Community Economic Development Organizations in Montreal

Summary

This chapter explores the dilemmas facing CED intermediary organizations as vehicles for progressive social change through an analysis of an urban Canadian model from Québec called corporations de développement économique communautaire (CDEC). CDECs are democratically controlled, not-for-profit, local development organizations that oversee and support CED efforts on three main levels: (1) job skills development and “employability” services; (2) business development; and (3) development of innovative partnerships among diverse groups to plan and coordinate CED strategies in their communities. These practices are analyzed and issues inherent to them are presented using specific contributions from CED literature. This analysis shows that within such organizations, contradictory practices and directions co-exist due to pressures exerted simultaneously by market, state, and community forces.     

Resisting Invisibility

Nonprofit arts organizations often struggle for visibility and survival. They may meet these challenges by adopting new marketing strategies, forming administrative alliances with other organizations, or creating programming that appeals to broader audiences. Though these tactics are indeed important, arts organizations must first develop a persistent presence in their communities. This article proposes five key ingredients of persistent presence for nonprofit arts organizations and suggests that persistent presence can be consciously constructed by an organization, by an artistic discipline, and by the larger arts community. The intent of this exploratory framework for persistent presence may guide arts administrators in their work and propel future research in this area.     

The community development potential of large health services organizations

Large health services organizations routinely support communitiesthrough provision of services. However, as these organizationshave also become important economic entities, they are increasinglyviewed as having significant potential to make additional contributionsto community development in a variety of ways. The incentivesfor large health services organizations to play broader communitydevelopment roles include the same business advantages thataccrue to other organizations that do so. Beyond this, uniquely,health services organizations can more fully fulfill their centralhealth-enhancing purposes through their community developmentefforts because, ultimately, the health of people is affectedby the quality of the communities in which they live.     

Cleaning Up Water? Or Building Rural Community? Community Watershed Organizations in Pennsylvania*

Abstract Recent initiatives from state and federal government agencies have helped foster the formation of community‐based watershed organizations. Although there is a great deal of enthusiasm about the potential of these organizations to enhance water quality, relatively little attention has been paid to the impacts these organizations may have on the well‐being of rural communities more generally. Assessments of effectiveness have typically focused on specific activities and accomplishments, rather than a broader range of community‐based effects. In short, we ask whether community‐based environmental management improves community as well as environment. Our research utilized a mixed‐methods design, including a statewide mail survey of all Pennsylvania watershed organizations, followed by in‐depth interviews with 28 rural watershed organizations. This sequential approach progressively explored in more detail definitions of effectiveness, including the building of rural capacity. We find watershed organizations are potentially effective mechanisms for building local leadership, enhancing the skills of rural residents, and making valuable connections with other communities, facing similar water‐resource and rural‐development issues. However, the range of issues with which local watershed organizations engage and the methods they currently utilize may eventually limit their usefulness.     

First Nations and community economic development: a case study

A training project in a northern Canadian community providedan opportunity to examine participatory planning approachesand the meaning of work in First Nations communities. Focusgroups conducted three years after the unsuccessful interventionof a community economic development (CED) project suggest thatcomplex factors such as lack of support from community leadersand rate of pay for workers determine whether CED is alwaysappropriate in northern, First Nations contexts.     

Maintaining Solidarity: A Look Back at the Mormon Village*

Abstract The present study suggests, in contrast to community dissolution theories, that community is maintained through a dialogue between ideological commitment and cooperative action within a cultural framework. The research follows up on a classic rural community study series, that of Lowry Nelson's Mormon villages. Replicating Nelson's ethnographic methods, the author reevaluates the earlier findings and extends the data by several decades. Nelson's findings on Mormon village dynamics are still relevant, although in modified forms, largely through community members' commitments to a common ideology. The author concludes that affectively based communities persist despite modernization. Mormon solidarity has endured because of its early articulation of expected interaction with the broader social world and because of its commitment to both ideals and practical action.     

The complexity of diversity and importance for equitable philanthropy

The current U.S. climate of racial and social injustice has prompted a renewed call for diverse and equitable ways to rethink community philanthropy. Community foundations are vehicles for community philanthropy which offer vast benefits for social improvement and community development. The board of directors ensures these organizations fulfill their mission, making decisions on funding priorities and holding the organization functionally and fiscally responsible. Drawing on constructs of diversity and representative bureaucracy and a case study of Florida community foundations, we suggest that diversity is understood in different ways and the presence of diverse board members may be linked to advancing the interests of diverse communities and in achieving outcomes that assist in the needs of certain social groups. Increased understanding of diversity can improve foundation and philanthropic effectiveness and bring broader social change by promoting equity and social justice among community‐based philanthropic organizations.     

