Exploring organisational change
insights from a qualitative longitudinal study of the third sector
Rob Macmillan and Malin Arvidson
Third Sector Research Centre
University of Birmingham
University of Southampton
Funded by:
Hosted by:
Interdisciplinary perspectives on continuity and change: What counts as QLR?
Southampton, 15th November 2012
In summary
1. Thinking about organisational change
2. Conceptualising organisational change in the third sector
– change as threat or risk
3. Longitudinal research - seeing things differently?
– a case study example: a crisis in ‘Hawthorn’
‘Real Times’ in a nutshell…
Overall aim
•
To establish, maintain and analyse a qualitative longitudinal sample of
third sector organisations, groups and activities
Research structure and timing
•
Diverse set of 15 core case studies plus a range of related
‘complementary’ case studies
•
Spring 2010 to Summer 2013: 4 (+1) waves of interviews, observations
and documentary analysis
Purpose and research questions
•
Understanding how third sector activity operates in practice over time
•
Fortunes, strategies, challenges and performance
•
What happens, what matters, and understanding continuity and change
1. Thinking about organisational change
Starting with structure and agency
“You beat your wings all your life, but in the end the wind decides
where you go”
Exploring the qualities of change AND collapsing the distinctions
Experiencing, explaining and narrating change as
•Endogenous/exogenous
•Deliberate/imposed
•Anticipated/unforeseen
•Fast/slow
•Rough/smooth
•Incidental/consequential
1. Thinking about organisational change
• organisation – noun or verb?; thing or process?
– stability and routine
– synoptic (‘from state A to state B’) and performative accounts
• evolutionary accounts of organisations
– life cycles and stage models: liabilities of newness and age
– inertia, selection and adaptation
• institutions and institutional work
– enduring rules, routines and regulations
– process and practice: ‘the world inside the process’
• organisations in/as fields - the struggle for ‘room’
– strategic action fields: interdependence and proximity
– unsettlement – ‘a stone thrown into a still pond’
2. Organisational change in the third sector
Three key concepts in studies of change in TSOs:
• Mission drift
• Isomorphism
• Hybridisation
What is the nature of change? What is the source of
change? What has methods got to do with this?
• Change as a result, not a process
• Change as unintended process, little agency
• Change poses risks and threats
How can a change in methodological approach
contribute to a different understanding of change?
Wave
‘A family support and parenting
project’
4
Aug-Sept ’12
Uncertain future – 6 months of grant
funding left; LA commissioning process
A case study
example:
‘Hawthorn’…
3
Aug-Oct ’11
Internal conflict – over the loss of original
ethos and new professional identity; new
business plan
2
Dec ’10
Stabilisation and new developments – new
systems; re-branding; introduction of more
structured services
•who’s in charge leadership
1
Apr-Jul ’10
Crisis - dismissal of founding coordinator;
torn loyalties; new coordinator recruited
•crisis legacies?
•boundaries and
informality
•a synoptic account?
Pre-Wave 1
•
•
Established 2004 – informal drop-in
sessions
Five year foundation grant and LA
funding from 2008 - expansion and paid
staff
Four tensions for discussion
1. Synoptic and performative accounts – aren’t some unfolding
processes are more important than others?
2. Constructions and experiences of ‘organisation’ and ‘change’ –
research and participant perspectives
3. Accounting for change with theories prioritising stability and
reproduction?
4. Back to structure and agency…?