“Everything Here is so Political. …” Separating the Organizationally Normal from the Political in Communities of Organizations

Abstract

The rhetoric of “community” is common in talk of social programs. With it comes imagery of common interests, overcoming turf battles, working together, and getting along. When programs fail to achieve goals or turn into outright fiascos, personal, organizational, and community pathology, or simply “politics” are common explanations. Problems are assumed to be endemic and intractable or remediable only by gifted leadership or transcendence of business as usual. This article argues that such thinking is rooted in a false assumption. “Community” needs to be reconceptualized as a community of organizations, not people, and organizations as constrained actors not analogous to individuals. Organizations interact in peculiar, but analyzable ways, giving rise to unanticipated outcomes that could be labeled pathology or mere politics. Community alcohol and other drug AOD programs might be more successful if their logic models were based on realistic concepts of community that can distinguish the actually political from the organizationally normal.

Why It Is So Difficult to Form Effective Community Coalitions

“…Even as many organizations withdrew, most sites were left with programs full of sometimes arbitrary issues and agendas barely related to the initial goal of action against alcohol and drug abuse. Such chaos is one inevitable result of bringing "everyone" to the table: the more organizations, the murkier (Ryan, 2005).…”

Emergent Temporal Effects in Community Initiatives

“…They have suggested many different conceptual schemes for categorizing temporal properties of social entities (e.g., Hawley 1950;Lauer 1981;Moore 1963;Ryan 2004;Sorokin and Merton 1937;Zerubavel 1981). Pace, speed, and tempo, for example, refer to the rate at which events occur.…”

“…This analysis is based on a multiyear study of an effort to build a communitywide coalition against substance abuse in New Haven, Connecticut (Ryan 1999). Supporting materials are drawn from studies of parallel efforts in a number of other sites (Jones and Fisher 1997;Jones and Suazo-Garcia 1998;Kadushin et al 2005;Lindholm 2001;Lindholm et al 2004;Ryan 1999). The research involved fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis.…”

“…Staff worked out of city hall and consisted of an executive director, clerical staff, and several outreach workers and community organizers. The project's annual budget was on the order of $500,000 (Ryan 1999).…”

“…Such problems are sometimes offered as evidence that still more temporal resources are needed. Perhaps more frequently, however, people involved in, or affected by, community programs, as well as those who design, fund, or evaluate them, interpret "time troubles" as evidence of underlying personal, organizational, or community pathology (Ryan 2006). Failure to produce a plan during a planning period, for example, is taken to reveal a project director's incompetence.…”