The Organizational Construction of Exceptionalism and the Logic of Help in Parisian Social Services

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. Non-Profit Rationalization

Abstract

Non-profit human service organizations have long faced the challenge of distributing limited resources among populations with excess and ever-increasing demands. With the modernization of public management and increased competition from for-profit and hybrid organizations in the provision of social services, scholars have posited both an expanded and a constricted discretionary space for social service providers. This paper explores how employees of an organization for the homeless in Paris respond to institutional pressures to streamline resource allocation by enacting a broader organizational logic of help. Relying on ethnographic fieldwork enriched by interviews with service providers, I argue that the latter collectively negotiate a framework for rationalizing which types of clients warrant favorable exceptions to distributive rules and which client categories simply remain subject to the rules. Operating at the extremes, the particular logic of help suggests that those clients most apt to increase their autonomy (the severely and chronically marginalized, on one end, and the marginally disadvantaged who unexpectedly fall on hard times, on the other) tend to receive exceptional attention and assistance. Conversely, the average clients “in the middle” are particularly prone to being overlooked, often failing to transition from “getting hooked” to the organization to “getting out” by achieving a sufficient degree of independence. Organizational practices of exceptionalism thus carry important implications in that they risk reinforcing fault lines and perpetuating inequalities between distinct client groups within a population already experiencing severe social exclusion.

Author

• Nevena Radoynovska, Northwestern University