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Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) becoming business-like is a contested issue. Some understand the adoption of business-like practices by NPOs as a case of adopting rational myths through institutional isomorphism and thus potentially dangerous for NPOs’ ability to fulfill their unique societal roles. Others are more optimistic, arguing that technical rationality is possible in the adoption of business-like practices, and that such practices can therefore support NPOs in fulfilling a wide range of societal roles. Drawing on survey data of NPOs in Flanders, we examine the relationship between the extent to which NPOs use business-like practices, and the extent to which they engage in various societal roles. We find that business-like practices are weakly related to NPOs’ societal roles. All roles are positively related to nonprofit managerialism and unrelated to NPOs’ reliance on commercial funding. Our results suggest that a certain optimism regarding the rational use of business-like approaches is justified.

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the need to consider multiple and often novel perspectives on contemporary policymaking in the context of technically complex, ambiguous, and large-scale crises. In this article, we focus on exploring a territory that remains relatively unchartered on a large scale, namely the relationship between economic inequalities and excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a dataset of 25 European countries spanning 300 regions. Our findings reveal two pathways by which economic asymmetries and inequalities can observably influence excess mortality: labor market structures (capturing concentrations of industrial jobs) and income inequalities (capturing concentrations and asymmetries in income distribution). We leverage our findings to offer recommendations for policymakers toward a more deliberate consideration of the multidimensionality of technically complex, large-scale crises with a high degree of societal embeddedness. These findings also urge future scholarship to utilize a range of parameters and indicators for better understanding the relationship between cues and outcomes in such complex settings.

Summary This article presents the results of a research project involving 10 people with intellectual disabilities concerning their idea of “a good life” in a residential care setting, within a context of personal budgets. We introduce the capability approach as a framework for focusing on the opportunities personal budgets offer for people with intellectual disabilities. We make use of qualitative interviews following a photovoice project in which people with intellectual disabilities documented their lives in order to research what they deem valuable and aspire to. Findings In the analysis section, we present the elements which the participants identified as limiting and enhancing for imagining their future. From their stories, we learn that their aspirations are nourished by the encounters and social bonds that they engage in within a residential care context. The results make clear that the use of money offers opportunities to elaborate on what is already known and enables the realization of aspirations, while interactions with significant others more often than not encourage participants to explore and try out changes and thus further develop people’s set of aspirations. Applications In drawing the discussion to a close, we explore the implications these stories might have for understanding the role of aspirations in the practice of care and support for people with intellectual disabilities. The findings encourage us to think about a relational pedagogy and to address this in the practices of personal budgets.

Individual funding schemes are increasingly implemented to organize public welfare services and can be considered as a prime example of the marketization of social care. Clients receive a budget and can "shop" on the welfare market. Current knowledge about the impact of individual funding schemes on choice opportunities for people with an intellectual disability is inconclusive. We conducted a vignette experiment in the context of the Flemish (Belgian) individual funding scheme for people with a disability, using 610 close relatives of people with an intellectual disability as subjects. The respondents were presented with hypothetical situations in which they had to express their intention to change current care provision into care via personal assistance. We find that dissatisfaction with services and having a supportive network increases the intention to change care. Professional support from the incumbent provider does not have a significant impact. We conclude that the promise of choice, as assumed with marketized public services, is likely to be fulfilled only under particular conditions. This entails risks in terms of equal opportunities for clients receiving public services in the context of welfare markets.

Although the non-profit marketization literature argues that governments’ performance-based accountability demands can hinder non-profit organizational performance, rational planning literature suggests a more positive yet indirect impact. To unravel the mechanisms at play for those steering their organization, we investigate (1) if performance-based accountability can alter how non-profit directors’ perceive organizational performance and (2) if such relationship is mediated by rational planning inspired practices. Results from structural equation modelling on two-wave survey data among 297 non-profit directors in Flemish non-profits confirm that management tool use and performance measurement are central in explaining how performance-based accountability impacts subjective performance.

