The critical role of information sharing to the value proposition of a food systems network

Abstract

With goal-directed networks being used so extensively as a strategy to achieve ‘collective impact,’ increased attention is being paid to the investment of participating member organizations’ time, and informational, financial, and human capital in these efforts. Authors draw on the concept of ‘value proposition’ from the business and public administration literature and use extensive network data from a food systems planning network to test hypotheses focusing on the positionality of member organizations within specific operational subnetworks by correlating positionality with multiple assessments of value. Results indicate that embeddedness in the information sharing subnetwork most strongly correlates with member value proposition.