Social Disorganization and Parochial Control: Religious Institutions and Their Communities

Set within the framework of social disorganization theory, this article explores the relationship between social disorganization and parochial control. Specifically, this study investigates whether more disorganized communities support fewer religious institutions than less disorganized areas. It also examines the relationship between religious institutions and another type of community association: multi-issue, neighborhood-based organizations. Data are drawn from 1990 Census data, the 1991 Chicago telephone directory and local community organization directories. Findings support the idea that residential mobility and ethnic heterogeneity are negatively related to the prevalence of religious institutions whereas there is a curvilinear relationship between poverty and religious organizations. Finally, a strong relationship between the prevalence of religious institutions and the prevalence of multi-issue organizations is established.     

Ethnic Minority Families and Minority Gays and Lesbians

Attitudes toward sexuality differ within the diverse ethnic and racial communities that exist in the U.S., and the cultural values and beliefs surrounding sexuality play a major role in determining how individuals behave within their sociological context. The family unit is the domain where such values and beliefs are nurtured and developed. An individual's value system is shaped and reinforced within the family context which usually reflects the broader community norms. Disclosure of a gay or lesbian sexual preference and lifestyle by a family member presents challenges to ethnic minority families who tend not to discuss sexuality issues and presume a heterosexual orientation. For ethnic minority gays and lesbians the "coming out" process presents challenges in their identity formation processes and in their loyalties to one community over another. Ethnic gay men and lesbians need to live within three rigidly defined and strongly independent communities: the gay and lesbian community, the ethnic minority community, and the society at large. While each community provides fundamental needs, serious consequences emerge if such communities were to be visibly integrated and merged. It requires a constant effort to maintain oneself in three different worlds, each of which fails to support significant aspects of a person's life. The complications that arise may inhibit one's ability to adapt and to maximize personal potentials. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction and processes between ethnic minority communities and their gay and lesbian family members. A framework for understanding the process of change, that occurs for the gay or lesbian person as they attempt to resolve conflicts of dual minority membership, is presented. Implications for the practitioner is also discussed.     

The Social Networks of Leaders in More and Less Viable Rural Communities1

Abstract The relationship between the social networks of leaders and community viability is examined in a comparative study of leaders (N = 75) in five rural communities (population range, 1,000 to 2,500). The analysis looks at leaders' connections to organizations outside of their communities and at different kinds of linkages between leaders within their respective communities. Leaders in more and less viable communities do not differ much in characteristics such as age, education, and occupations, but the presence of women in leadership positions is associated with community viability. In addition, there is some support for the expectation that leaders in more viable communities are more likely to have formal linkages to statewide and national networks. The most important finding, however, is that the way in which leaders relate to each other in instrumental tasks within their respective communities is associated with community viability.     

Heretical Social Movement Organizations and Their Framing Strategies*

This article is an exploratory study of heretical social movement organizations (HSMOs) and the challenges that they face in framing their issue positions. It examines how identity communities’ core issue positions serve to demarcate the boundaries of authentic group membership, making “heretics” out of community organizations that have contrary positions. It also analyzes how these organizations finesse their heretical status by utilizing specific framing strategies. It illustrates these processes using data on two social movement organizations involved in the American abortion controversy, Catholics for a Free Choice, a Catholic pro‐choice organization, and Feminists for Life of America, a feminist pro‐life organization, during the period between 1972 and 2000. I begin by demonstrating the Catholic and feminist communities’ use of an abortion litmus test to maintain community boundaries. I, then, describe the two organizations’ use of value amplification and boundary framing to frame their “heretical” issue positions both within and against their identity communities, respectively. I conclude by discussing the trend toward orthodoxy in many identity communities and the role of heretical social movement organizations in challenging this trend.     

