Legitimacy and the Role of UK Third Sector Organizations in the Policy Process

This paper explores the legitimacy of third sector organizations in the policy process in the United Kingdom. It draws on empirical research to examine how legitimacy is defined, both by third sector organizations and by those they target within government. The paper argues that while many third sector organizations give high priority to political forms of legitimacy—in the sense of participatory structures and accountability to members and beneficiaries—government is generally more likely to give priority to technical forms of legitimacy, e.g., the quality of research and the ability to implement policy. Nonetheless, political legitimacy is still important, first because this is the form of legitimacy that third sector organizations claim for themselves and second because, as government gives way to governance with an increase in partnerships and collaboration, the dilemmas faced by third sector organizations in achieving political legitimacy are being faced on a broader canvas.     

Child Protection,Voluntary Organizations,and the Public Sector in Sweden

This paper presents an analysis of the role of Swedish voluntary organizations within the field of child protection as well as processes of institutionalization within such organizations. The empirical focus is on the two most important voluntary organizations within the field today, namely Rädda Barnen (Save the Children) and BRIS (Children's Right in Society). And their importance within the child protection discourse, as well as their role as producers of welfare, is discussed. In the latter respect two different processes of professionalization—professionalization of volunteers and avant-garde professionalism—are identified. It is demonstrated that the relationship between the state and voluntary organizations is a key issue when understanding the nature of the organizations and their role in the organizational landscape.     

Successful collaboration between the nonprofit and public sectors

Public and private funding sources often require nonprofit organizations to provide evidence of partnership with a governmental entity before financing a project. However, the circumstances under which working partnerships between the nonprofit and public sectors are forged and sustained have not been fully studied. This article presents the findings of a case study of land trusts and local governments and identifies conditions that foster successful collaboration. Social factors such as experience on the part of key personnel in working with the opposite entity and genuine affection for each other are more important than economic benefits. This suggests that a nonprofit agency interested in creating a viable partnership to improve a project should give careful consideration to assigning staff.     

A rural development model with potential international applications

A major project in rural planning and development was initiated in the eastern counties of Washington (State) beginning in 1976. The purpose was to merge several previous ‘model’ within a new conceptual framework incorporating collaboration among diverse organizations as a means of integrating development activity. Institutions of higher education, state and federal agencies, regional secondary education organizations, a regional educational laboratory, counties, and local communities, among other units, were drawn together initially as members of the partnership. A process was designed and implemented, based on contemporary findings of social science research, to systematically support ongoing interaction and collaboration in solving specific rural problems or bringing to realization new opportunities. The major thrust of this paper is to report results from the project, suggesting the broad applications of the findings to other rural regions in both developed and less developed nations.     

Conflicting rationalities, knowledge and values in scarred landscapes

Incorporating public or local preferences in landscape planning is often discussed with respect to the difficulties associated with accurate representation, stimulating interest and overcoming barriers to participation. Incorporating sectoral and professional preferences may also have the same degree of difficulty where conflicts can arise. Planning theory calls for inclusiveness and collaboration, ideally egalitarian, and analysis of the process often uses case study scenarios that may offer examples for practice and further research. Much of the literature takes case studies in urban landscapes as the starting point for discussion and little is known of the collaborative process in rural landscapes, especially damaged landscapes such as those that may occur after extreme resource extraction. In this paper, we use industrially mined, or ‘cutaway’, peatlands as illustrative examples of the remaining ‘scarred’ landscapes. Using narratives of ‘knowledge-holders’ as iterative examples, we explore the perspectives of key actors within scarred landscape after-use planning. It is shown that though there is agreement that community ‘stakes’ are important, there are conflicts relating to the exact level of collaboration or to the extent that it is necessary at all. Traditional sectoral approaches predominate with community level narratives following established pathways. The prevailing rationalities revolve around protectionism and differing opinions of knowledge. Where a policy vacuum exists in relation to after-use of damaged landscapes, the resulting conflict may be an impediment to non-tokenistic stakeholder collaboration.     

