57 research outputs found
Government provision of social services through nonprofit organisations
Historically, nonprofit organisations in the United States have played a critical
role in helping people in need by providing education, training, residential,
counselling and in-kind and cash support. Today, contrary to popular belief,
most nonprofit service organisations in the United States depend on government
for over half of their revenues. The paper by Lipsky and Smith considers the
implications of this relationship between government and nonprofit
organisations for our understanding of the welfare state in advanced industrial
countries. They argue that recently the American government has used
nonprofit agencies to expand the boundaries of the welfare state in a host of
service categories, from child abuse to domestic violence to homelessness . The
result is a welfare state that is more expansive than would be the case if
policymakers relied solely on the public sector. The paper also examines the
effe cts of this evolving relationship on the organisational norms of nonprofit
agencies. These agencies have an emphasis on particularistic responses to the
individual, while the government requires an equity-based focus in which all
clients are treated alike. The new funding arrangements mean increased
government intrusion into the affairs of nonprofit agencies, thereby altering the
character of social policy and the American welfare state.
In his paper, 'A Note on Contracting as a Regime', Michael Lipsky explores the
notion of a 'contracting regime' as a set of "principles, norms, rules, and
decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a
given issue-area." Regimes, however, are not simply collections of equal and
independent entities, but instead are critically influenced by one of the
participating actors. Specifically, in the contracting regime , nonprofit service
organisations have changed. Nonprofit human service agencies may now be
more expansive than they were able to be in the past, but they are also more tied
to government and more reflective of public priorities than of the community
values they represented in the past.
Lipsky then poses a series of questions about the relationship of government and
nonprofit organisations in Australia. To what extent do government agencies
articulate separate purposes , priorities and standards? Alternatively, to what
extent to they endorse current activities of the voluntary agencies from which
the y purchase service? To what extent do government agencies have the capacity
to articulate the service needs in their sectors? To what extent can voluntary
agencies take actions outside the relationship defined by the contract to obtain
public funds and achieve their purposes? To what extent does government
possess the capacity to enforce contracts? He suggests that in Australia
policymakers have gone far to achieve the hegemony of government over
voluntary agencies in service delivery through contracting , but many believe that
in selected instances there is still considerable ground to be covered.Note on contracting as a regime and its possible relevance to Australia / Micahel Lipsky -- Government provision of social services through nonprofit organisations / Michael Lipsky and Steven Rathgeb Smit
Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington
State-level funding for the arts, humanities, heritage, and allied forms of culture is an important source of financial support, dwarfing the aid provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. This investigation, underwritten by the Pew Charitable Trusts, shows that states support culture through policies and programs scattered across state government and through means that go beyond direct funding
Theorizing hybridity : institutional logics, complex organizations, and actor identities : the case of nonprofits
We propose a novel approach to theorizing hybridity in public and nonprofit organizations. The concept of hybridity is widely used to describe organizational responses to changes in governance, but the literature seldom explains how hybrids arise or what forms they take. Transaction cost and organizational design literatures offer some solutions, but lack a theory of agency. We use the institutional logics approach to theorize hybrids as entities that face a plurality of normative frames. Logics provide symbolic and material elements that structure organizational legitimacy and actor identities. Contradictions between institutional logics offer space for them to be elaborated and creatively reconstructed by situated agents. We propose five types of organizational hybridity – segmented, segregated, assimilated, blended, and blocked. Each type is theoretically derived from empirically observed variations in organizational responses to institutional plurality. We develop propositions to show how our approach to hybridity adds value to academic and policy-maker audiences
Identifying and Defining the Dimensions of Community Capacity to Provide a Basis for Measurement
Although community capacity is a central concern of community development experts, the concept requires clarification. Because of the potential importance of community capacity to health promotion, the Division of Chronic Disease Control and Community Intervention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), convened a symposium in December 1995 with the hope that a consensus might emerge regarding the dimensions that are integral to community capacity. This article describes the dimensions that the symposium participants suggested as central to the construct, including participation and leadership, skills, resources, social and interorganizational networks, sense of community, understanding of community history, community power, community values, and critical reflection. The dimensions are not exhaustive but may serve as a point of departure to extend and refine the construct and to operationalize ways to assess capacity in communities.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67070/2/10.1177_109019819802500303.pd
What Determines the Formal Versus Relational Nature of Local Government Contracting?
Meeyoung Lamothe is currently an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include local alternative service delivery arrangements, social service contracting, and nonprofit management. Her recent publications may be found in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, International Journal of Public Administration, and American Review of Public Administration.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline
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