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) hybridizing toward the market domain by adopting business practices has sparked an ever-growing debate. There is research showing a rather positive effect on organizational legitimacy. However, considering the literature discussing other performance dimensions (e.g. social effectiveness), this trend is argued to erode the prosocial underpinnings of NPOs, increasingly leaving their stakeholders wondering what distinguishes them from business enterprises. When examining these previous studies, most research only focuses on one dimension of organizational legitimacy and/or one type of stakeholder. In this study, we aim to provide a more fine-grained picture of how nonprofit-business hybridity impacts nonprofit legitimacy by adopting (a) a multi-dimensional understanding of legitimacy, and (b) a multi-stakeholder perspective. We draw on survey data from Flemish NPOs to sample two matched pairs of opposite cases, i.e. a ‘low’ and ‘high’ hybridized NPO for qualitative examination. Our findings suggest that nonprofit-business hybridity is significantly detrimental for stakeholders who are closely involved, and beneficial in the eyes of stakeholders who are more distant from the organization.

status: Published online

Background: This paper presents the findings from a qualitative research project that explored what ten people with intellectual disabilities who receive care and support in a residential care faci...

Dans cet article, nous analysons les differents roles joues par les professionnels de terrain lors du processus de creation de valeur publique dans le cadre d’un projet de developpement communautaire conduit sur le mode de la coproduction. Nous nous interessons en particulier a la maniere dont des professionnels de terrain motives associent differents roles – ami, guide, representant et mediateur – pour autonomiser et inclure les membres du groupe cible et, ce faisant, participer a la creation de valeur publique. Cette question a ete examinee dans le cadre d’une etude de cas qualitative concernant un projet de developpement communautaire a Ostende (Belgique). Cette etude a montre que le professionnel de terrain devait adopter differentes combinaisons de roles de maniere reflechie pour influer sur le processus de coproduction intervenant dans la creation de valeur publique. La combinaison des roles d’ami et de guide et celle des fonctions de guide et de mediateur, en particulier, est susceptible de conferer une autonomie accrue aux coproducteurs et de creer ainsi une valeur individuelle pour ceux-ci. En outre, les professionnels etudient avec soin la combinaison des roles d’ami et de guide pour favoriser la valeur communautaire plutot que la valeur individuelle. De meme, assumer simultanement les fonctions d’ami, de guide et de representant permet aux professionnels d’inclure un nombre plus eleve de coproducteurs et de renforcer ainsi le sentiment de la valeur communautaire. Il apparait en conclusion que la mise en œuvre de ces differentes combinaisons de maniere idoine suppose la presence d’un professionnel motive qui dispose du temps et de l’autonomie necessaires. De plus, nous soulignons que les recherches sur ces differentes alliances de roles doivent etre approfondies pour etablir clairement le panorama des differentes associations susceptibles d’etre utilisees par les professionnels.Remarques a l’intention des praticiensForts des enseignements tires de notre recherche, nous pouvons formuler a l’intention des praticiens deux recommandations essentielles. Premierement, pour inclure les personnes vulnerables et leur donner des moyens d’agir dans le processus de coproduction, les professionnels doivent acquerir l’eventail de competences qui leur permettra d’endosser les roles requis pour nouer le dialogue avec les participants. Deuxiemement, et de maniere connexe, cela signifie que les professionnels de terrain doivent disposer de l’autonomie suffisante (a l’egard des responsables des politiques publiques) pour etre a meme de determiner les actions necessaires pour assurer la reussite du projet de coproduction au regard des objectifs d’inclusion et de renforcement du pouvoir d’agir.

The care for disabled people in Flanders is currently undergoing a major social policy reform under the introduction of a personal budget scheme. Disability services in Flanders are explicitly expe...

Resource competition is assumed to encourage commercial behaviour by publically funded non-profit organizations (NPOs). However, this widespread assumption falls short as empirical findings remain ...

Personal budget schemes for people with disabilities are imbued with a conception of autonomous and rational individuals. The policy objective to enlarge people’s opportunities conflicts with the p...

Despite widespread concerns about nonprofit organizations becoming “business-like” by hybridizing toward the market sphere, systematic knowledge about the extent and coherency to which this phenomenon finds traction beyond the liberal welfare context remains largely absent to date. Based on survey data ( N = 496), this study addresses this lacuna for the region of Flanders (Belgium), an emblematic case of a post-corporatist welfare state. We find that (a) business practices are on the rise yet not prominently present, and (b) the theorized conceptual coherence of this phenomenon corresponds with a more fragmented empirical reality. This raises the question to what extent the conception of nonprofit hybridization toward the market sphere as a “monolithic threat” to the distinctiveness of the nonprofit sphere is an empirical reality in a post-corporatist welfare context.

