Understanding change in third sector organisations insights from the 'Real Times' qualitative longitudinal study

Dr. Rob MacmillanThird Sector Research Centre

University of Birmingham

5th ESRC Research Methods FestivalSt. Katharine’s College, Oxford

2nd July 2012

Two moments in civil society…

‘Larch’• Deprived ex-mining village – housing and community-

based regeneration• Heritage Centre, Youth Club, Village Hall, successful

community shop/café, new social enterprise• An uneven landscape of participation, e.g. ‘Brown hair

turning grey’

‘Birch’•Secure local advice agency growing through local authority funding and additional contracts•Annual surplus to ‘weather the storm’ and for service development•Anticipating possible outsourcing opportunities

‘Real Times’ in a nutshell…

Overall aim

• To establish, maintain and analyse a qualitative longitudinal sample of third sector organisations, groups and activities

• Access and engagement - experiences and dilemmas

Research structure and timing

• Diverse set of 15 core case studies plus a range of related ‘complementary’ case studies

• Spring 2010 to Summer 2013: five 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

Research context

A contextual baseline

A great unsettlement - a third sector in transition?

•‘Shaking-out’ and ‘Shaking-up’ (organisations being more ‘enterprising’, demonstrating value and ‘reconfiguration’)

•Changing economic context – impact of recession, austerity and cuts

•Changing political context – partial decoupling of sector and state

Methodological/theoretical basis

The promise of seeing things differently?

•Growing interest in qualitative longitudinal research - snapshots and moving pictures

•Taking time seriously – rhythms and change in third sector life

•A ‘field’ based understanding of the third sector – context, relation and ‘room’

A diverse set of case studies

• A large national charity delivering services – anticipating a changing funding and policy environment, and preparing a cutback plan

• A specialist mental health charity – concerned to maintain its distinctive services amidst public spending cuts, the personalisation agenda and new models of intervention

• A new social enterprise – pursuing growth beyond its local community

• A co-operative sports club - trying to sustain initial enthusiasm and impetus

• A local support project for teenage mothers – surviving an internal crisis, preparing for longer term sustainability

• A parish plan action group – seeking to implement ‘quick wins’ in the village

What happens next?

‘Larch’ (then)

• Deprived ex-mining village – housing and community-based regeneration

• Heritage Centre, Youth Club, Village Hall, successful community shop/café, new social enterprise

• An uneven landscape of participation, e.g. ‘Brown hair turning grey’

‘Larch’ (now-ish)

• Unsuccessful funding bids – youth club closes

• Utility bills and winter damage - Heritage Centre closing down?

• Contracting infrastructure support

• Shop/café and new social enterprise still developing

What happens next?

‘Birch’ (then)

• Secure local advice agency growing through local authority funding and additional contracts

• Annual surplus to ‘weather the storm’ and for service development

• Anticipating possible outsourcing opportunities

‘Birch’ (now-ish)

• LA reviews provision and cuts basic funding, pending re-commissioning

• Birch forced to consider closing services in hiatus

• A debate on tactical responses

• Reprieve, redundancies and re-organising structures and services – ‘transition’?

The overall story so far

A picture dominated by cuts for some…

• From anticipatory anxiety to the experience of public spending cuts • Restructuring and redundancies • Ongoing uncertainty about the scale and scope of cuts, and emerging

policy agendas• Thwarted plans and contained ambitions

But not for all…

• Organisations planning growth • Re-positioning and the development of new ventures and services• Relative insulation from the changing context

Understanding (organisational) change

• Narrative profiles, storylines and ‘process tracing’

• ‘Organizing’ as perpetual motion

• Exploring the quality of change - experiencing and narrating change

– Endogenous/exogenous– Fast/slow– Rough/smooth– Deliberate/imposed– Anticipated/unforeseen– Incidental/consequential

• Stability and change in strategic action fields (Fligstein and McAdam 2012)

– Organisations-as-fields, organisations-in-fields– Sources of stability and change: interdependence, sensitivity and

proximate social fields – ‘a stone thrown in a still pond’– Unsettlement and resettlement: of positions, norms and institutions

Further information

• ‘Real Times’ is being undertaken by a core team of five researchers at TSRC: Rob Macmillan, Andri Soteri-Proctor, Simon Teasdale, Rebecca Taylor and Malin Arvidson

• Macmillan, R (2011) Seeing things differently? The promise of qualitative longitudinal research on the third sector

TSRC Working Paper 56, March 2011

• Macmillan, R et al (2011) First Impressions: introducing the ‘Real Times’ third sector case studies

TSRC Working Paper 67, November 2011

www.tsrc.ac.uk