The concept of legitimacy—i.e., being regarded as “lawful, admissible, and justified” (Edwards in NGO rights and responsibilities: a new deal for global governance, The Foreign Policy Center, London, ...2000)—is pivotal within civil society research. Recently, the concept has applied to wider notions concerning the civil sphere and civic action. The introductory article of this special issue aims to provide an overview of conceptualizations of legitimacy within civil society research and to point at new avenues for future research. We depart from Suddaby et al.’s (Acad Manag Ann 11(1): 451–478, 2017) configurations of legitimacy within management literature: as property, perception, and process. While these configurations are also reflected in civil society literature, with legitimacy as property being prominent, they do not capture the full scope of civil society literature on legitimacy, given its multidisciplinary nature, its inclusion of multiple levels of analysis, and the presence of complementary conceptualizations of legitimacy. We posit that the legitimacy-as-relations-in-processes perspective is valuable for advancing research in civil society organizations.
Reform in Europe Lettinga, Berber; Heyse, Liesbet; Lantink, Tineke
2006, 20171128, 2017, 2007-11-01, 2017-11-28, 20060101
eBook
One of the most prevailing myths within the social sciences is the difficulty of achieving reform. Governments are either unwilling to push for reform or if they are willing, they are unable to do ...so. This volume illustrates that reform can and does happen and therefore need not by mythologized. Through carefully selected case studies, the contributions to this volume illustrate reform in several policy sectors and countries, to include the smoking bans in Ireland, public housing in the Netherlands and asylum procedures in Germany. Designed to enhance our understanding of the reform process, this volume is highly suited to the fields of public administration and policy.
How do non-governmental humanitarian aid organizations initiate, terminate and extend their project activities? Humanitarian aid organizations regularly face difficult decisions about life and death ...in a context of serious time constraints which force them daily to select whom to help and whom not to help. Liesbet Heyse focuses on how humanitarian aid organizations make these decisions and provides an inside view of the decision making processes. Two NGO case studies are used as illustration - Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) and Acting with Churches Together (ACT) - both of which operate in an international network and represent specific types of NGOs often found in the community. This book opens up the black box of NGO operations, provides an empirical account of organizational decision making and combines insights of organization theory and organizational decision making theory.
The decentralization of the Indonesian healthcare system, launched in the year 2000, allowed the authorities of local community health centers (CHCs) to tailor their services to the needs of their ...clients. Many observers see this as an opportunity to increase CHC efficiency. Building on the Context Design Performance Framework, this paper assesses the extent to which efficiency variations between CHCs can be explained by the degree of fit between their organizational design characteristics and aspects of the communities in which they are embedded.
Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was applied to construct a measure of CHC efficiency for a sample of 598 CHCs in 2011, drawn from a publicly available Ministry of Health (MoH) dataset. Tobit regression analysis was applied to assess the impact of organization design and community characteristics and their interplay on efficiency.
Large variations in CHC efficiency were discovered, suggesting that not all CHCs are equally capable of finding the optimal design to operate most efficiently. A significant inverted U-shape relationship was found for the organization design-efficiency link: efficiency is highest for CHCs with 1-2 horizontal units and decreases for CHCs exceeding or not reaching this number. No significant association was found between community characteristics (proportion of poor people, remote location of CHC) and CHC efficiency.
Organizational design matters for CHC efficiency, but no evidence was found for the hypothesis that a better fit between community characteristics and CHC design increases efficiency. A potential reason for this might be that CHC management's main design challenge is how to cope with the scarce availability of well-trained health personnel.
In this exploratory study, we present findings from semi-structured interviews with 11 self-identified lesbian and gay (LG) humanitarian aid workers of Doctors without Borders (MSF). We investigate ...their perceptions of workplace inclusion in terms of perceived satisfaction of their needs for authenticity and belonging within two organizational settings, namely office and field. Through our combined deductive and inductive approach, based on grounded theory, we find that perceptions of their colleagues' and supervisors' attitudes and behaviors, as well as organizational inclusiveness practices play a role in LGs' perceived authenticity, but not belonging, in the workplace. However, these organization-level characteristics do not account for between-participant differences in perceived authenticity. Therefore, we inductively construct a typology of three groups, which we coined
,
, and
, based on how LG humanitarian aid workers assess and deal with not being able to be their authentic selves when they are in the field, because homosexuality is illegal in many project countries. Conscious first-missioners are separated from the other two groups based on having gone to the field once, whereby they felt in control over the decision on how to manage their sexuality. Alternatively, authentic realists and idealistic activists alike felt they did not really have a choice in how to manage their sexuality, but handled that differently. We find the importance of one's sexuality as well as adherence to the overarching organizational mission relevant individual-level factors herein. Furthermore, we find disclosure of sexual identity to be strongly context-dependent, as participants are 'out of the closet' in the office, but go back into the closet when they enter the field, with different country contexts even leading to different decisions concerning self-disclosure, thus demonstrating the importance of careful sexual identity management. This so-called disclosure dilemma, we find, may not be merely an individual choice, but rather a shared dilemma involving multiple stakeholders, such as the organization and fellow team members. We discuss the findings' contributions to existing literature on LGs' workplace experiences and implications for future research on inclusion of sexual and other invisible minorities in the workplace.