Neo-corporatist relations consist of a stabilized institutional exchange between government, civil society and other social spheres. Current research suggests a destabilization of this relationship...

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In their recent systematic review of co-production and co-creation in this journal, Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers (2015) called co-creation a ‘magic concept’, to justify both its extraordinarily i...

A growing body of literature discusses the (dis)advantages of nonprofit organizations becoming commercial by engaging in the sale of organizational services and products. However, when explaining this phenomenon, scholars tend to focus on resource uncertainty, thereby disregarding the organizational ability to commercialize. Complementing resource dependency theory with insights from contingency theory, this study presents arguments drawn from a comparative case study of six sociocultural nonprofits in Belgium. We find that, when resource uncertainty is similar, organizational differences in terms of commercial income can be explained by differences in (a) organizational origins, (b) professional capacity and, (c) type of tasks. We conclude that organizational characteristics can either enable or disable the ability of nonprofits to commercialize and consequently their ability to self-sustain in an increasing challenging resource environment.

This article deals with the different roles of the street-level professional in achieving public value in a co-productive community development project. The article focuses, in particular, on the question of how engaged street-level professionals combine different roles – as friend, leader, representative and mediator – in order to empower and include their target audience, thereby contributing to public value creation. This question was explored in a qualitative case study in a community development project in Ostend (Belgium). The study indicated that the street-level professional needed to adopt different role combinations in a well-considered way in order to influence the co-productive process that affected public value creation. More specifically, the combination of friend–leader, as well as the leader–mediator combination, can empower co-producers and thus create personal value for these co-producers. Moreover, professionals carefully consider the combination of friend–leader to support community value over personal value. Also, by combining the friend, leader and representative roles, professionals can include more co-producers and create a stronger sense of community value. This article concludes that there is a need for an engaged professional who has sufficient time and autonomy to apply the combinations as needed. Additionally, we note that more research on these different role cocktails is necessary in order to provide a clear framework of the different combinations that professionals can apply. Points for practitioners From our research, we can make two key recommendations for practitioners. First, in order to empower and include vulnerable participants to co-produce, professionals need to develop the right skill set to fulfil the roles needed to engage with participants. Second, and relatedly, this also implies sufficient autonomy (vis-a-vis policymakers) for the professionals at the street level, which will enable them to consider what is needed for the co-production project to become successful in terms of inclusion and empowerment.

In spite of the belief instilled by the New Public Management reforms that nonprofit organizations (NPOs) can benefit from more management, more measurement and more market practices, systematic knowledge on the organizational effects of NPOs incorporating business practices in their day-to-day functioning remains absent to date. This research note addresses this limitation by reviewing 49 research articles. The focus lies on the redefinition of nonprofits' mission and income streams, changing governance arrangements and shifting management practices. We find that, despite numerous detrimental effects cited in the literature, (a) generating commercial income can contribute to the financial stability of NPOs, and (b) hybridization towards the market domain can strengthen the organizational legitimacy of NPOs, suggesting that imitating for-profit enterprises might contribute to nonprofit functioning in perception, rather than in practice.

La relation actuelle entre les Etats et la societe civile en Europe est une relation curieuse et particuliere sur le plan historique. Nous ne sommes plus dans une situation ou la participation et l’association preparent les citoyens aux postes dans l’administration publique. Aujourd’hui, c’est l’Etat qui implore des citoyens parfois hesitants de participer activement a la societe civile. Ce phenomene decoule de plusieurs evolutions dans les paradigmes de gouvernance actuels et du processus plus general de liquefaction sociale. Dans le present article, nous analysons ces deux tendances interdependantes et examinons le nouveau type de relation qui est en train d’apparaitre entre l’Etat et la societe civile.Remarques a l’intention des praticiensDans le present article, nous situons la tendance actuelle a revoir les relations entre l’Etat et la societe civile dans un contexte plus large. Nous allons voir que, aussi louables soient bon nombre d’initiatives, la volonte des gouvernements d’amener les citoyens a participer et a s’auto-organiser risque d’amener l’Etat a faire main basse sur ces initiatives, ce qui se traduirait par une societe civile fabriquee, qui n’aurait plus grand-chose a voir avec les initiatives citoyennes spontanees. Autre consequence possible : les initiatives citoyennes vraiment spontanees risquent d’eviter de collaborer avec l’Etat et de se centrer sur elles-memes, au detriment des valeurs publiques en general. Dans ce domaine, l’Etat doit des lors s’efforcer de trouver un juste milieu, aussi delicat cela soit-il, entre encouragement et limitation.

