Search results

This article aims to explore the growing adoption of social impact measurement (SIM) among French Social and Solidarity Economy Organizations (SSEOs) in the context of a global drive for accountability. It examines the evolution of SIM, its implications, risks and methodological challenges. Key themes include the transition from “social utility” to “social impact,” the emergence of an impact-driven market, and concerns about the limitations of standardized measurement models. The paper calls for a diverse approach to evaluation, aiming to preserve the unique identities of SSEOs and promote innovation.

This comprehensive literature review, covering both academic and grey literature, explores the evolution of SIM in French SSEOs. It focuses on regulatory frameworks, stakeholder engagement and methodological principles to provide a thorough understanding of the implications and potential risks.

The findings highlight a major shift in public policy instruments, driven by the growing adoption of SIM within French SSEOs. While SIM methods offer opportunities, they also pose risks, such as the commodification of social impact, the rise of isomorphic practices and an overemphasis on performativity.

The research implications emphasize the need to recognize how SIM affects the organizational identity of SSEOs and to foster discussions on alternative evaluation methods. A limitation of the study is its focus on French SSEOs, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other contexts within the broader social economy sector.

The article provides valuable insights for policymakers, SSEOs and stakeholders on the role of SIM in the French social economy. It advocates for critical evaluation and policy alignment to improve the sector’s overall effectiveness.

The social implications involve gaining a deeper understanding of how SIM practices affect the identity and operations of French SSEOs. By emphasizing risks such as commodification and isomorphic trends, the article encourages reflection on the broader societal impacts.

The article’s originality stems from its thorough exploration of SIM’s evolution within French SSEOs. Its value lies in shedding light on the complex relationship between SIM adoption, organizational identity and societal values, thereby encouraging informed decision-making and deeper discourse within the SSEOs landscape.

This paper aims to analyze the “crafts” of governance within social and solidarity economy (SSE) cultural organizations, considering formal and informal rules, to support their project of democratization of arts and culture and more generally of cultural democracy. The hypothesis is that it is through participatory and democratic governance that SSE can have a transformative role.

This paper builds upon a qualitative, multiple case study of three SSE organizations in the performing arts and audiovisual production in France. Although different in age, size and legal form, they all experiment a more participative governance system, not without tensions, to face deep institutional changes in their environment.

The results show that legal forms from the SSE are necessary safeguards but not sufficient to effectively implement a democratic governance beyond the “one member, one vote” principle. Democratic governance is supported by both formal and informal rules. By experimenting with innovative participative and democratic governance rules, these organizations contribute to the transformation of practices in the cultural field (democratization of art and culture) but also in society at large by fostering cultural democracy.

Building upon three case studies, this exploratory work stresses important issues that are worth to explore on a larger scale to understand by which levers SSE can play a transformative role in the cultural field.

This paper contributes to the literature on SSE and on governance by enlarging the analysis beyond the board of directors and the statutory rules. Applying the approach of collective action and reasonable values developed by Commons to SSE, it shows that participatory governance cannot be based on an ideal or a choice of preestablished values and principles but must leave room for creativity and representations of stakeholders not only to support transformation of practices within the cultural field but also externally by increasing cultural democracy.

This chapter explores social innovations in childcare policies in France, focussing on their role and their institutionalisation process. Despite France's robust national family and early years childcare policies, marked by theoretically high coverage rates for children under 3 (59.8 places per 100 children under 3 in 2019), local governance complexities and persistent social and territorial inequalities have led to the appearance of social innovations at the grassroots level. Historically, these initiatives have gradually gained recognition and become institutionalised into public policy. However, recent policy reforms have prioritised managerial efficiency and competition among public, non-profit and for-profit providers, and implemented a growing number of top-down instruments such as calls for projects to support innovative projects. In this context, social innovations aim to address various social needs, such as territorial inequalities, social diversity, integration of vulnerable mothers into employment, and provision of childcare during non-standard hours. The case of the department of Seine-Saint-Denis exemplifies how social innovations can emerge in response to insufficient local provision to address the needs of disadvantaged families, and how they manage to combine childcare and work integration. It illustrates the fact that social innovation can be driven both from the bottom up and, when serving as instruments of public policy, from the top down. Nonetheless, this case also shows that, while innovative, these local initiatives do not fundamentally transform the institutional framework of national childcare policy.

Over the past few decades, the subject of governance has come to the fore in many public discussions, notably with regard to reforms of the social protection system. Without entering into various debates the concept has generated, we shall use it in its positive sense (Gilly, Leroux, & Wallet, 2004), to designate all of the interactions between various public and private actors in the elaboration and implementation of public policies to attain shared objectives of general interest (Enjolras, 2008; Le Galès, 1998). Governance thus reflects a change in the forms of collective action – which certainly would qualify as modernisation – and the growing importance granted to management strategies in this change. It also brings out the complexity of the interrelationships between the different levels of decision-making (horizontal and vertical), which might be characterised as ‘poly-governance’ (Eme, 2005). And governance also permits a simultaneous approach to the new territorial, productive and partnership arrangements emerging in response to the different levels of constraints and socio-demographic changes. These issues lie at the heart of the transformations of the welfare state and related policies for rationalising public intervention and stabilising public finances. Studies dealing with welfare mix and welfare pluralism (Evers & Svetlik, 1993; Esping-Andersen, 1999; Ascoli & Ranci, 2002; Pestoff, 2006; Richez-Battesti, 2008) bring out different ways of combining sources of risk protection or other forms of solidarity. Such research reinforces analyses of co-ordination, as well as those of management and decision-making.

The context conditions for third sector organizations (TSOs) in Europe have significantly changed as a result of the global economic crisis, including decreasing levels of public funding and changing modes of relations with the state. The effect of economic recession, however, varies across Europe. The purpose of this paper is to understand why this is the case. It analyses the impact of economic recession and related policy changes on third sector development in Europe. The economic effects on TSOs are thereby placed into a broader context of changing third sector policies and welfare state restructuring.

The paper focusses on two research questions: how has the changing policy environment affected the development of the third sector? And what kind of strategies have TSOs adopted to respond to these changes? The paper first investigates general trends in Europe, based on a conceptual model that focusses on economic recession and austerity policies with regard to the third sector. In a second step of analysis, the paper provides five country case studies that exemplify policy changes and responses from the third sector in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

The paper argues that three different development paths can be identified across Europe. In some countries (France and Spain), TSOs face a strong effect of economic recession. In other countries (Germany and Poland) the development of the third sector remains largely stable, albeit at different levels, whereas in the Netherlands, TSOs rather experience changes in the policy environment than a direct impact of economic decline. The paper also shows that response strategies of the third sector in Europe depend on the context conditions. The paper is based on the European project “Third Sector Impact.” It combines an analysis of statistical information with qualitative data from interviews with third sector representatives.

The paper contributes to our understanding of the interrelation between economic recession, long-term policy changes and third sector development in Europe.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.