‘People Can’t Believe We exist!’: Social Sustainability and Alternative Nonprofit Organizing

Jensen, Peter R.

doi:10.1177/0896920517691106

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…However, an over emphasis on the goal of efficiency may limit the kind of impact a SPO network can demonstrate. For example, supportive elements of a service may be compromised in order to demonstrate more quantitative outcomes (Jensen, 2018), employees may be disempowered by bureaucratic accountabilities (Baines, 2008), and larger numbers of service users may need to be served within defined timescales. These factors create tensions which can lead to goal distortion or divergence (Green & Dalton, 2016) (Florin & Schmidtz, 2011).…”

Section: Bmi As a Response To Changes In The Spo Operating Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mission or margin? Using dynamic capabilities to manage tensions in social purpose organisations’ business model innovation

Best

Miller

McAdam

et al. 2021

Journal of Business Research

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This study examines how tensions arising from business model innovation (BMI) are managed within a social purpose organisation (SPO) network. We utilise a case study to illustrate how tensions within a network with a dual (social and economic) mission focus, present themselves at three key stages of BMI (initiation, exploration, and exploitation). Moreover, we use illustrative examples to show how network tensions are managed through dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing, and transformational). The findings show that while engaging in BMI can improve the competitiveness of SPOs, the tensions emerging from a dual mission focus in a multi-stakeholder network are complex, which need to be addressed by careful and nuanced planning in practice. Furthermore, different dynamic capabilities may mediate the effect of tensions and thus help SPO networks to be more effective at different stages of BMI and accomplish a dual mission.

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Section: Bmi As a Response To Changes In The Spo Operating Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mission or margin? Using dynamic capabilities to manage tensions in social purpose organisations’ business model innovation

Best

Miller

McAdam

et al. 2021

Journal of Business Research

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“…Sanders and McClellan, 2014). To meet these demands, many nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have adopted increasingly market-based practices to appear fiscally healthy and ensure that they attract donors, both private and public (Jensen, 2018). Unfortunately, the market practices and rationalities that these organizations adopt may come at the expense of social mission, leading to mission drift and the violation of core organizational values (Baines, 2010), which can be especially troubling when those NPOs are serving precarious communities like the homeless.…”

Section: Nonprofit and Alternative Organizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies in nonprofit organizing are increasingly concerned with how business-thinking and for-profit mentalities are taking hold in the nonprofit sector (e.g. Jensen, 2018). Some scholars have argued that the tensions between for-profit and nonprofit organizational norms may be a productive space for new organizational praxis (e.g.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative logics: A Discursive approach to normative and alternative organizing

Jensen

2020

Human Relations

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The marketization of nonprofit organizations is often taken for granted as an inevitable fact. Drawing on the institutional logics and discursive resources perspective, I examine the organizing practices of two shelters that serve homeless women in the same area. In my analysis, I argue that a Discursive approach to institutional logics has much to offer in examining differences between nonprofit organizations as these organizations enact their organizational mission. Using comparative ethnographic methods, I examine how each organization sought to enact a social welfare institutional logic, and how that enactment resulted in more normative or alternative organizing practices. At one organization the social welfare institutional logic was translated into getting clients ‘back on track’ while at the other shelter it was translated as practicing ‘hospitality’. I argue that these translations served as primary discursive resources that both enabled preferred organizational practices and productively maintained tensions between conflicting Discourses.

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“…However, only a small number of studies have focused explicitly on community organisations as alternative organisations. This small group of studies has explored the translation of anarchist practices into the community sector (Jensen, 2017;Land & King, 2014) and the possibilities of creating spaces of solidarity that allow non-normative identities to emerge and flourish (Reedy et al, 2016). As community organisations are embedded in their communities, alternative organising practices are seen to benefit marginalised people by engaging in collective education (The Trapese Collective, 2014) and social support (Jensen & Meisenbach, 2015) without embodying market values.…”

Section: Alternative Understandings; Alternative Organisationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, consideration must still be given to the marketization pressures in the community sector context, if scholars are to understand how community organisations build sustainable models of alternative organising (Jensen, 2017). Therefore, there remains much work to be done to expand on how community organisations can be understood through the lens of alternative organisation.…”

Section: Alternative Understandings; Alternative Organisationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

I am undone by these women: Identity and change in a feminist domestic violence organisation

Weatherall¹

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<p>The six words of the title, ‘I am undone by these women’, embody the interconnected dimensions of this thesis. Simultaneously, this thesis is a personal transformational project (the ‘I am’); a series of theorisations of the relationship between identity and change in the context of the community sector (the ‘undoing’); and a textual space through which I share the working lives of my participants and victims of violence (the ‘these women’). My experiences as a volunteer ethnographer sit at the heart of this thesis. The ethnographic project was undertaken in the community sector, with a feminist domestic violence organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through this project, I became committed to the social justice cause of my colleagues and participants: ending violence against women. My thesis aims to (re)create the textures of the working lives of my colleagues and participants. To represent these textures, I suffuse emotions and contradictions into this thesis through writing personally and subjectively and through adopting a rhizomatic (non-linear) structure in order to foster affective connections between the reader, the writer, my colleagues, and victims of violence. The ‘undoing’ in this thesis relates to how my theorisations developed over this project through a mixture of my own emerging understandings of identity, reflections on my ethnographic experience, and on issues salient to the working lives of my colleagues. My thesis traces the lines of my thinking about the relationships between identity and change in the context of the community sector, showing how they shifted before, during, and after my ethnographic experience. My thesis is structured into five parts. Each part acts as a semi-independent node of thought; following similar lines about identity and change but flourishing in different intellectual territory. This rhizomatic structure emphasises how feeling identity during my fieldwork changed how I thought about identity for my thesis. Or in other words this structure maps how my thinking became ‘undone’ and the relevance of this undoing for understanding identity and change. Initially, I map my thinking about the concept of identity as situated in the Critical Management Studies literature, particularly in relation to the work of Judith Butler and narrative theory. In the further parts of the thesis, I follow some of these initial lines of thought, but circle away from others. One part contributes to the literature about alternative organisations. In this part, I argue that strong emotions are important for fostering collective responsibility in alternative organising – here for victims of violence. Another part contributes to the literature on the gendered body. Here, I argue that gender identity becomes unsettled through the body in domestic violence work because of repetitive exposure to gender violence. Accordingly, both celebrating and reconsidering gender identity in domestic violence work can help to achieve change for all women subjected to violence. In a further part, I contribute to literature on the micro-politics of identity. I argue that storytelling about feminist identity can help to foster solidarity in the context of the community sector. Ultimately, this thesis puts the emphasis on the different ways identity and change are interlinked; there is no centre point to the argument. In the vein of autoethnography, the ‘undoing’ and ‘these women’ are also understood through an exploration of who ‘I am’ as a scholar. I understand the thesis to be a formative process through which the doctoral student learns what it means to be a researcher in their field. I map how my identity as a researcher was unsettled as I came into contact with domestic violence work and workers. In this way, I also explore what is learnt about identity and change on a personal level.</p>

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‘People Can’t Believe We exist!’: Social Sustainability and Alternative Nonprofit Organizing

Cited by 22 publications

References 22 publications

Mission or margin? Using dynamic capabilities to manage tensions in social purpose organisations’ business model innovation

Mission or margin? Using dynamic capabilities to manage tensions in social purpose organisations’ business model innovation

Alternative logics: A Discursive approach to normative and alternative organizing

I am undone by these women: Identity and change in a feminist domestic violence organisation

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