In order to deal with “wicked problems” like inequality and social exclusion, one needs the support of committed citizens (Brandsen et al. in Manufactured civil society: practices, principles and effects, Palgrave, London, 2014). A promising setting to examine to what extent this is the case is that of community development projects in derelict neighbourhoods where the largest representation of ‘marginalised’ citizens can often be found (Head in Community development: theory and method of planned change, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979; Needham in Personal co-production, 2009). In this article, we examine to what extent citizens are actually involved in local co-productive community development projects (in the city of Ghent, Belgium), and how professional field workers influence this engagement. We focus on three different potential effects of co-productive community development (inclusion and empowerment of citizen co-producers and the equity in the benefits they receive), and whether professional support can influence these effects. We find that co-production in community development projects may lead to more inclusion, empowerment and equity. Moreover, it is posited that the presence of professionals in their different roles does have a positive impact on co-productive community development.

This article explores how social workers deal with the ambiguity that arises from their ability to transform the private needs of individuals into issues of public concern. It is argued that the current shift towards joined-up working, which is epitomized by the creation of interorganizational networks, could encourage new opportunities for social work. These horizontal and nonhierarchical forms of cooperation serve as platforms for debate to ensure regular discussions about the causes of and potential solutions to complex societal problems. This article relies on a case-study of bottom-up networks in two Belgian cities where social workers from various policy fields voluntarily joined forces to look after hard-to-reach groups of homeless people. The primary data were obtained from document analysis, semi-structured interviews with network participants, and direct observations of network meetings. These data were analyzed by conducting a directed content analysis. The examination shows that the jo...

Co-production is often considered a solution to improve service quality and production efficiency, yet research on the reasons why citizens participate in the creation and/or implementation of public services is still limited to specific sectors. In this article, we study the different citizens’ motivations discussed in the literature. We distinguished two categories of motivations, personal and circumstantial. By means of a guided survey, we collected data on these different motivations in a Belgian case in the unstudied setting of community development. The results show that even in a community development case, where material incentives are used to entice citizens in a vulnerable socio-economic position to participate, the reasons behind co-production are still more diverse and complex than simple benefit maximization.

It has been repeatedly stated that the topic of network effectiveness has often been neglected. This has led to a situation of ‘network euphoria’ amongst practitioners and policymakers with regard to the creation of networks as a means to (re-)organize welfare provision. Starting from a case study of networks for welfare provision in two Belgian cities, this article focuses on the effectiveness of service delivering networks at the client level, which is understood as the contribution of the network in improving the conditions of life of those being served or targeted by the network. Therefore, we focused on the collective efforts via these networks (e.g. by creating a night shelter or by conducting case consultations) to look after a population of homeless people who face multiple problems and are not able yet to benefit from welfare provision. Our findings revealed that these networks were able to realize a ‘collaborative advantage’ by filling in service gaps and by overcoming fragmentation of care. Nevertheless, these networks equally maintained criteria that restricted the accessibility or usefulness of welfare services provided to homeless people. In the concluding section, we highlight some of the factors that could help us to explain our findings and highlight the tension between the effectiveness of networks at the client level and the effectiveness at the organizational level.

The position of civil society is changing, as many traditional organizations have become dependent on governments and markets for financial resources. At the same time, new kinds of civil society are on the rise, in the shape of self-organization and social movements. These new players challenge the position both of government, of traditional civil society and of relevant institutions. Simultaneously, citizens are taking on new roles in relation to both government and civil society. They start acting as co-producers, participating in the design, production and evaluating of public services. The question is how governments and administrations are able to cope with these new developments.

This chapter conceptualizes 'democratic quality' of participation and co-production. It focuses on the current knowledge about the determinants of democratic participation and co-production. Looking at the literature, democratic quality of participation can be made more specific by looking at concepts like equity, inclusion (or exclusion), (lack of) impact while participating or co-producing, and empowerment of participants or co-producers. The literature on participation in general provides us with some answers to the question under which circumstances co-production is democratic in nature or not. The literature also provides us with some first assumptions on potential drivers for democratic co-production: professional support, a sense of competency and salience may be important to lift target groups over the threshold. Care is needed, however, in translating knowledge from the broader participation literature to more specific co-production and co-creation research, as there may be empirical differences between general citizen participation and specific co-production, in terms of 'who's in', and what 'representativeness' means.