The study investigates to what degree Indonesia’s large-scale decentralization and democratization changed corruption networks. A role structure approach is developed to move current analysis of ...dyad-level structures to the network level. This approach is empirically tested by comparing the relational content and third-party structures of 96 corruption networks operating in the first phase of decentralization (2001–2004), characterized by a powerful local council, with 94 corruption networks detected in the second phase (2005–2013), when direct local elections were introduced, and the power of the local council declined. Building on Fiske’s relational model theory, it is argued and found that the local executive’s reduced dependence on the local council provided the opportunity to initiate corrupt exchanges with a broader set of players both inside and outside the bureaucracy. Whereas deep dependence power relations (i.e. formal authority) remained important, an increasing proportion of corruption networks involved compound role structures characterized by both shallow (non-embedded profit and work relations) and deep interdependence (kin- and friendship). Furthermore, third party intermediaries became more important. Implications for the study of networks of corruption are discussed.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees’ sexual identitymay be considered a concealable stigmatised identity. Disclosing it to others at work could potentially lead to discrimination and ...rejection, hence threatening their inclusion. Therefore, they may hide their sexual identity instead, which may then come at the cost of, e.g., guilt for not living authentically. However, disclosure is a continuum—rather than a dichotomy—meaning that LGB workers may decide to disclose selectively, i.e., telling some, but not all co‐workers. Most literature on disclosure focuses on the interplay between intrapersonal (e.g., psychological) and contextual (e.g., organisational) characteristics, thereby somewhat overlooking the role of interpersonal (e.g., relational) characteristics. In this article, we present findings from semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews with nine Dutch lesbian and gay employees, conducted in early 2020, to gain a better understanding of interpersonal antecedents to disclosure decisions at work. Through our thematic analysis, we find that LGB workers may adopt a proactive or reactive approach to disclosure, which relates to the salience of their sexual identity at work (high/low) and their concern for anticipated acceptance. Other themes facilitating disclosure include an affective dimension, being in a relationship, and associating with the employee resource group. We demonstrate the importance of studying disclosure at the interpersonal level and reflect on how our findings relate to literature on disclosure, authenticity, belonging, and social inclusion of LGB individuals at work.
Humanitarian NGOs face difficult choices about whom to help and whom not on a daily basis. The research question in this article is how humanitarian NGOs make these difficult decisions and why in a ...particular way. March's study on consequential and appropriate decision-making processes is used to analyze the nature and course of NGO decision making. Since March's two models are often explicitly or implicitly linked to certain types of organizational settings—as reflected in an organization's formal structure, compliance and coordination mechanisms—this article particularly zooms in on the relationship between NGO decision-making processes and these settings. The theoretical framework is illustrated and discussed by means of an exploratory comparative case study of two international humanitarian NGOs: Médecins Sans Frontières Holland (MSF Holland) and Acting with Churches Netherlands (ACT Netherlands). Les ONG (Organisations Non Gouvernementales) humanitaires sont confrontées à des choix complexes quant aux populations qu'elles doivent aider ou non au quotidien. La question de recherche dans cet article est la manière dont ces ONG humanitaires prennent ces décisions difficiles et pourquoi d'une manière particulière. Pour ce qui a trait aux processus d'une prise de décision adéquate et significative, le travail de March est utilisé afin d'analyser la nature et l'évolution de la prise de décision de l'ONG. Les deux modèles de March étant souvent liés de manière explicite ou implicite à certains types de caractéristiques organisationnelles, ainsi qu'elles apparaissent dans la structure formelle comme dans les mécanismes de conformité et de coordination d'une organisation, cet articles'intéresse en particulier à la relation entre les processus de prise de décision d'une ONG et ces caractéristiques. Le cadre théorique est illustré et discuté au moyen d'une étude de