Fight against terrorism and organized crime require strong collaboration between public security organizations. Because of increasing challenges about terrorism and organized crime, governments establish various new organizational networks to fight against different aspects of these problems. Managing complex network arrangements is different from managing and leading a single public organization.

The following research questions will guide the research study: Which factors are important for effectiveness in public security networks? What is the role of inter-organizational trust among partner agencies? Which kind of leadership style will achieve the highest performance in public security networks? What is the relative importance of goal convergence and organizational culture in network effectiveness? How does the relationship between inter-organizational trust, leadership style, goal convergence and organizational culture impact network effectiveness?

In order to find these relations between study variables, a self-reported survey conducted with 1956 current and previous Turkish public security network managers. The study expects to find that inter-organizational trust has a positive relation with network effectiveness. While goal convergence is expected to be positively related with network effectiveness, the nature of organizational culture in public security is expected to have a negative relation. Network leadership style is expected to positively or negatively influence the network effectiveness. This study will contribute to the literature on network effectiveness with particular proposals for public security managers and practitioners.

This research aims to identify the factors that affect the success of collaboration among agencies in public security networks. Although earlier studies examined network effectiveness in public service delivery networks, little attention has been paid to the effectiveness of public security networks. This study addresses this issue by studying the impacts of four latent variables which are inter-organizational trust, network leadership style, organizational culture and goal convergence on network effectiveness in public security networks. The study will use network theory, resource dependency theory, and inter-organizational social capital perspectives. Turkish local public security networks are selected as the case of the research to analyze relations between the variables. Terrorism and organized crime are two significant safety problems for Turkish Government. Turkey has been suffering from various terror groups from left wing to right wing that have various purposes. Turkey also has a critical location for organized crime groups, since it is a vital transit line between Europe and Asia. Terrorist organizations also perform illegal activities, or act together with organized crime groups to find economic resources. The profit of these organized crime activities is the main financial source of the terrorist organizations. The instability in Turkey’s neighbor countries, Iraq and Syria, provide permanent bases for crime groups.