In order to produce useful information on the structure and process of management in networks involved in public action, one must address relevant questions. These questions are not answered here. However, we are able to make some tentative conclusions regarding network management. There are apparent common network management sequences like activation, framing, mobilizing, and synthesizing. We need to know more about how these processes unfold. Some of these are behavioral, as collaborative learning that draws on social capital plus negotiation supplement more standard behavioral science techniques. We need to know more about how negotiation plays off against collaborative learning. Apparently, many political, bureaucratic, and resource deficiency issues can be facilitated through flexible processes by managers. It is apparent that accountability in networks is defined and perceived differently than in single organizations. We also need to know more about the contribution o! f personal responsibility and responsiveness to network performance. Additionally, the cohesion developed through trust and a program rationale should be measured against the force of authority in hierarchies.
Not all is peace and harmony in networks. We know that power needs to be confronted as a core element in network management, both in terms of control and its social production forms. The impact of control on synergistic collaboration needs further elaboration. While we know that networks create value by acting as important means of bridging multiple organizations and dealing with difficult problems, there is more to be explored. Is the emergence of networks attributable to changes in policy instruments? Is the emergence of new policy instruments attributable to the availability of network forms of organizing? There is little research on the productive outcomes of networks regarding whether solutions would be different if carried out through single organizations. Simply put, we need to know more about how networks produce.
In the opening chapter of the volume that emerged from the first national Public Management Research Conference, Hal Rainey addressed the topics of what public management is and what public management should be, by asking "whether public administration scholars might do better in advancing both the identity of the field and its research and theory if fewer of us ruminated on these topics and more of us simply identified important theoretical and research questions and worked on providing answers to them" (1993, 9). So it is with public network management. It is not so much that scholars who study networks ruminate needlessly about normative issues-indeed, the subject is rarely introduced (O'Toole 1997a)-but rather that so few do empirical research with the expectation that it will lead to additional research, and too few provide empirical researchers with questions to consider and hypotheses to test. To be relevant, management research must inform action: data for data's sa! ke is not useful. As it is now a core task of governance, network management must be placed up front as an essential arena of examination in the fields of public management and administration.