Socioeconomic System of the Oil Boom and Rural Community Development in Western North Dakota

An oil boom is a complex social and economic phenomenon. The socioeconomic system presented in this article represents a novel effort to explicate boom impacts and changes, within a systems framework, at the community level to enhance community planning and development efforts. Most boomtown studies focus on longitudinal changes of a boom‐bust‐recovery cycle or social‐disruption‐based approaches. This article is an effort to demonstrate that longitudinal changes or social disruptions of a boom manifest through the interactions and interrelationships between social entities and stakeholders acting within the boom conditions and surrounding conditions. The socioeconomic system approach in this article analyzes the boom as a system, which provides a useful lens for many other rural communities currently experiencing unconventional oil and gas development in the United States. The socioeconomic system highlights five main challenges or factors that need to be addressed through community development strategies: develop affordable housing, invest in community infrastructure, expand public services, attract new businesses to the area, and develop better community integration strategies to build trust and unity within the community. This article is qualitative and exploratory in nature. As a result, it explicates the functions, structure, and relationships between system entities to provide a broader understanding of coherence, conflicts, and synergies within a system.     

The ecology of games between public policy and private action: Nonprofit community organizations as bridging and mediating institutions

The conception of nonprofit organizations as institutional bridges that mediate within an environment of interrelationships is a useful device for informing strategic thinking by nonprofit professionals and volunteers. The bridge metaphor neatly explains not only the rise in number of nonprofit community organizations, but also the process by which leaders of the private and public sectors have formed partnerships to project the wealth and assets of communities.     

The Logic of A Co‐Operative Economy and Democracy 2.0: Recovering the Possibilities for Autonomy,Creativity, Solidarity,and Common Purpose

Over the past 30 years, the collectivist‐democratic form of organization has presented a growing alternative to the bureaucratic form, and it has proliferated, here and around the world. This form is manifest, for example, within micro‐credit groups, workers’ co‐operatives, nongovernmental organizations, advocacy groups, self‐help groups, community and municipal initiatives, social movement organizations, and in many nonprofit groups in general. It is most visible in the civil society sector, but demands for deeper participation are also evident in communities and cities, and the search for more involving and less bureaucratic structures has spread into many for‐profit firms as well. Building on research on this form of organization, this article develops a model of the decisional processes utilized in such organizations and contrasts these “Democracy 2.0” standards for decision making from the Democracy 1.0 (representative and formal) standards that previously prevailed. Drawing on a new generation of research on these sorts of organizations, this article and this special section discuss: (a) how consensus decisional processes are being made more efficient; (b) how such organizations are now able to scale to fairly large size while still retaining their local and participatory basis; (c) how such organizations are cultivating a more diverse membership and using such diversity to build more democratic forms of governance; (d) how such organizations are combatting ethnoracial and gender inequalities that prevail in the surrounding society; and (e) how emotions are getting infused into the public conversations within these organizations and communities.     

The Policy Outputs and Conflicts of Large Communities from an Interorganizational Viewpoint

Abstract

An interorganizational framework is employed to merge elitist, pluralist, and dialectic perspectives on the community in this pilot study of 36 large United States cities.

An interorganizational framework is employed to merge elitist, pluralist, and dialectic perspectives on the community in this pilot study of 36 large United States cities.

Where organizations fail to abound, power may be wielded by an organized elite over an unorganized mass, thereby creating the conditions of polarized conflict, undampened by the crosscutting and issue-specific lines of coalition and conflict existing in organizationally richer environments. The indicators of community decentralization did indeed have independent effects upon the absence of conflict, measured by flouridation of the municipal water supply.

Decision by coalition lends special significance to linkage-providing organizations, such as large-scale and diversified municipal government. The idea of organizations with plural interests and values suggests that centralized governments either are weak or exist in organizationally barren communities; neither alternative is conducive to collective community action. The finding follows that seven different community outposts, each one requiring interorganizational cooperation, were positively affected by the scale and diversification of municipal government and/or by its decentralization.

All of this suggests that various small conflicts serve to prevent large ones in the multiorganizational setting and that the power of organizations, even government agencies, depends upon their capacity for coalition-formation, whatever the degree of their political autonomy.     

