community-level influence in shaping
individual NGOs’ behaviors (Freeman & Audia, 2006; Shumate & O’Connor, 2010a).
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Given that the community under-study represents a group of highly heterogeneous
organizations, the community ecology framework thus enables the current study to
investigate how the overlap of resource needs among diverse organizations, functional
types, and clientele bases may all influence immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance partner
selection. Furthermore, the first study makes a theoretical synergy between different lines
of research on interorganizational collaboration and alliance building among NGOs. As
the research field has increasingly recognized the complementarity of different theoretical
perspectives (Guo & Acar, 2005), the current study responds to the call for theoretical
integration by proposing a model that combines community ecology theory with a
number of existing alliance formation mechanisms, including geographic proximity
(Oerlemans & Meeus, 2005), the third party referral mechanism (Gulati & Gargiulo,
1999), and the role of organizational status (Podolny & Phillips, 1996).
The second study of this dissertation fills in an important gap by investigating
how the same group of immigrant-serving NGOs’ interorganizational networks across
multiple technology platforms may show structural divergence, and how the concept of
goal-attaining communication ecologies can offer theoretical explanations for such
divergence. While NGOs today are increasingly using multiple technology platforms to
manage alliance relationships, what remains less examined is how the interorganizational
relations sustained by various technology platforms may serve distinctive functions for
NGOs, therefore leading to the diverging interorganizational connection patterns as
observed in the current study. By systematically comparing the network structure of the
three interorganizational networks emerging from organizational websites, Twitter and
Facebook, the second study first empirically assesses the degree to which the same group
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of immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance networks overlap as well as diverge. Guided by the
concept of goal-attaining communication ecologies, this study further posits that as
NGOs of different functional types may prioritize different goals, and each technology
platform carries a varied capacity in terms of fulfilling these goals, two specific
connection mechanisms—the status-seeking tendency and the role of NGOs’ functional
types—are expected to show varied levels of influence on the likelihood of tie formation
within the website-based alliance network versus the social media-based networks.
Overall, this study contributes to the emerging literature on NGOs’ use of communication
technologies in two ways. First, it offers a more nuanced conceptualization of the
interorganizational relations maintained by each technology platform. This is an
extension of Shumate and Contractor’s (2014) taxonomy of network relations in the
interorganizational context, and more specifically, it differentiates the website-based
interorganizational connections from the social media-based connections by
conceptualizing the former as a vehicle for accountability and legitimacy communication,
whereas the latter as a channel for interorganizational information exchange. Second, by
comparing the extent to which different tie formation mechanisms operate within each
interorganizational network, the results identify a number of common mechanisms that
consistently predict organizational tie formation regardless of technology platforms (e.g.,
geographic proximity, the presence of third party partners, and structural centrality)
versus mechanisms whose influence appears to vary depending on the nature of
technology platforms, as well as the primary goals sought by the focal NGO (e.g., NGOs’
functional types).
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Overall, the two studies conducted in this dissertation contribute to the current
inquiries on NGO alliance communication by (1) incorporating community-level sources
of influence in understanding NGOs’ alliance behaviors and (2) a cross-platform
comparison. The following offers a more detailed interpretation of the results, and
discusses key theoretical and practical implications from each study.
Study I
Study I models the influence of community-level interdependence among
immigrant-serving NGOs of different forms—specifically those that demonstrate
resource and identity niche overlap, along with three established tie formation
mechanisms on NGOs’ alliance partner choices. The ERGM analysis identifies the
following findings: First, in terms of how the overlap of resource niche may influence
NGOs’ alliance partner choices, the current finding offers strong support for cooperative
commensalism among NGOs that seek financial resources from the same party. In other
words, NGOs that depend on the same organization for funding are more likely to
establish alliance relationships than those that do not share the same funding sources.
Second, the overlap of functional identity niche, as indicated by the scope of NGOs’
principal activities, does not significantly influence the process of alliances tie formation.
Meanwhile, the results suggest that the overlap of the ideological identity niche is only
significant in predicting Asian immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance partner choices, and
“generalist” immigrant-serving NGOs do not necessarily enjoy greater alliance ties
compared to their “specialist” counterparts. Finally, regarding the three additional
mechanisms of alliance formation, the results are highly consistent with existing
literature. The study finds that immigrant-serving NGOs that are geographically
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proximate and have common third party partners are more likely to build
interorganizational alliances. Structurally central NGOs are also in a more advantageous
position to establish future alliance ties than their peripheral counterparts. However, the
results indicate that NGOs enjoying governmental partnership status are not necessarily
favored by other organizations in the community.
The finding that the overlap of resource niche leads to a greater likelihood of
alliance building among the community of immigrant-serving NGOs is worth discussing.
The community ecology theory states that mutual reliance on resources can lead to either
mutualism—cooperative behaviors, or competition among organizations (Dobrev,
Ozdemir, & Teo, 2006; Hannan & Freeman, 1977). For the specific organizational
community under study, there are several explanations as to why collaboration is
generally favored over competition. First, community ecology scholars have pointed out
that mutualism and competition may alternate to characterize different evolutionary
stages of an organizational community (Hannan & Freeman, 1988). In particular,
mutualistic behaviors including building strategic alliances are more likely to occur when
the organizations occupying the same niche space still lack legitimacy (Dobrev, Kim, &
Hannan, 2001), such as during the formative period of a new organizational form. For the
new entrant organizational population, the cooperative behaviors not only facilitate the
growth of the population, but also serve as an important mechanism to gain institutional
legitimacy (Hannan & Freeman, 1988). In the case of immigrant-serving NGOs, the act
of building alliances with those that share the same resource niche can thus be explained
by a similar need of legitimation for the entire organizational community, given that
immigrant-serving NGOs are often perceived as less mainstream with contested identity
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(Fujiwara, 2005; Ramakrishnan & Bloemraad, 2008). Second, the tendency of building
alliances with those that share the same funding sources may also be explained by the
idea of “cupid alliance” as discussed in relevant literature (Stephens, Fulk, & Monge,
2009). Cupid alliance refers to the type of interorganizational relations that are formed
due to an interested third party, who serves as the “cupid organization” to broker between
two targeted organizations (Stephen et al., 2009, p. 503). Although most alliance ties
examined in this study are formed voluntarily, the process of partnership selection may
still be subject to the expectation of third party organizations, particularly those that
provide financial sponsorship to NGOs. As a matter of fact, the current finding is
consistent with what has been documented in the nonprofit sector (Longoria, 2005). For
instance, Atouba (2013) discusses an emerging trend regarding NGOs obtaining funding
from governmental or other funding institutions; nonprofit applicants are often expected
to demonstrate commitment to sharing resources or engaging in formal service
coordination with other nonprofits. To some extent, mutual funders may play the role of a
“cupid organization” that positively contributes to the formation of alliance ties among
the organizational dyads.
Furthermore, the current study produces mixed results regarding how the overlap
of identity niche impacts the formation of alliance ties among immigrant-serving NGOs.
In the current study, the identity niche is further operationalized as NGOs’ functional
identity, indicated by the type of principal activities an NGO engages in, and NGOs’
ideological identity, indicated by NGOs’ clientele bases in terms of the generalist or
specialist orientation espoused by the organizations. Interestingly, the primary type of
activities an NGO engages in does not significantly influence the formation of alliance
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ties. However, the overlap of clientele bases turns out to significantly predict only Asian
immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance partner choices—that is, there is a strong tendency for
Asian immigrant-serving NGOs to partner with same-ethnic organizations, whereas the
clientele based homophily is not observed for other types of generalist or specialist NGO
populations. The third finding confirms the important role of geographic proximity and
the presence of common third party partners in predicting the likelihood of alliance
formation. Across both for-profit and nonprofit sectors, geographic proximity has been
found to consistently drive the formation of interorganizational alliances (e.g., Atouba &
Shumate, 2015; Shumate, Fulk, & Monge, 2005; Rosenkopf & Almeida, 2003). Research
from the community ecology tradition similarly suggests that geographic proximity can
enhance the mutualistic effect among organizations that share the same resource niche.
For example, in and Kurkoski’s (2012) study on the market niche of geographic
communities in the United States,
7
they found that geographically distant communities
occupying the same market niche solely faced the constraint of competition, whereas
geographically proximate communities occupying the same niche experienced both
competition and opportunity—that is, being near to similar others offers communities
easier access to resources from their partners, such as critical information, skilled
workers, and specialized suppliers. Given that the current study finds that immigrant-
serving NGOs sharing the same resource niche are more likely to develop alliances, it is
plausible to assume that geographic proximity magnifies the benefit of mutualism so that
NGOs are motivated to establish alliances rather than compete with one another.

