The preceding meditations on the implications of our empirical findings and theoretical
development are far from complete. But they do suggest several avenues for additional
esearch. First and foremost, a more complete understanding of network management can only flow from careful examination of the environment in which public service networks
exist. We have identified at least three generic types of networks in a public service network system. We have also highlighted the importance of identifying the systems that are adjacent to one another. However, we do not know how general these findings are. For
instance, would one find these structures in a substantive domain that is less reliant on ‘‘soft money?’’ Only future research will tell. Similarly, future research should attempt to link policy networks with collaborative networks of a different nature. For instance, Agranoff (2006) notes that networks could be primarily used for informational or outreach purposes. Do these networks have a similar ‘‘system’’ structure? Our hunch is that systems are more general; that resource dependence often generates political expedients that must be attended to, even if collaboration is less intense than in our cases. But no research base exists yet to test these suppositions.