The normative tendency towards optimism tends to mask a number of potential pitfalls. This chapter addresses seven potential evils of co-creation and co-production: the deliberate rejection of responsibility, failing accountability, rising transaction costs, loss of democracy, reinforced inequalities, implicit demands and co-destruction. It argues that scholars should fully open up to these possibilities and make them part of the research agenda, because otherwise they risk damaging their own academic credibility. Based on a review of literature on co-creation and co-production of public services, Voorberg concludes that while little research systematically studies the outcomes of co-creation or co-production, the research on this topic that is available focuses mainly on effectiveness. In order to avoid pitfalls, co-creation and co-production need real investment of time and money by government, but also an openness to comprehend the concerns of different actors involved.

Although mixed public–private provisions of welfare have always been a typical characteristic of continental welfare states, recent international scholarship has pointed to a historically new process of institutional hybridisation, with a more systematic intermingling of rationalities of the state, market and third sector within one and the same organisation. In this article, we address two limitations in the current knowledge: first, the absence of an indicator-model for exploring organisational hybridity empirically; second, the lack of sensitivity to cross-national variation depending on the welfare regime. We develop a multi-dimensional analytical framework that takes regime differences into account and empirically assess organisational hybridity in a (post-)corporatist welfare regime. Based on a survey of 255 third-sector organisations (TSOs) in Flanders (Belgium) and using latent class analysis, we find three clusters of TSOs that reflect different types of organisational hybridity. Contextualising our results further shows that the positioning of TSOs in our cluster model to a large extent results from the institutional context in which TSOs operate.

In this article we discuss the extent to which service-delivering nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are committed to fulfill an expressive advocacy role, and we look at the advocacy strategies these organizations adopt. Furthermore, we question whether a close relationship with government compromises the NPOs’ willingness to perform these advocacy activities. Based on a large-N sample of more than 250 NPOs in the Flemish welfare sector, our research shows that the overall commitment to an advocacy role was rather low. Rather than focusing on a role as adversary of government, NPOs seek to adopt “softer” strategies such as the use of insider contacts with policy makers, the participation in umbrella organizations or building coalitions with other NPOs. Finally, we found mixed evidences concerning our initial hypotheses. Most importantly, as the dominant source of public income did not stifle the NPOs’ commitment to advocate, we found little support for a resource dependence framework.

We test a typology of public–private partnerships by using survey data on the relationship between non-profit organizations (NPOs) and Flemish local governments. We found that quite strong relations occur, but this is not a uniform picture: although most NPOs are not financially dependent on local government, there is a variation in NPO–local government contacts. We observe that NPOs active in poverty fighting, or in integration of ethnic minorities, build stronger relations, compared to NPOs in elderly care or youth care. Our analysis allows to refine the original typology by adding intermediate positions on the initial dichotomous scales of ‘dependence’ and ‘nearness’.

Faced with an increasingly challenging environment, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) must behave innovatively and act in a result- or performance-oriented manner. In this article, we explore the extent to which NPOs behave innovatively (in their management and service delivery), and the factors that determine this innovative behaviour. We conducted our research in the main subsectors of the Flemish nonprofit sector (education, welfare, health and the socio-cultural sector). The results presented here are based on a survey of 170 NPO managers. We found that the organizations within our sample claim that innovations occur to a fairly large extent. We have, however, discovered differences in innovative behaviour between subsectors. In addition, we found that there are many forces at work when trying to explain innovative behaviour in NPOs and different forms of innovative behaviour also seem to have different explanations.

Private nonprofit organizations (NPO) involved in publically funded welfare programs face the challenge of maintaining autonomy in their strategic decision-making processes. In this article we study the extent to which NPO managers perceive this autonomy vis-à-vis government in defining the NPO’s mission, their working procedures, the target groups to be served and the results to be achieved. Empirical evidence is taken from a large-N sample of 255 NPOs engaged in social welfare provision in Belgium. Our findings suggest that public resource dependence does have a negative impact on the perception of NPOs about the level of organizational autonomy. Still, we will argue that, when looking at the relative share of public income in the NPO’s total budget, the nature and intensity of the consultation process between government and NPO and some measures of organizational capacity, this picture is less black and white than presumed.