7
More specifically, Audia and Kurkoski (2012) define a community’s market niche as
the primary industries that a community depends on for growth.
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As for the role of common third party partners, the current finding is largely
consistent with what has been established in the existing alliance literature. Regardless of
organizational type, the presence of common third party partners can significantly boost
the chance of collaboration, both among same-sector organizations such as among
corporations (Gulati, 1995), NGOs (Margolin et al., 2015), and in the context of multi-
sector collaboration (Thune, 2007). The current finding re-affirms that just like other
types of organizational community, immigrant-serving NGOs similarly rely on indirect
ties as a referral or certification mechanism to gather partner information and navigate
their everyday relationship building. The common third party partners included in the
current study are not strictly limited to NGOs working on immigration issues; in fact, the
range of common partners includes NGOs working on a variety of social issues,
governmental agencies and foundations, as well as corporate entities. While the current
study does not differentiate the organizational type of the common third party partners
shared, future work is encouraged to parse out whether same-sector or cross-sector
common partners may have a varied degree of influence on the likelihood of alliance tie
formation.
Finally, in terms of how an NGO’s organizational status predicts the chance of
alliance tie formation, the result supports the “cumulative advantage” logic in that
centrally located immigrant-serving NGOs are more likely to keep attracting future
alliance partners (Powell et al., 2005, p. 1137). Interestingly, the status of having a
partnership with governmental organizations, which is hypothesized to signal reputation,
is not found to significantly contribute to immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance building
capacities. One possible explanation might be that the partnership with governmental
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organizations, especially in the form of financial support, is not necessarily perceived
positively in the nonprofit sector (Gazley & Brudney, 2007). For one thing, the tension
between receiving governmental support and maintaining NGOs’ autonomy has long
been debated (Froelich, 1999). Additionally, governmental partnership may bear the
negative consequence of jeopardizing NGOs’ connections to the community
constituencies that they are committed to serving. For example, Guo (2007) found that
NGOs’ reliance on governmental funding could alter NGOs’ governance structures. More
specifically, it decreases the likelihood of developing strong boards that are
representative of the community. Given the specific mission of immigrant-serving NGOs,
such a weakened community linkage can be particularly damaging. Taking these
explanations together, it is likely that governmental partnership status actually
undermines rather than boosts NGOs’ community outreach and networking capacities.
Study II
The second study identifies the overlap as well as structural divergence among the
same group of NGOs’ interorganizational networks across three technology platforms,
organizational websites, Twitter, and Facebook. It applies the concept of goal-attaining
communication ecologies to explicate how the nature of interorganizational relations
afforded by each technology platform may interact with the different alliance
communication goals of NGOs, thereby leading to the diverging connection patterns
observed. The findings from this study offer several theoretical and practical
implications. First, regarding how NGOs utilize communication technologies to manage
everyday alliance relationships, the current study expands the research foci from single to
multiple technology platforms. It offers a preliminary cross-platform comparison that
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delineates the different natures of interorganizational relations afforded by each
technology platform. To recognize the distinctive nature of interorganizational ties across
platforms is important, as relatively few communication studies have examined the
intersections and overlaps between different types of network relations, including
information flow relations, affinity relations, representational relations, and semantic
relations (Shumate et al., 2013). The second study bridges this gap by simultaneously
investigating the same group of NGOs’ representational versus information flow relations
sustained by different technology platforms.
Second, the current study builds on the concept of communication ecologies and
applies it to explain how the same group of NGOs’ interorganizational networks may
diverge across different platforms. The concept of communication ecologies emphasizes
the goal-attaining nature of organizations and the importance of communication context
in shaping the configuration of NGOs’ communication resource networks (Ball-Rokeach
et al., 2012; Gonzalez, 2013). This concept outlines two sources of influence that likely
drive the divergence of multiple interorganizational networks: First, the goal(s) pursued
by the focal organization constitutes an internal source of influence. The current study
only focuses on a population-level attribute, immigrant-serving NGOs’ functional type, to
indicate the diverging goals sought by NGOs from different organizational populations. It
should be noted, nevertheless, that there are other ways to operationalize organizational
goals, and even the goal(s) sought by the same organization may shift over time and/or as
the external environment changes (Broad, 2015). Second, communication context
constitutes an external source of influence on the structure of organizational
communication ecologies. The current study conceives different technology platforms as
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distinctive communication contexts, and it posits that the specific technological features
associated with each context facilitate the formation of different types of
interorganizational relations. Overall, by conceptualizing interorganizational networks as
the aggregated form of individual NGOs’ communication ecologies, and each technology
platform as a unique communication context, the second study develops the theoretical
explanation regarding why immigrant-serving NGOs’ interorganizational networks
