Professionalization, Competing Institutional Logics and the Emergence of Organizational Hybridity
Before telling our story of the associationâs transformation, we wish to set the wider scene. To do this, we draw on key theoretical ideas from institutionalism and scholarship regarding the historical and contemporary societal role of nonprofits vis-Ă -vis the state and the market. This is important for understanding nonprofit professionalization and the emergence of hybrid forms of organizing (those comprising more than one cultural logic) because such scholarship goes some way in explaining the macro-level conditions within which these developments have occurred.
Voluntary action or nonprofit organizing has played a major role in many Western democracies for centuries. In the U.K. specifically, it developed from a source of locally organized social action and welfare provision that was not the stuff of âhigh politicsâ in Victorian Britain (Lewis, 1996) to an extension of state apparatus through the hyperactive mainstreaming of the âthird sectorâ into public policy under New Labour (1997â2010) (Kendall, 2010). In its earliest guises, voluntary action addressed poverty and tackled the underlying causes of inequality and disadvantage (Tilly, 2005; Rochester, 2014). It did so through what Beveridge (1948) later referred to as a top-down philanthropic impulse (e.g. charitable trusts financed by private wealth) and a bottom-up mutual aid impulse (e.g. friendly societies, social movements and the like). We suggest such social action was underpinned by a âcommunity logicâ (Marquis et al., 2011). A community logic or âinstitutional orderâ is founded upon a commitment to community values and ideology, personal investment in the collective good, cooperation, trust and reciprocity, though not devoid of ego satisfaction and reputation factors (Thornton et al., 2012; also see Mohan & Breeze, 2015 on The Logic of Charity).
The first wave of professionalization emerged in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. Attempts to better co-ordinate nonprofit organizing through development of the precursors to what we now refer to as âinfrastructureâ or intermediary bodies date as far back as 1869, with the founding of the Charities Organisation Society (COS). This intensified further in the early 20th century with developments in the stateâs responsibilities for welfare services, representing a shift in the institutional logic of the state. The liberal welfare reforms of the 1906â1911 Lloyd George administration involved state intervention in what was previously the territory of voluntarism. This in turn created an imperative for nonprofits to acquire a national presence to influence new governmental actors on the welfare stage and follow the state in adopting a bureaucratic model of organization (Penn, 2011). Grant (2011; 2014) traces further impetus to the professionalization of nonprofit organizing to its contribution to wartime social stability during World War I (1911â1914). In particular, he notes the turn from âamateurâ to professional, paid social workers; the invention and expansion of modern fundraising methods; the emergence of state attempts to better co-ordinate voluntarism and, relatedly, the development of institutions that exist to promote mutually supportive links between statutory and voluntary âsectors.â These included the War Officeâs appointment of a Director General of Voluntary Organizations (DGVO) in 1915 and establishment of a Council of Social Service in 1919, which superseded the COS and later became the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) (See Coule & Bennett (2018) for a historical account of stateâvoluntary relations).
A second wave of professionalization ensued following changes in social attitudes in the 1970s, when citizens increasingly became unwilling to pay towards the welfare of others. This provided impetus for the 1979 U.K. Conservative government to undertake large-scale reforms to Labourâs post-World War II âwelfare stateâ architecture, which was based on the influential Beveridge report of 1942. These reforms involved development of an âenterprise cultureâ involving tax cuts, privatization of government services, deregulation and public spending cuts. The associated introduction of New Public Management (NPM) in the late 1980s resulted in a system of public services organized on a âmarket logic,â emphasizing competition, consumer choice and efficiency (Coule & Patmore, 2013). Following the global economic crisis, the U.K. ConservativeâLiberal Democrats Coalition (2010â2015) quickly began to dismantle New Labourâs âpartnershipâ apparatus and positioned the stateâs role as a (welfare) market creator and reformer. Significantly, it brought the stateâs treatment of nonprofits in line with that of private corporations, cuing the expectation that they should embody the âideal typeâ of public service delivery agent â that of a professional and enterprising entity (Coule & Bennett, 2016). The state not only displayed a disinterest in nonprofit advocacy/campaigning for the most vulnerable in society, but also suffered heated media attacks for gagging nonprofits through specific clauses in contracts between government and nonprofit providers, alongside the broader ranging Lobbying Act. In a review of the Civil Society Strategy of 2018, Bennett et al. (2019) point to the Tory governmentâs latest discursive affront including the use of the adjective âtraditionalâ to describe those parts of the âsocial sectorâ that include âindividual philanthropists, trusts and foundationsâ (HM Government, 2018, p.19), thus inciting us to see this as nostalgic, archaic and serving a bygone era. This is held in contrast to the alternative, cotemporary ways in which social value is produced through âsocial enterprises, mutuals and mission-led businessesâ (p.18) and situates mission-led businesses as the driving force of social transformation and civil society Bennett 2019.
