Organizational arrangements in the nonprofit and solidarity sector. A strategy for change with a humanistic perspective

• In Event: Strategy in nonprofit organizations. Understandings of coherence, future sustainability, and voluntary work.

Abstract

Throughout history, societies have had the need to organize themselves, that is, to generate specific ways of structuring their forms of being and inhabiting the world. This phenomenon has been associated with contextual dynamics, where economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions, among others, shape the bases of social organization. It follows, then, that the organization is a "living" entity with its own structure, which is permeated by the unique characteristics of the context. In addition, a biologist and structuralist viewpoint is inferred, as well as another related to the systems theory (Montaño, 2007).
As for the organizations known as non-profit organizations, they are a form of organization that arises from the postulates of solidarity, social economy, common goods, where these principles have a direct impact on the purposes that guide their actions (Pérez, et al., 2011). Broadly speaking, nonprofit organizations orbit around social, local, territorial, functional, trade union, substantive and solidarity economy issues; in addition, it is important to highlight that the emergence of these organizations is part of a sector that emerges from the multiple contradictions that have arisen between the State and the market (Alberich, 2018).
This research focuses on non-profit organizations, framed in a specific field, the solidarity sector. Its forms of action are problematized from its internal dynamics to evidence in its discourses the ways of sustaining itself in time and responding to some postulates of solidarity and common good. Consequently, it is shown how a non-profit organization, which is framed within the principles of solidarity economy, can be involved in contradictions as it is immersed in a capitalist economic system.
The research is based on Organizational Studies, focusing on nonprofit organizations and their internal dynamics and speeches to problematize their forms of action and ways of sustaining following principles of solidarity and common good. The methodological approach was qualitative research, supported by ethnographic, historical, and case study research methods, which contributed to the achievement of the results. This research was carried out in the Confiar Foundation of Colombia, which was founded by the Confiar Cooperative and integrated by organizations of the solidarity sector such as Sólida, Fomentamos, Los Olivos, etc., which are based on the principle that it is possible to think and make another economy.
As a result of the research, the category of Organizational Arrangements, a concept that emerges from the approach to the case study, is highlighted as a result of the research. Organizational arrangements are a response of non-profit organizations for sustainability and coherence, which allows, by transcending the internal wefts of the organization and going beyond the desire to maintain its own dynamics, to influence in a social bet, a community bet, a bet towards a political and ideological militancy, seeking to influence this prevailing economic system.

Author

• Diana Lopera-Montoya, Autor