exhibit structural divergence across the representational communication context (i.e.,
web-based alliance networks) versus the organizational information exchange/flow
context (i.e., social media-based organizational networks).
Finally, one of the practical implications demonstrates how NGOs can more
strategically select technology platforms to enhance networking capacities and alliance
building outcomes. A comparison of a website-based alliance network with two social
media-based networks reveals that the latter two networks, especially the Twitter
followship network, exhibit a higher level of tie reciprocity than the former network (as
high as 42.75% for the Twitter network, compared to only 13.51% for the website-based
alliance network). This high level of reciprocity may be attributed to the low cost of
making connections on social media in general, together with the presence of the “friend
recommendation” algorithm that serves as a generative mechanism to create connections
based on users’ existing network ties (Ellison & boyd, 2013). For NGOs that are less
capable of building offline relationships due to resource constraints, the platform of
Twitter can serve as a viable alternative to help them expand their organizational
connections online. Although scholars have lamented on the “weak ties” nature of social
media connections (Haythornthwaite, 2002), the high level of reciprocity, as observed in
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the current study, indicates that social media platforms could still be effective in initiating
mutual connections, or at least in getting the less influential NGOs on the radars of the
more influential ones.
The following findings are of particular importance. Regarding H5 and H6,
although the results do not support H5—as the status-seeking tendency is equally
significant across all three networks— they do support the prediction that advocacy-
oriented NGOs are generally more active in developing interorganizational connections
on social media platforms than service provision-oriented NGOs (H6). What further
supports the argument of goal-attaining organizations is the finding that the effect of
NGOs’ functional type is not uniform across different technology platforms. Specifically,
the functional type of immigrant serving-NGOs does not emerge as a significant predictor
of alliance tie formation in the website-based network, suggesting that NGOs prioritizing
advocacy-related activities do not differ substantially from their service provision peers
in terms of building representational alliance ties. However, when it comes to using
social media to fulfill the goal of information exchange and dissemination, advocacy-
oriented NGOs are indeed more motivated in developing connections with other
organizations in the community. To interpret this finding from the standpoint of goal-
attaining communication ecologies, it indicates that organizations’ online relationship
building behaviors are significantly influenced by the goals prioritized by the
organizations, as well as the extent to which a given technology platform enables the
fulfillment of such goals. In a technology-saturated environment in which multiple
communication technologies are available to the nonprofit sector, the current study
echoes recent findings in that NGOs are rather strategic and goal-driven when it comes to
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utilizing technology platforms to advance their mission (Hackler & Saxton, 2007).
However, the goal-attaining nature of technology use does not mean that NGOs are all
savvy in their technology-related practices. Rather, it should be pointed out that the actual
technology use outcomes for NGOs are often subject to additional factors, such as the
amount of resources available, the level of technology competence equipped by the focal
organizations (Aral & Weill, 2007), and so forth.
Furthermore, a comparison of the ERGM results across platforms suggests that
the overlap of resource niche only significantly influences the likelihood of tie formation
within a website-based alliance network, but not in social media-based
interorganizational networks. Such a divergence may be explained by the symbolic nature
of alliance communication on the organizational websites. That is, since the alliance
relationships constructed on the websites are often intended for the stakeholder
community, and funding organizations are important members of this community, NGOs
are thus motivated to display their affinity with peer organizations that also receive
support from the same funding organizations. On the other hand, as social media-based
connections are less oriented towards the goal of communicating legitimacy to the third
party stakeholders, the presence of mutual funders thus ceases to become a significant
predictor of interorganizational connections.
Finally, similar to what has been found from the first study, geographic proximity
turns out as a robust predictor across all three interorganizational networks. This finding
contributes to the ongoing debate on whether the formation of technology-mediated
interorganizational connections actually transcends geographic boundaries. On the one
hand, a growing body of research has documented the emergence of geographically
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dispersed organizational networks, particularly in the form of knowledge transfer and
product innovation (e.g., Cramton, 2001; Gibson & Gibbs, 2006). On the other hand, the
counterargument contends that in spite of the convenience and lowered cost of building
geographically dispersed ties, the formation of social connections is still heavily
governed by geographic proximity. For example, Takhteyev, Gruzd, and Wellman (2012)
examined the network ties in Twitter and found that distance and related variables, such
as language and country boundaries all directly affect the likelihood of tie formation. The
current finding echoes their conclusion in that geographic distance still considerably
constrains the formation of social ties, regardless of the type of technology platforms
used.
Limitations and future research
Using community ecology theory, this dissertation proposes an integrative model
that combines factors from multiple theoretical frameworks to understand immigrant-
serving NGOs’ alliance building behaviors. It further applies the concept of goal-
attaining communication ecologies to explain why the same group of NGOs’ alliance