cas comparative et exploratoire de deux ONG humanitaires internationales. Médecins Sans Frontières Hollande (MSF Hollande) et Acting with Churches Netherlands (ACT Netherlands). Humanitäre nicht-staatliche Organisationen müssen täglich schwierige Entscheidungen dahingehend treffen, wer ihre Hilfeleistungen erhält und wer nicht. Die Forschungsfrage in diesem Beitrag lautet: Wie treffen humanitäre nicht-staatliche Organisationen diese schwierigen Entscheidungen und warum gehen sie dabei auf eine ganz spezifische Weise vor? Zur Analyse der Art und Weise und des Verlaufs der Entscheidungsfindung in nicht-staatlichen Organisationen wird Marchs Abhandlung zu logischen und angemessenen Entscheidungs-prozessen zugrunde gelegt. Da die zwei Modelle nach March häufig explizit oder implizit mit bestimmten organisatorischen Rahmenbedingungen in Verbindung gebracht werden—wie sie sich in der formalen Struktur, der Einhaltung von Richtlinien und den Koordinationsmechanismen einer Organisation zeigen, konzentriert sich der vorliegende Beitrag insbesondere auf die Beziehung zwischen den Entscheidungsprozessen nicht-staatlicher Organisationen und diesen Rahmenbedingungen. Das theoretische Rahmenwerk wird mittels einer explorativen und komparativen Fallstudie zweier internationaler humanitärer nicht-staatlicher Organisationen, Médecins Sans Frontières Holland (MSF Holland) und Acting with Churches Netherlands (ACT Netherlands), dargestellt und diskutiert. Las ONG (Organización No Gubernamental) humanitarias se enfrentan a elecciones difíciles sobre a quién ayudar y a quién no diariamente. La pregunta de investigación en este artículo es cómo las ONG humanitarias toman estas difíciles decisiones y por qué lo hacen de una forma en particular. El trabajo de March sobre los procesos de toma de decisiones consecuenciales y apropiadas se utiliza para analizar la naturaleza y curso de la toma de decisiones de las ONG. Dado que los dos modelos de March están vinculados explícita o implícitamente a menudo a determinados tipos de configuraciones organizativas—según se refleja en la estructura formal de una organización, en los mecanismos de cumplimiento y coordinación—el presente artículo se centra más en particular en la relación entre los procesos de toma de decisiones de las ONG y dichas configuraciones. El marco teórico se ilustra y debate mediante un estudio de caso comparativo exploratorio de dos ONG humanitarias internacionales. Médecins Sans Frontières Holland (MSF Holanda) y Acting with Churches Netherlands (ACT Países Bajos).
Providing aid in times of increasing humanitarian need, limited budgets, and mounting security risks is challenging. This paper explores in what organisational circumstances evaluators judge, ...positively and negatively, the performance of international non‐governmental organisations (INGOs) in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards. It assesses whether and how, as perceived by expert evaluators, CARE and Oxfam successfully met multiple institutional requirements concerning beneficiary needs and organisational demands. It utilises the Competing Values Framework to analyse evaluator statements about project performance and organisational control and flexibility issues, using seven CARE and four Oxfam evaluation reports from 2005–11. The reports are compared using fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The resulting configurations show that positive evaluations of an INGO's internal and external flexibility relate to satisfying beneficiary needs and organisational demands, whereas negative evaluations of external flexibility pertain to not meeting beneficiary needs and negative statements about internal control concerning not fulfilling organisational demands.
Standard anticorruption interventions consist of intensified monitoring and sanctioning. Rooted in principal‐agent theory, these interventions are based on the assumption that corrupt acts follow a ...rational cost‐benefit calculation by gain‐seeking individuals. Given their mixed results, however, these interventions require closer scrutiny. Building on goal‐framing theory, the authors argue that rule compliance requires a salient normative goal frame, since monitoring can never be perfect. Being inherently brittle, it needs constant reinforcement through external cues operating alongside formal monitoring and sanctioning. Leaders and peers setting a good example can provide such cues. In line with this hypothesis, analysis of multilevel repeated measures data from a vignette study of 580 Indonesian senior civil servants shows that the perceived likelihood of a hypothetical civil servant accepting a bribe is lowest when monitoring and sanctioning are strong and when leaders and peers are known to have refused bribes in the past.
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