Organizational Field Differences in Food Security and Affordable Housing Organizations

• In Event: 292 - Regular Session. Organizations: Organizational Decision-Making

Abstract

Food security and affordable housing organizations have been institutionalized as critical providers of poverty alleviation services, growing in funding, staff, and programs. This qualitative case study investigates how food security and affordable housing organizations in a Midwestern city are structured, how they responded to sharp increases in need after the Great Recession, and how they are preparing for the future. Following organizational sociology’s study of fields, I explore how the affordable housing and food security fields’ different historical development and funding structures impact their organizational fields’ structures. I find that affordable housing organizations’ less centralized local funding structure and opportunities for program and funding diversification give them more autonomy than food security organizations. This study can help researchers to understand more thoroughly how organizational fields operate in the heterogeneous nonprofit sector.

Author

• Erica Phillips, The Ohio State University