networks across multiple technology platforms may exhibit structural divergence. While
this dissertation makes important contributions to the current literature on
interorganizational alliance and NGOs’ use of technology for relationship building
purposes, there are several limitations.
The first limitation deals with how immigrant-serving NGOs’ resource niche and
identity niche are operationalized in the current study. The community ecology theory
considers a broad set of resources that an organizational population depends on (Freeman
& Audia, 2006), ranging from financial resources, knowledge and expertise resources, to
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membership and human capital resources. Yet, the current study only focuses on the
aspect of financial resources. Albeit of critical importance to organizational survival,
financial resources alone may not capture the full spectrum of resources needed by an
immigrant-serving NGOs community. Similarly, by operationalizing identity niche only
through immigrant-serving NGOs’ functional type and clientele base, the typology used
in the current study may not be directly generalized to other organizational communities.
Methodologically, the current study takes a less refined measure of niche space than what
has been implemented in other community ecology studies. For example, scholars have
employed more sophisticated measures, such as niche width—which can be
mathematically calculated based on an actor’s utilization of various resources (Carroll,
1985; Dobrev, Kim, & Hannan, 2002; Hannan & Freeman, 1989)— to more rigorously
capture the multi-dimensional nature of niche spaces. However, because not every NGO
in the sample fully discloses its financial portfolio or the extent to which it relies on each
type of resource, the availability of data was the major constraining factor preventing the
current study from developing a more refined measure of niche spaces.
Second, in theorizing the relationship between resource niche overlap and NGOs’
alliance tie formation, although the empirical findings support that NGOs with mutual
funders are more likely to establish cooperative relationships, it is less clear as to whether
and how the dynamics of competition—the other mechanism derived from community-
level interdependence—may also play a role in immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance
building. It is plausible that both competition and cooperation are present during the
process of alliance partner selection. Due to different magnitudes of effect, the outcome
of competition might be offset by the outcome of cooperation. However, the current
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study is not able to identify or parse out the unique effect of each mechanism, largely due
to the cross-sectional nature of data and the particular analysis methods employed.
Along this line, future studies are encouraged to disentangle the effect from
competition and cooperation in order to better understand how resource niche overlap
affects NGOs’ alliance building choices. According to the community ecology theory,
one way to identify competition is through the lens of density dependence, which predicts
that competition can arise when the density of the same type of organizations exceeds the
maximum carrying capacity of the resource environment (Carroll & Hannan, 2000).
Therefore, future research may consider collecting additional community-level data, such
as the historical and current density of each organizational population, to estimate
whether the current organizational community is experiencing competition due to the
crowding of certain types of NGOs. Alternatively, organizational-level data may be
supplemented, such as through organizational interviews, in order to gather
organizational responses regarding the perceived competition level and how such
perception may affect their decisions of alliance building.
The second study utilizes the concept of goal-attaining communication ecologies
to explain the structural divergence of interorganizational networks across technology
platforms. Although the current study identifies two important mechanisms associated
with the observed divergence (namely, the goal pursued by the NGOs, and the
communication context afforded by the technology platform), it may not adequately
consider other mechanisms that are also likely to affect NGOs’ choices of alliance
partners and technology platforms. For example, the information technology (IT)
capability of individual organizations is not considered. As a concept widely used in the
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information systems literature, organizational IT capability is defined as “an
organization’s ability to mobilize and deploy technology-based resources in combination
with other resources and capabilities” (Bharadwaj, 2000, p. 171). Specifically, IT
capability manifests itself in an organization’s possession of IT infrastructure, the amount
of human IT resources, as well as the overall technology-related visions held by the
managers of the organization (Feeny & Willcocks, 1998). In the same way as for-profit
organizations, NGOs are found to differ considerably in terms of IT capability. Empirical
work has identified a significant disparity with regard to organizations’ overall reception
to communication technologies (Zorn, Flanagin, & Shoham, 2011), the amount of
resources available for an NGO to devote to technology development (Hackler & Saxton,
2007), as well as the effectiveness of devising technology-related strategies (Olsen,
Keevers, Paul, & Covington, 2001). Given that organizational IT capability has been
found to impact various performance outcomes (Bharadwaj, 2000), it is likely that this
variable may also contribute to the observed divergence of NGOs’ interorganizational
networks across platforms.
In examining the relationship between NGOs’ organizational goals and their
construction of communication ecologies, the current study focuses on the variable of
functional type and posits that NGOs of different functional types aim to fulfill different
goals when utilizing communication technologies. Obviously, the current study only
examines a static and single aspect of this multi-dimensional construct. Scholars have
long maintained that organizational goal setting is a dynamic process, and the specific
goals prioritized by the organization are subject to influences from the external
environment (Thompson & McEwen, 1958). For example, when an environment
144

