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…?