Building a Network Administrative Organization's Social Base: Lessons From the National Quality Forum

Networks are an increasingly common aspect of administrative life. One organization in health care, the National Quality Forum (NQF), is attempting to address issues of health care quality in a new way by bringing together organizations from the public and private sectors to discuss and debate measures of quality and, ultimately, to effect change. Little, however, is known about a network leader's tasks during the creation of an organization like the NQF. The purpose of this article is to discuss and elaborate on one critical task, building a social base, that the NQF's president and CEO engaged in during the NQF's formative stages.