Eve E. Garrow

This paper draws insights from the sociological study of residential segregation and the institutional perspective on organizations to examine the influence of the racial and ethnic composition of the neighborhood on organizational disbanding. The analysis, which combines panel data on a probability sample of nonprofit human service organizations with census data, reveals systematic differences: The percentage of Blacks and Latinos in the census tract is positively associated with the odds that organizations surveyed in 2002 had disbanded by 2011 after controlling for a variety of organizational and environmental factors. By contrast, an increase in the percentage of Whites in the census tract decreased the odds of organizational disbanding. Results highlight the effects of the racial and spatial landscape on organizational life chances, with implications for the capacity of the nonprofit human services sector to reach the most isolated and disadvantaged populations.

We explore the rise of social enterprises, particularly, work integration social enterprises (WISEs), their particular hybrid organizational form, and their impact on their clients. We propose that WISEs are an expression of a neoliberal welfare logic that challenges social rights by emphasizing market solutions to social needs and by devolving and privatizing social services to the local level and the private sector. We show that as a hybrid organizational form, WISEs must balance between two conflicting institutional logics: market and social services. Our research demonstrates that when the WISEs are dominated by a market logic, they commodify their clients as production workers. We suggest that WISEs, as a hybrid organizational form, contribute to the neoliberal project of blurring the boundaries between the market and the welfare state.

Studies of advocacy by nonprofit human-service organizations generally fail to distinguish between two major types of advocacy—advocacy for social benefits versus organizational benefits. We show that different organizational factors explain the emphasis on each type of advocacy. We use an institutional logics perspective, with its emphasis on the moral frames organizations adopt, as our theoretical framework. We propose that two organizational mechanisms express these moral frames—selection of a practice frame and location decision—and shape the substance of advocacy. Analyzing a probability sample of these organizations, we find that a practice frame that places the clients’ problems on the environment rather than the individual is positively associated with advocacy for social benefits. Similarly, organizations that express their moral commitment to locate in high-poverty areas are more likely to advocate for social benefits. We conclude with some implications on the role of advocacy in a neoliberal regime.

Research on variation in policy implementation has examined how individual- and organizational-level variables shape discretionary practices at the frontlines of implementation but has given less attention to the influence of the organizational field. From an institutional logics perspective, the practices of street-level workers are likely to be more congruent with policy intent when policy is consistent with the core institutional logic that structures the organizational field. Using data from a probability sample of 90 Los Angeles County HIV/AIDS health organizations and 216 frontline practitioners, our findings suggest that the extent to which implementation of HIV test counseling follows guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is related to consistency between CDC policy and core institutional logic, when accounting for individual-level factors such as client need; practitioners’ professional orientation, knowledge, experience, and training; and organizational constraints such as workload pressures and formalization.