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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.

Advocacy and its direct and indirect advocacy tactics have been heavily researched within nonprofit studies. However, next to influencing institutional elites, nonprofits could strive toward other political goals as well. Based on our current understanding of advocacy, we have uncovered another form of nonprofit politics: ‘politicization’ of the public sphere. In this study, we include both politicization and advocacy, and analyze the extent to which advocacy and politicization can be considered as two separate forms. Moreover, we examine the explanatory value of organizational size and age, public and market income and institutional field of activity, within the neo-corporatist context of Flanders, the northern region of Belgium. Making use of a large-N survey database of Flemish nonprofits, our findings show that: (a) advocacy is present to a larger degree than politicization, (b) advocacy and politicization are significantly correlated and (c) institutional field of activity and public income are important explanatory variables.

Scholarship interested in nonprofits’ repertoire of political tactics, and its possible ‘qualitative thinning out’ – i.e. a presumed shift in political tactics – has been limited by two major caveats: (1) political tactics are often reduced to advocacy tactics alone and (2) political tactics are examined within a predominantly liberal nonprofit regime. We address these issues by focusing on a neo-corporatist nonprofit regime and including politicization tactics. Our statistical analysis is based on a database of nonprofits in Flanders, the northern region of Belgium (N = 496). Our results show that (a) advocacy is more heavily pursued than politicization, (b) there are similarities between the political repertoire of advocacy and politicization, (c) cooperative and direct political tactics are more frequently used than confrontational and indirect ones and (d) the assumption of ‘qualitative thinning out’ should be replaced by the assumption of ‘neo-corporatist path dependency’ for the Flemish context.

If the COVID‐19 pandemic has already taught us anything, it is that policymakers, experts and public managers need to be capable of interpreting comparative data on their government's performance in a meaningful way. Simultaneously, they are confronted with different data sources (and measurements) surrounding COVID‐19 without necessarily having the tools to assess these sources strategically. Due to the speed with which decisions are required and the different data sources, it can be challenging for any policymaker, expert or public manager to make sense of how COVID‐19 has an impact, especially from a comparative perspective. Starting from the question “How can we benchmark COVID‐19 performance data across countries?”, this article presents important indicators, measurements, and their strengths and weaknesses, and concludes with practical recommendations. These include a focus on measurement equivalence, systems thinking, spatial and temporal thinking, multilevel governance and multimethod designs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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...

In the last two decades, nonprofit scholars have extensively examined the topic of advocacy. However, two remaining limitations stand out. It seems as if advocacy is nonprofits’ only political activity and empirical research is often limited to a liberal nonprofit context. In this paper, we address both research gaps. We include public sphere effects next to advocacy as a nonprofit political activity. Then, for both political activities, we look at their efforts, use of tactics and possible explanatory variables in a neo-corporatist context. Making use of a large-N survey database of Flemish nonprofits, our findings show that: (a) advocacy is present to a large degree in comparison with public sphere effects, (b) that field of activity and public funding are important explanatory variables and (c) that there is an overlap in the use of indirect/outsider advocacy tactics and public sphere effects tactics.

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.

The current relationship between the state and civil society in Europe is a curious and historically unique one. This is no longer a situation in which participation and association prepare citizens for the offices of the state; rather, it is the state urging a sometimes-reluctant citizenry to engage actively in civil society. This phenomenon stems from a combination of changes in prevailing governance paradigms and of the more general process of social liquefaction. In the article, we analyse these two intertwining trends and discuss the new type of relationship between the state and civil society that may be emerging. Points for practitioners The article puts the current vogue for renewed state–civil society relationships in a larger context. It shows that, however commendable many initiatives may be, there is the risk that the desire on the part of governments for their citizens to participate and self-organize may lead the state to take over such initiatives, leading to a manufactured civil society that has little to do with spontaneous citizen initiatives. Another possible consequence is that truly spontaneous citizen initiatives will shun collaboration with the state and focus only inwards, to the detriment of broader public values. Therefore, in this area, the state must strike a delicate balance between encouragement and restraint.

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.

Public sector challenges translate in more complex job demands that require individual innovation. In order to deal with these demands, many public organizations have implemented employee performance management. In a multilevel study, we examine when employee performance management affects individual innovation. We contribute by focusing on consistent employee performance management and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). Based on goal-setting theory, we first argue that employee performance management fosters individual innovation when it entails consistent subpractices. Subsequently, LMX is theorized to function as a moderator in this linkage. We use multilevel data from 68 elderly homes and 1095 caregivers in Flanders to test our hypotheses. The study reveals that individual innovation is related to consistent employee performance management, and that LMX functions as a moderator in this relationship. Our findings contribute to scholars' understanding of effects from employee performance management in public organizations.

Vooreerst wordt er in dit rapport dieper ingegaan op één van de actuele thema’s in de non-profit sector: vermarkting ofwel hybridisering richting de markt. Ten tweede wordt er aandacht besteed aan de geloofwaardigheid of legitimiteit van dergelijke hybride non-profitorganisaties. Ten slotte wordt gekeken naar strategieën die non-profitorganisaties toepassen om met effecten van hybridisering richting de markt op legitimiteit om te gaan. In deze casestudie wordt ingezoomd op de sociaal-culturele sector.

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.