Public Administration Networks for Industrial Waste Management in Eastern Thailand

Abstract

There are many studies that point out the utility of public administration networks. However, there are few empirical studies that examine network effectiveness in network-level interactions as a whole network. This survey research aims to study the effectiveness of public administration networks at three levels of analysis: network, organization, and community levels. Additionally, it aims to provide a systematic analysis of factors that influence the network. The study looked at a sample case involving an industrial waste management network in seven provinces of the eastern area of Thailand. Data were collected through questionnaires from a sample group composed of public sector, private sector and civil society representatives from 901 organizations.

The results showed that the effectiveness of the public administration network for industrial waste management in Eastern Thailand was low at all three levels of analysis, especially in the area of network conflict management and public network accountability. In addition, the research found that there is a relationship between effectiveness at different levels of network analysis. Overall, findings indicated that network environment, network structure and characteristics, network management, and network capacity and availability significantly influence the effectiveness of public administration networks, at significance level p ≤ 0.05. The research results were used as a basis to provide recommendations about academic knowledge, policy design, guidelines for public network managers and future research.