Governance and Collaboration: An Evolutionary Study of Two Mental Health Networks

As examples of a state of agents, this paper will present a comparative analysis of the evolution of two community mental health networks that both have similar contracts from the State of Arizona and operate under the same set of rules. One of these is governed by a for-profit firm that both produces services directly and buys them from a network of nonprofit agencies. The other is governed by a community based nonprofit that contracts with four separate nonprofit networks to offer services. These networks are analyzed, using social network analysis, at the beginning of the system and four years later. The mature network is compared to the new network. The for-profit governed system is compared to the nonprofit governed system. The paper discusses the evolution of structure over time and a limited comparison of the networks in terms of which produced higher quality outcomes.