Fighting back: Vulnerabilities,blunders, and countermobilization by the targets in three animal rights campaigns

Among the determinants of social movement success, the characteristics and responses of nonstate organizations under attack by protestors have been overlooked. We examine three campaigns by animal rights groups against experimentation, in 1976–1977, 1987–1988, and 1988–1989. The first two campaigns stopped the research, while the third did not. One influential set of factors was the preexisting vulnerabilities—e.g., unpopular practices, internal factions—on the part of targeted organizations. Another was the strategic responses of these organizations, especially the avoidance of blunders. A growing countermovement, thirdly, affected the organizations' ability to respond effectively and avoid blunders. As a social movement expands and strengthens, it encourages counterorganizing and a hardening of resistance, so that many social movements may actually be less successful as they become larger and more visible.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, August 1990.     

What's Playing in the Organizational Theater? Collusive Relationships in Management

This article takes as its point of departureconcepts derived from couple therapy to betterunderstand collusive relationships in organizations. Aswe examine these dysfunctional workplace relationships— these interpersonal gridlocks —four main types of collusive superior subordinateinteraction patterns are identified — thenarcissistic, the controlling, the paranoid, and thesadomasochistic — and the consequences of each such dyad in organizationsare explored. In conclusion, the paper presents a numberof recommendations on how to recognize the presence ofsuch collusive arrangements (taking leadership behavior as a point of departure) and suggestspreventive steps that can be taken.     

Outcomes Assessment and the Paradox of Nonprofit Accountability

Leaders of nonprofit organizations face a particular bind in responding to the demands for results‐based accountability. If they focus only on the project‐level outcomes over which they have the most control or for which indicators are readily available, they risk default on the larger question of accountability to publicly valued goals. On the other hand, if they try to demonstrate the impact of their particular projects on communitywide outcomes, they risk taking credit inappropriately or shouldering the blame for indicators beyond their control. Here, I present findings from a research project, conducted in collaboration with economic development organizations on the north coast of California, that explored the practical demands and dynamics associated with this paradox. The key challenges are more civic and political than technical.     

Collaboration and competition in a children's health initiative coalition: a network analysis

Activating communities to achieve public health change and initiate policy reform usually requires collective action from many entities. This case study analyzes inter-organizational networks among members of a coalition created to expand health insurance coverage to uninsured children in a large metropolitan area. Six networks were measured: collaboration, competition, formal agreements, receive funding from, send funding to, and greater communication. The response rate was 65.8% (50 of the 76 active members). Positive network questions such as “who do you collaborate with” elicited many network choices whereas negative ones such as “who do you compete with” elicited few. The collaboration network had a core–periphery structure and analysis showed that a large network can be reduced to a small set of core organizations one-sixth the size of the whole. Centrality (out- and in-degree) was associated with perceived organizational function and perceived barriers to success. For example, organizations that received many choices as collaboration partners were more likely to perceive the coalition functioned well than those who received few choices. The study suggests that perceptions of organizational performance are associated with position in the network, central members are more likely to perceive the organization performs well than those on the periphery.     

Negotiating Quality: Total Quality Management and the Complexities of Transforming Professional Organizations

During the past two decades organizations in many industries have introduced management-style changes, such as employee involvement (EI) and total quality management (TQM). In the health care sector, one change has been the inclusion of TQM into the accreditation process. Using ethnographic and interview data, this case study examines the process of introducing TQM into a professional organization—a hospital—and shows how successful implementation of such new management styles in professional organizations requires complex negotiations of existing formal and informal power relationships. Some employees and middle managers embraced the TQM philosophy and techniques and successfully influenced the implementation and project-team design. In this case, administrators used TQM as rhetoric and justification for increased bureaucratic control, goals that are distinctly at odds with the ideological objectives of TQM.     

The use of Outcome Harvesting in learning-oriented and collaborative inquiry approaches to evaluation: An example from Calgary,Alberta

The Community Development Learning Initiative (CDLI) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada aims to be a network that brings together neighbourhood residents, community development practitioners and other supporters to learn and act on neighbourhood-based, citizen-led community development projects. In 2013, the CDLI initiated The Evaluation for Learning and Dialogue Project to provide the opportunity for organizations and supporters to work together to establish a shared vision and goals through discussions about evaluation learning and outcomes. It was intended that the project would be a useful learning tool for participating organizations by enabling them to engage in an evaluative methodological process, and record relevant information and to compare and learn from each other’s projects. Outcome Harvesting was chosen as the evaluation methodology for the project. This article reviews critical learning from the project on the use of Outcome Harvesting methodology in the evaluation learning and outcomes of local community development projects, and it provides lessons for other jurisdictions interested in implementing this methodology.     

