From ‘One Stop Shop’ to ‘No Wrong Door’: Coalition-Building and Meaning-Making in the Veterans Services Sector

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 08. Institutional Encounters

Abstract

This paper explores veterans’ services in San Diego as a site of shifting meanings and destabilization in an organizational field. Following the expansion of the post-9/11 American military, the adjacent field of veterans services experienced a sudden and dramatic growth. In the face of a bigger and more complex field, organizational actors have responded by building coalitions and making new meanings in service to the coalition-building process. Through in-depth interviews and observations, I explore how organizational actors make sense of the changing organizational field of veterans services and the ways in which the coalition-building process has been legitimized. I find that while these coalitions have provided some stability to a changing field, they have also created new confusions and challenges for organizations that are providing services as well as the veterans who are seeking services. In addition, I call for further investigation of how local contexts, particularly at the county level, shape the dynamics of organizational fields.

Author

• Erica C. Bender, UC San Diego