In many Western countries, alongside NPM-rhetoric, important tasks of public service delivery have been devolved to autonomous single purpose agencies. This was also the case in Flanders (Belgium). This reform rhetoric also has a clear vision on how tasks in the policy cycle are to be distributed between actors: policy-making is a political prerogative, supported by core governmental departments, whereas executive agencies have policy implementation as their main task. This article addresses whether this ideal-typical model really exists, drawing on two case studies of policy initiatives in Flanders. Our observations confirm a policy-operations divide between politics and administration, but it needs refinement: ministers and their advisors make the strategic policy decisions, in which they are assisted by executive agencies. Ministerial departments are hardly involved in the policy-making process. Executive agencies are more than policy implementers alone, as they often have a large input in the operational stages of policy-making.

In this introductory article to the thematic issue, our aim is to discuss the state of the art in research on co-production of public services. We define co-production, for the purpose of this article rather narrowly, as the involvement of individual citizens and groups in public service delivery. We discuss the concept along three main research lines that emerge from the literature: what are the motives for co-production? How can co-production be organized effectively? What are the effects of co-production? Secondly, we also critically assess the state of the art and discuss some conceptual and methodological issues that are still open to debate. Thirdly, we propose some directions for future research: greater methodological diversity and the need for empirical and comparative research with a specific attention for theoretical advancement in co-production research.

The involvement of private actors (non-profit and/or for-profit) in public service provision has a lot of consequences and implications not only for users and service providers, but also for government. This article explores the consequences for the relations within public-private service provision networks, by focusing on the governance regime of childcare in Flanders. Our case analysis clearly shows that public-private service provision networks may threaten the transparency of the service provision field for users, and challenge the role of the oversight authority, often requiring a two-level steering of the service provision field: a direct steering of individual service providers and the network and/or market steering of the whole service provision field (in a community or region). Governance regimes comprising service providers of different sectors may complicate this kind of network steering, as there seem to exist at least six relationships within such networks. Furthermore, we noticed that service providers may face conflicting (public) accountabilities.

This article focuses on the role public agencies play in the policy making process. Based on a single embedded case-study of one Flemish public agency and two policy-programmes in which this agency is involved, the normative practitioner model of the policy/operations divide is tested. This model assumes (or prescribes) that policy making is a political prerogative, while public agencies as administrative actors should stick to implementing policy. The evidence shows that reality is more complex than the rhetoric of the practitioner model. Agencies may be more involved in policy preparation and policy decision-making than assumed, and political actors may in some cases have a large say in policy implementation. The evidence from my case-study shows that in reality the policy/operations divide might not be that clear-cut, and that this normative model should be revised on some points. Next to that, the findings may be discussed in the light of the current administrative reform projects in various countries that propagate a strict labour division between the political sphere (policy) and the administrative sphere (implementing policy). This discussion is particularly relevant for the Flemish public sector that is currently facing a major reform of that kind.

This article aims at contributing to the study of arm's length agencies by focusing on what are considered to be core concepts of agencification: autonomy and control of public agencies. The balance between autonomy and control is studied for a set of Flemish public agencies, from three angles: (1) To what extent can we observe the practitioner model of disaggregation, managerial freedom and results based control in Flanders?; (2) Which autonomy-control balances do we find empirically? Departing from two extreme cases – control loss and false autonomy – I conclude that there is a lot of variation amongst Flemish public agencies as to their autonomy-control balances; and (3) Based on a third set of empirical conclusions, I try to broaden the normative discussion on the accountability debate that surrounds arm's length agencies, by proposing a broader concept of steering and control. I conclude the article by proposing four directions for future research on this specific topic of agency research.

We argue that contemporary research on the influence of organisational autonomy on performance in public organisations uses a diverse and a too restrictive conceptualisation of autonomy. After discussing that research, the article develops six dimensions of the concept of autonomy in public organisations. Second, weaknesses of contemporary research are shown by confronting their conceptualisations with the developed taxonomy. Third, data from a survey of Flemish public organisations illuminate the need to acknowledge the six different dimensions of autonomy when studying the effect of autonomy on performance. The empirical material points at the dangers of using formal–legal status of a public organisation as an indicator of its autonomy, given substantial heterogeneity of organisations with the same formal–legal status on each dimension of autonomy. Moreover, tensions between different levels of autonomy appear in practice, indicating the need for a combined and integrated study of the effects of the different dimensions of autonomy on performance. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.