Organizational Change-Too Much,Too Soon?

ABSTRACT

Recent changes in government policies and practices, especially managed care, have led many nonprofit organizations to embrace collaboration as a competitive strategy. This article presents a case study of a large human service agency that has adopted a management service organization (MSO) model, a type of collaboration particularly suited to handling third-party contracts, at the urging of the founding CEO. A new governance model was also adopted. Using chronology as an analytical approach, the case examines key decisions made by professional and lay leaders during four distinct stages of organizational development. The actions taken by the board of directors to restore financial stability and protect the organization's reputation after learning from the CEO of the existence of a significant deficit demonstrate the need for strategic planning and better communication among all relevant parties involved in a collaboration.     

Deep Roles: Twelve Primordial Roles of Mind and Organization

The thesis in this paper is that there are 12archetypal roles in groups and organizations. Thesedeep roles have their origin in the rolesof the essential family — father, mother, son, anddaughter. In groups and organizations, each of theseimages of family roles will — through the basicdefense mechanisms of splitting and projection —be polarized into a good and bad part: The father as Godor devil, the mother as queen or witch, the son as crownprince or black sheep, and the daughter as princess orwhore. In addition to these eight primary deep roles,there come two secondary ones: the helpers Shaman and Slave whose function are to help the familysurvive spiritually and materially, respectively. Thetwo last deep roles are of a transcendental nature: thehero (winner) and the clown (loser), i.e., the one who has won a good family role, and the onewho has lost it — or never gained it. These 12deep roles are well known from such cultural artifactsas fairy tales and mythology. In groups andorganizations, deep roles are attended with power andinterest. Those who are attributed a deep role in theirorganization will have a similar symbolic power ascharacters in fairy tales and mythology.     

Moving Toward Collaboration

Summary

Traditionally, organizations serving children and families have focused service delivery by available funding stream criteria. Federal funding streams supported fragmented services by tightly channeling monies to specific programs for specific needs. The intensity of providing and improving the delivery of services has overshadowed building connectedness across organizations and systems. Service has been the major goal and intense effort has gone into maximizing opportunities and measuring effects through service frequency. Over the past several years, new funding incentives have provided the opportunity for new collaboratives. This article describes an innovative collaboration between the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) and Eastern Washington University (EWU) and the unique directions and support that a university/agency partnership can provide for both organizations. Key features of this collaboration include shifts in funding and staffing strategies that contributed to more flexible services and increased levels of collaboration between IDHW, EWU and other community and state organizations and institutions. This article describes how funding can be viewed as a tool to increase the level of collaboration between systems, thus potentially leading to a breakdown of the traditional service delivery system. Finally, this article describes how an agency/higher education partnership played a key role in documenting the success of a school based program in meeting the emergency assistance needs of children and families, and how program evaluation, like funding requirements, can provide a supportive role in building collaborative relationships.     

Collaboration for the Provision of Services

Abstract

This paper conducts a review of the extant literature to examine community collaboration in the provision of human services. The authors conducted a systematic research synthesis to organize literature around how community organizations should position themselves in order to maximize the benefits of collaborative relationships while enhancing service provision. Evaluation of the literature reveals 30% of the articles could be classified as empirical. Due to limitations of the studies no definitive statements could be made regarding the nature of collaboration and what works in the collaborative process; however, some generalizations are suggested. Gaps in the literature include lack of rigorous empirical studies that identify best practices, the type of training needed to prepare staff and members of organizations for participation in the collaborative process, and differing management models and practices to determine which forms of governance system achieve the best results.     