experiences external shock caused by disruptive events, organizational goals may shift
accordingly. Research on the media system dependence (MSD) theory has made an
analogous argument. The MSD theory examines the dependency relationship established
between individuals and the media system in fulfilling various individual goals (Ball-
Rokeach, 1988). It posits that the level of dependence can be moderated by the change or
disruption of the external environment. For example, Lowrey (2004) applied the MSD
theory to examine how individuals’ dependencies on individual media types in the
aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2001 were different from
their everyday selection of media types. Following this line of thought, future research is
encouraged to compare the configuration of NGOs’ online alliance networks during
everyday relationship building versus during emerging events, such as protests or
massive mobilization. By examining whether and how the environmental dynamics may
alter NGOs’ goal priorities and therefore the pattern of alliance building, future research
can more systematically explore the usefulness of goal-attaining communication
ecologies in explaining NGOs’ alliance building behaviors.
In addition, one needs to recognize other means of constructing communication
ecologies for NGOs, especially in the offline and face-to-face context. Despite the rapid
adoption of social media and communication technologies, research in the nonprofit
sector consistently shows the importance of interpersonal relationships in community
outreach and the formation of trusting interorganizational relations (Tsasis, 2009).
Depending on the specific goals sought by an NGO, the use of technology platforms may
be only secondary to other forms of relationship building. Therefore, future research is
145

