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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 Interdisciplinary perspectives on continuity and change: What counts as QLR? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Exploring organisational change insights from a qualitative longitudinal study of the third sector
Rob Macmillan and Malin Arvidson Third Sector Research CentreUniversity of BirminghamUniversity of Southampton
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?
A case study example:
‘Hawthorn’…
•boundaries and informality
•who’s in charge - leadership
•crisis legacies?
•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
1Apr-Jul ’10
Crisis - dismissal of founding coordinator; torn loyalties; new coordinator recruited
2Dec ’10
Stabilisation and new developments – new systems; re-branding; introduction of more structured services
3Aug-Oct ’11
Internal conflict – over the loss of original ethos and new professional identity; new business plan
4Aug-Sept ’12
Uncertain future – 6 months of grant funding left; LA commissioning process
Wave ‘A family support and parenting project’
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…?