Positions, Roles, and Dependencies in a Community Interorganization System

This study focuses on community structure as a network of interorganizational linkages, with an eye toward (1) generating new conceptual schemes to study the community as a social network and (2) developing a methodology to measure new dimensions of community structure. An analysis of structurally equivalent roles is performed in two communities for three organizational resource networks: money, information, and moral support. Global dependencies on resource generator, consumer, and transmitter roles for the money network are analyzed using loglinear models. Local dependencies within the money network are also examined. Finally, the study examines the perceived influence of organizations in community affairs as a function of the organizations' global positions within the community network.