encouraged to map the full scope of organizational communication ecologies, which
should include both interpersonal and technology-mediated connections.
Finally, the limitation of using ERGM should be noted. Although predictive
network modeling is uniquely equipped to understand the underlying tie-formation logics
within a network (Shumate & Palazzolo, 2010), this method is less capable of comparing
the effect of the same mechanism across different networks. In the second study, the
comparison of model results detects whether the same mechanism is consistently
significant. However, it is not able to offer inferences regarding whether the magnitude of
effect varies across different networks.
Conclusion
The current dissertation investigates how multi-level factors and forces shape
immigrant-serving NGOs’ alliance building and partner selection across multiple
technology platforms. It uses predictive network modeling (i.e., the Exponential Random
Graph Models [ERGM]) to test the extent to which the community-level resource and
identity niche overlap, dyadic-level geographic proximity and common third party ties,
and organizational status in explaining the underlying mechanisms associated with
NGOs’ alliance partner choices. Furthermore, it expands the current research literature on
NGOs’ use of communication technologies in relationship building by including a
comparison of the networks formed from multiple technology platforms. Using a novel
theoretical perspective, that is, the goal-attaining communication ecologies, this
dissertation offers important explanations as to why the same NGOs’ multiple
interorganizational networks may show structural divergence. Altogether, this
dissertation proposes an integrative model that highlights the importance of community-
146