Latino Faces,Corporate Ties: Latino Advocacy Organizations and Their Board Membership

Although they have increased exponentially since the 1960s, social scientists know little about ethnic advocacy organizations. These nonprofits are important bridges between underresourced communities and mainstream funding organizations and their directors are established ethnic leaders. Sociologists study interlocking directorates—or shared board membership—to understand how organizations fit together within broader social networks. Network concepts, particularly the theory of institutional isomorphism, suggest that organizations are likely to be similar to the extent they are connected and operate within a common organizational field. We apply this logic to Latino advocacy organizations to examine the underlying source of cohesion across this ethnic field. We ask whether the organizations are tied by interlocking directorates of ethnic elites who sit on their boards of directors or if board members' common affiliation with other elite institutions creates the structural conditions that facilitate potential ideological or behavioral similarity. A social network analysis of five prominent Latino advocacy organizations reveals support for both hypotheses: Latino board members are both embedded in ethnic‐based networks and entrenched within elite organizational webs. This suggests that ethnic elites who sit on the boards of Latino advocacy organizations are also corporate elites, selected for the social capital they bring to these nonprofits.     

Voluntarism, self-help and rural community development: Some current approaches

Within the last decade or so, there has developed an increased concern for the welfare of rural communities and for individuals within such communities. At the same time there has emerged a parallel concern for environmental matters, concerned with conservation of species and habitat and the protection of cherished landscapes and amenities. Both sectors of rural concern have been characterised by debate about the means of delivery of policies and programmes in their respective areas and, in particular, about the balance between state action and the activities of the private sector. A common thread running through such debates has been the role of what is loosely called the ‘voluntary sector’, that is the complicated mix of individuals and organisations, local and national, which involve themselves in effort, not for direct payment nor as a routine of work, but because of feelings of commitment, belief and ideology.This paper is concerned with just one aspect of this sector — that which involves social and community aspects of the lives of rural dwellers in the English countryside. Despite this restricted field, there is an attempt to see things within a broader socio-political context, such that rural voluntarism and rural self-help can be assessed not only against a wider picture of volunteering generally but also placed within a political framework, both national and local. Voluntarism and self-help cannot exist independently of the world around them, yet the very process of facing up to the wider political realities creates problems of accountability and control to the extent that some would dismiss the voluntary sector as ineffective at best or the tool of vested interests at worst.     

Integrating community ergonomics with educational ergonomics--designing community systems to support classroom learning

This paper offers a conceptual framework, bolstered by empirical evidence, for two conclusions: (1) that variability in student learning is prominently influenced by ergonomic design features, not only of classrooms and school systems, but also of surrounding communities; and (2) a systems concept of learning environments therefore is required to support student learning, based on integrating educational with community ergonomics. Educational system design factors known to strongly influence student learning first are reviewed. One of the most prominent of these is the socioeconomic status of communities in which schools are housed. Independent lines of evidence then are introduced that may account for how and why community design affects learning. The paper closes with recommendations for persuading policymakers and educators that closer integration of school system operations and functions with those of the surrounding community, with a central goal of upgrading community design conditions, represents a highly promising opportunity for improving student learning performance. One major challenge is to heighten awareness that learning environments outside the classroom are as or more important as those inside, in terms of influencing not only test but broader educational and societal trajectories of children.     

Implications of welfare reform on the elderly: a case study of provider, advocate, and consumer perspectives

Whereas many studies of welfare reform have focused on effects on children and families, little research has examined the implications of welfare reform for the elderly. This case study incorporates interviews with service providers for the aging, members of advocacy organizations, and two focus groups of older consumers conducted in the multi-ethnic urban community of San Francisco. Study findings suggest that welfare reform has had both direct and indirect effects on the elderly and their services in the study community. Direct effects derive primarily from changes in the welfare reform legislation that had the effect of undermining both immigrants' eligibility for and claiming of public assistance benefits. Indirect effects on older persons include increased child-care demands upon grandparents. The case study data bear on a significant policy change within the broader trend of devolution at a historical point when anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States was running high.     

Beyond Neighborhoods and Crime: Expanding the Scope of Social Disorganization to Explain Occupational Deviance

This article proposes a structural explanation for the occupational deviance dimension of white collar crime. The systemic model of social disorganization theory is used as a framework for understanding organizational conditions that produce high rates of occupational deviance. The model of workplace disorganization proposed here posits parallel mechanisms can be found in communities as well as organizations. Marginalized workplaces, employee turnover, and employee heterogeneity are antecedent factors that discourage employee network formation and collective action against deviance. By refocusing on organizational factors, we offer a broader understanding of occupational deviance, one that can predict and explain the workplace conditions under which counterproductive behaviors occur.