Snuggling Together or Exploring Options? A Multilevel Analysis of Nonprofit Partnership Formation and Evolution in an Unstable Institutional Context

What predicts the formation and evolution of partnerships in unstable institutional contexts? We answer this question by examining the partnership field of environmental nonprofit organizations based in Lebanon. Employing descriptive and inferential network methods, we find organizational attributes such as scope, operations, and age to be significant predictors of partnership formation. In particular, organizations working in the same issue areas are more likely to partner with each other; age and scope complementarity also drives the partnership formation over time. Furthermore, the results reveal that organizations are more likely to form partnerships with their partners’ partners, and consequently stable clusters or subgroups emerge over time. These findings are suggestive but are the first to provide a multilevel analysis of nonprofit partnership formation and evolution.