Third Sector Organizational Responses in a Changing Environment - Hybridization, Governance, Management Dilemmas: A Comparative Approach

• In Event: Regulation and Governance

Abstract

In most European countries, Third sector organizations (TSO’s) are growing in number, in size and get more professionalized. They are recognized as a strong economic power and count, with more than 28 millions of full-time equivalent workers (paid and volunteer) for 13% of the EU workforce in 2014 (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2016).

Building upon the results of a European Union funded comparative research project on Third Sector Impact (TSI), this paper analyzes how recent trends in the institutional environment have influenced the evolution of Third sector organizations (TSO’s) in eight European countries.

While the history of each country contributed to shape the landscape of the Third sector, we observed convergence trends across Europe. We argue that currently TSOs have to cope with environments that have undergone significant changes during the last decades. These changes refer to the availability of resources (austerity crisis), the co-operation with government (new public management), the legitimacy of organizational forms and governance mechanism (professionalization), and TSOs nexus to society (erosion of social milieus/individualization). In other words, TSOs have to adjust themselves to a new zeitgeist and a new way of organizing, mobilizing and steering in order to avoid failure and to become sustainable. Indeed, they have to work into the direction of a new equilibrium with their environment. But, how could this new equilibrium look like? How do TSOs address the management dilemmas, which are systemic for TSOs and with which they have always struggled, in a different and new way that is appropriate for and adjusted to their new and modified environment?

These topics will be addressed by presenting organizational dilemmas and solutions adopted by TSOs as identified in our study. Following Putnam et al. (2016, p. 73), dilemmas “refer to either-or choices in which alternatives must be selected among mutually attractive (or unattractive) options” (Cameron and Quinn, 1988). By contrast with contradictions and paradoxes, dilemmas concern alternatives that are neither necessarily incompatible nor mutually exclusive. Trade-offs can be reached. Our aim is to identify different patterns of solutions emerging from more than 40 case studies.

Empirically, this paper is based on the TSI project coordinated by The Institute of social research in Norway and in which eight European Universities took part. This project analyzed barriers and obstacles that are currently standing in the way of TSO’s as well as management strategies to cope with these hurdles. The data used for this paper was generated from 2014-2016 by quantitative and qualitative research conducted in eight countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, United Kingdom).

Authors

• Francesca Petrella, University of Aix-Marseille, LEST-CNRS

• Ruth Simsa, Vienna University of Economics and Business

• Annette Zimmer, Münster University

• Ulla Pape, Freie Universität Berlin

• Taco Brandsen, Radboud University Nijmegen

• Joachim Benedikt Pahl, Muenster University

• Nadine Richez-Battesti, University of the Mediterranean