Improving government communication and empowering rural communities: Combining public relations and development communication approaches

This article proposes combining public relations and development communication insights so that organizations, particularly in the public sector, can engage and empower rural communities to adopt and exploit infrastructure developments for mutual benefit. Applying appreciative inquiry to explore the communication process involved in the development of micro-hydro power plants in Kulon Progo Regency, Indonesia, this article offers a view from those who are regarded as the target of communication, as the opposed to those take an organizational standpoint. The study proposes a new development project communication model which seeks to initiate, secure and sustain positive community outcomes and meet the project initiators’ requirements. This is achieved through collaboration and the gradual relinquishment of power and decision-making from the latter to the former. The model emphasizes the importance of the processes of communication as well as outcomes, and considers rural communities as having agency, rather than as objects of or for development. By embracing community assets such as local knowledge and contextual wisdom and the characteristics of collective communities in non-Western countries such as togetherness, reciprocity, a strong sense of shared destiny, locality, and fraternity, the model offers a community centric approach which encourages progressive community empowerment and ownership. The evidence points to the impacts for both communities and governments being more beneficial and sustainable than current communication practices.     

Constructing collaborative processes through experiential learning: Participatory planning in Kaymaklı, Turkey

Prevalent discussions in urban planning focus on collaboration. However, they do not explain the underlying processes that allow collaborative work. This paper argues that experiential learning processes can help construct and maintain collaborative platforms in urban planning. To show this, the paper uses the participatory planning of Kaymaklı, a small agricultural and touristic town in the internationally well-known cultural landscape, the Cappadoccia region. This entails the second stage of a two-year long Participatory Action Research project initiated by a local civil association in collaboration with the Municipality of Kaymaklı. The paper presents how the local capacity for collaboration is built through the development of local knowledge in a practice-based training programme. The attention is particularly directed to the pedagogic design of the training programme, the shared knowledge that came out of it, the affects of the programme on the collaborative capacity of participants, and their future collaborative action.     

Managing electronic documents and work flows: Enterprise content management at work in nonprofit organizations

Web management and knowledge management systems have made significant technological advances, culminating in large information management systems such as enterprise content management (ECM). ECM is a Web‐based publishing system that manages large numbers of electronic documents and other Web assets intended for publication to Web portals and other complex Web sites. Work in nonprofit organizations can benefit from adopting new communication technologies that promote collaboration and enterprisewide knowledge management. The unique characteristics of ECM are enumerated and analyzed from a knowledge management perspective. We identify three stages of document life cycles in ECM implementations—content, reification, and commodification/process—as the content management model. We present the model as a mechanism for decision makers and scholars to use in evaluating the organizational impacts of systems such as ECM. We also argue that decision makers in nonprofit organizations should take care to avoid overly commodifying business processes in the final stage, where participation may be more beneficial than efficiency.     

Structures,Challenges, and Successes of Volunteer Programs Co‐managed by Nonprofit and Public Organizations

This article presents a mixed‐methods, multicase study and comparison of volunteer programs in US national parks that have evolved, in response to growth and fiscal pressures, to be co‐managed by national park staff and their nonprofit support partners. Findings detail why and how the expanded partnerships were formed; how they operate; challenges they face; ways in which they adhere to, stretch, and depart from theories of nonprofit management, collaboration, and program institutionalization; and the significant—even exponential—volunteer program growth that resulted in each case. These nonprofit?public volunteer program partnerships—at Acadia, Arches and ­Canyonlands, Cuyahoga Valley, Golden Gate, the National Mall, and Yosemite national park sites—employ many standard forms of interorganizational relations, even though in these cases the nonprofits give money to the government organization instead of the reverse. Their volunteer program and management structures also share similar elements because of coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures. At the same time, each volunteer program partnership is a distinct blend of collaboration and management practices because of the unique natural features, climate, needs, adjacent populations, and personalities of leaders at each site. The cases employ innovative strategies to substantially increase the number of staff who lead volunteer programs. Recommendations are offered for nonprofit management research and practice, and findings are instructive for organizations that utilize volunteers either as a single entity or as part of a collaboration.     

Virtual Teams — Support for Technical Communication?

Abstract

To work together in virtual teams has increasingly become a natural change in how organizations work. Due to demands from the environment, organizations have had to transform from traditional ways of working to becoming more flexible and adaptive. The aim of this article is to identify obstacles, problems, and presumptions in order to enable the virtual team to be successful. A project — The TIC-project — is described, and results from a study concerning collaboration and networking among companies within Technical Communication are presented. Results show that, to a great extent, experiences from networking are lacking. Furthermore, trust must be embedded in the teams, meaning that personal meetings must precede virtual meetings. Most interviewees declared a wish to collaborate despite being competitors. Finally, questions and topics for further research are presented.