Atlas: Managing in the real world: how markets and governments blight not-for-profit endeavour by Jon Griffith

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ISTR Sixth International Conference
Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004
Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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Managing in the real world: how markets and governments blight not-for-profit endeavour
by
Jon Griffith
University of East London

The hypothesis of some earlier research on 'Managing in the Real World' (presented at ISTR in 1998) was that management systems are often fragile arrangements, arrived at through deft negotiation and compromise, craft and wisdom, skilful handling of other people inside and outside the organisation, and reflection on, revision of and re-use of the prior knowledge of the people involved; that 'indigenous management knowledge' - about how to do things, and how to change what is being done - enables appropriate systems to be created, but tends to be displaced by new management knowledge which is concerned with something other than getting hold of resources to meet a need, then meeting it; and that what this new management knowledge is often concerned with is how to measure what is being done for an accountability system or for a market.

I interviewed people about what they saw as organisational successes, asking how the management system contributed to these successes, and where the organisation's approach to management came from; the findings were informative about the range of influences affecting people's behaviour as managers, inconclusive about the central questions, and indicative of a need to re-think and re-frame the research.

I am returning to the research with some new thinking about emerging social enterprises, and the differences between the managerial imperatives facing them and those facing established (and more conservative) not-for-profit organisations.

Social enterprises are, broadly, a set of organisations for which definitive measures (financials, sustainability, other stakeholder interests) are essential. The combination of a genuine multiplicity of stakeholders, and the enterprise's operation in the market place, make this unavoidable. Management systems need to be invented according to the enterprise's situation (with some risk of wasteful reinvention of wheels), but in arriving at appropriate measures and systems, there need be few conceptual difficulties in borrowing 'what works', largely because the enterprises will be either actually new, or will be experienced as new by most of the key actors.

In contrast are a set of organisations which are 'established' , providing a range of health care, welfare and other goods. Their primary purpose is not to survive or prosper in a market place (except in the very loosest sense of the term) but to provide the service as long as it is needed; to do this, they get resources from wherever they can, in whatever form they can use, by whatever means, as long as none of their resource gathering is so transgressive as to jeopardise their operation.

Where this leads me is some revised research questions: What kind of management systems are used by organisations providing services, especially those intended to meet essential needs (eg health care, welfare, rescue)?

What determines the kind of management system adopted? How far, in the creation or reform of their management systems, does indigenous management knowledge gets displaced by new management knowledge? what are the costs?

and how does indigenous management knowledge get incorporated into newly created or reformed management systems?

What are the differences - in management systems, and incorporation of indigenous management knowledge - between organisations that are more market-oriented, those that are more state or grant-funder oriented, and those that keep their distance from both?

The paper will present work in progress, based on some initial interviews in the UK and beyond.

Date received: October 10, 2003