level interdependence, NGOs’ goal-attaining nature, as well as the technological features
associated with each online platform in shaping individual organizations’ alliance
building and communication behaviors.
To conclude, this dissertation identifies two major findings regarding NGOs’
alliance building and communication. First, the mutual dependence on financial resources
significantly contributes to alliance formation among the diverse community of
immigrant-serving NGOs. It thus points out that resource interdependence derived from
the overlap of niche spaces merits future research, and it might be particularly fruitful to
use the current framework to study the alliance building behaviors among communities
comprised of diverse organizational populations. Second, regarding NGOs’ use of
communication technologies, the current study finds that the distinctive goals pursued or
prioritized by an NGO are significantly associated with the platform-based divergence as
observed across multiple interorganizational networks. As NGOs increasingly adopt
multiple platforms to manage interorganizational alliance, this dissertation sets important
groundwork for future inquires to examine how technological features and organizational
goals may intersect and shape alliance building outcomes.
147

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176

APPENDIX I: Immigrant-Serving NGOs Included in the Sample

ID NGO Name Short Name
1 African Advocacy Network AAN
2 Asian Law Alliance ALA
3 Bhutanese Community in California BCC
4 Centro De Ayuda Legal Para Imigrantes of Mountain View CALI
5 Canal Alliance Canal
6 Centro Binaccional Desarollo Indigina Oaxqueno CBDIO
7 Center for Empowering Refugees CERI
8 Californians for Human Immigrant Rights Leadership Action Fund CHIRL_AF
9 Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers Inc. CIIC
10 Coalicion Nacional de Inmigrantes Guatemaltecos- Conguate CONGUATE
11 Chinese Progressive Association CPA
12 Dream Team Los Angeles DTLA
13 Educators for Fair Consideration E4FC
14 East Bay Sanctuary Covenant EBSC
15 East Bay Community Law Center EBCLC
16 Filipino Migrant Center FMC
17 Garment Workers Center GWC
18 Good Samaritan Family Resource Center GSFRC
19 Help for Refugees HFR
20 California Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights ICIR-CLUE-CA
21 Indochinese Muslim Refugee Association of the United States IMRA
22 Immigration Center for Women and Children ICWC
23 Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates of Southern California KIWA
24 Koreatown Youth and Community Center KYCC
25 A Pan-Asian & Pacific Islander Immigrant Youth-Led Org in LA ASPIRE
26 Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition LBIRC
27 Islamic Association of Immigrants IAI
28 Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project MICOP
29 Mujeres Unidas y Activas MUA
30 National Alliance for Filipino Concerns NAFCON
31 Pilipino Workers' Center PWC
32 San Diego Dream Team SDDT
33 Santa Barbara Immigration Community Center Inc. ICC_SB
34 Street Level Health Project SLLP
35 Thai Community Development Center TCDC
36 Unitarian Universalist Refugee and Immigrant Services and Education UURISE
37 Vital Immigrant Defense Advocacy & Services VIDAS
38 Refugee Forum of Orange County RFOC
39 AAAJ-Asian Law Caucus ALC
40 Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation AIISF
177