The culture of valuing corporate and entrepreneurial approaches above alternatives is not unique to the U.K. (Eikenberry, 2009): âthe framework of marketization today is increasingly dominated by the core principles of global neoliberalism and its pervasive faith in the market and business-based approaches and solutionsâ (Dart, 2004, p. 418). With the global decline of other economic models, âneoliberal economics has become the prevailing position for much of the worldâ (Simpson & Cheney, 2007, p. 192). Citizens in Western democracies now live in what has been referred to as the hollow state (Milward & Provan, 2000) or the shadow state (Wolch, 1990). In other words, we live in societies with increasingly privatized governments that contract the provision of public goods to nonprofits and private corporations in place of state services (Salamon, 1995).
This globalized market-based approach to public management is well documented (Salamon, 1993; Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004; Eikenberry, 2009; Macmillan & Livingstone, 2015; Macmillan, 2017), with concerns expressed for its negative impact on democratic accountability and ideals (e.g. fairness, justice), citizenship and action for the collective public interest (Box, 1999; Box et al. 2001; deLeon & Denhardt, 2000; Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000; King & Stivers, 1998; Terry, 1998). The entrepreneurialism and satisfaction of individual client needs at the heart of the approach, alongside the adoption of private market values and practices among nonprofits themselves (Weisbrod, 1998), has led to the marketization of the nonprofit arena (Salamon, 1997). Ensuing ââmajor marketization trendsâ such as commercial revenue generation, contract competition, the influence of new and emerging donors, social entrepreneurship, the marketâs co-optation of the philanthropic impulse through consumption (e.g. cause-related marketing) and celebrity philanthropy are equally well examined (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004 p. 132; King, 2006; Nickel & Eikenberry, 2009).
In the contemporary era then, nonprofit organizations are faced with significant institutional complexity (Greenwood et al., 2011). At a macro or societal level, there are state, market and community logics (Thornton et al., 2012; Jay, 2013; Pache & Santos, 2013; Meyer et al., 2014; Skelcher & Smith, 2015), underpinned by divergent âsets of material practices and symbolic constructionsâ that constitute their âorganizing principlesâ (Friedland & Alford, 1991, pp. 248â249). Such complexity has the potential to result in what institutional scholars commonly refer to as âhybrid organizationsâ that are âsubject to multiple regulatory regimes, embedded within multiple normative orders, and/or constituted by more than one cultural logicâ (Kraatz & Block, 2008, p. 2).
Some organization theorists are pessimistic about the long-term survival prospects of hybrids, due to them being inherent arenas of contradiction (Scott & Meyer, 1991; Scott, 2001; Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Turco, 2012) that become âblocked, dysfunctional, and unable to resolve tensions between competing logicsâ (Skelcher & Smith, 2014, p. 440). Because a hybrid organization must concurrently negotiate the rules of the game in multiple, contradictory games (Heimer, 1999; Zilber, 2002; Glynn, 2008) it is âso many different things to so many different people that it must, of necessity, be partially at war with itselfâ (Kerr, 196...