Food Aid Management (FAM) is a collective of private voluntary organizations that receive American commodities for international development activities around the world. The member organizations cooperate to solve common problems associated with commodity management, commodity sales, monitoring, evaluation, and compliance with government regulations. Research suggests that FAM's organizational environment, structure, and culture may be understood from the theoretical perspective of the collectivist organizational type described by Rothschild-Whitt. During 2002, qualitative and quantitative social research methods were used to gather information from FAM member organizations to test the collectivist model. Parametric, nonparametric, and Boolean analyses of the data provided no quantitative support for the model. Social network techniques revealed the structure of inter-organizational interactions in the FAM context. Further analysis suggests that network elicitation prompts significantly impact associated network structures. Research findings support the use of social network methods to monitor collaborative activity. Changes in organizational structure and behavior to realign FAM with their collectivist mission and their collectivist outlook are also recommended based on the findings of this research.
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