41 African Immigrants Social and Cultural Services AISCS
42 Asian Immigrant Women Advocates AIWA
43 Apoyo Legal Migrante Asociado ALMA
44 American Muslim Voice Foundation AMV
45 Black Alliance for Just Immigration BAJI
46 Burma Family Refugee Network BRFN
47 Chinese for Affirmative Action CAA
48 California Immigrant Policy Center CIPC
49 Central American Resource Center CARECEN
50 Refugee and Immigrant Women Alliance RIWA
51 Chinatown Community Development Center, San Francisco CCDC
52 Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles CHIRLA
53 Korean Community Center of East Bay KCCEB
54 Council of Mexican Federations COFEM
55 Coachella Valley Immigration Service and Assistance CVISA
56 Devata Giving Circle DGC
57 Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement CIVIC
58 Filipino Advocates for Justice FAJ
59 Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries FIRM
60 Centro Laboral de Graton CLG
61 International Institute of the Bay Area IIBA
62 Orange County Immigrant Youth United OCIYU
63 Immigrant Legal Resource Center ILRC
64 Immigrant Genealogical Society IGS
65 Immigrants Charitable Foundation ICF
66 Immigration Services of Mountain View IS_MV
67 Jerry Refugee Foundation JRF
68 Korean Resource Center KRC
69 Latino Coalition for a Healthy California LCHC
70 Legal Immigrant Association LIA
71 La Raza Centro Legal LRCL
72 Afghan Refugee Islamic Community of the Bay Area ARIC_Bay
73 Mobilize the Immigrant Vote MIV
74 NALEO Educational Fund NALEOEF
75 National Day Laborer Organizing Network NDLON
76 National Immigration Law Center NILC
77 National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights NNIRR
78 African Refugee Relief Agency A California Nonprofit Corporation ARRA
79 North County Immigration and Citizenship Center NCICC
80 Nuestra Casa East Palo Alto NC_EPA
81 Oram - Organization for Refuge Asylum & Migration ORAM
82 Pacific Coast Immigration Museum PCIM
83 Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans PANA
84 Pars Equality Center PARS
85 Myanmar Refugee Community of San Diego MRCSD
178

86 People Organized to Demand Economic and Environmental Rights PODER
87 Refugee Transitions RT
88 The Episcopal Refugee Network of San Diego ERN_SD
89 Refugee Educators Network Inc. RENINC
90 Irish Immigration Pastoral Center of the Bay Area IIPC_Bay
91 Search to Involve Pilipino Americans SIPA
92 Services & Immigrant Rights & Education Network SIREN
93 TODEC Legal Center TODEC
94 Universal Congress for Unsettled Refugees Incorporated UCUR
95 UFW Foundation UFWF
96 Voice of Refugees VOR
97 WKF Giving Fund WKF
98 Migration Dialogue MD
99 Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network YIIN
100 Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees GCIR
101 Refugee Relief International Inc. RRI
102 Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California IDEPSCA
103 The National Korean American Service & Education Consortium NAKASEC
104 Chinese Newcomers Service Center CNSC

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Asset Metadata

Creator Liu, Wenlin (author)

Core Title Understanding alliance building and communication across multiple technology platforms among California's immigrant-serving NGOs

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 07/28/2016

Defense Date 05/31/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag community ecology,interorganizational communication,NGO alliance building,nonprofit social media use,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Ball-Rokeach, Sandra (committee chair), Fulk, Janet (committee member), Monge, Peter (committee member)

Creator Email liuwenlin1009@gmail.com,wenlin.liu@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-284163

Unique identifier UC11279654

Identifier etd-LiuWenlin-4649.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-284163 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LiuWenlin-4649.pdf

Dmrecord 284163

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Liu, Wenlin

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA