Measuring Client Participation in Organizational Decision-Making: 1A Survey of Agencies Providing Emergency and Temporary Shelter

Since the beginning of the modern age of downsizing and outsourcing in the 1980s, the nonprofit sector has expanded to fill the gaps created by the push for smaller government. State policy is translated through contracting agencies to their clients, with the nonprofits operating as the intermediary between citizens and the government. Although contracts require adherence to laws and regulations set forth by the government agency, the contractors still maintain some flexibility in creating programs and providing services. In effect, these contractors are creating policy and representing the government to clients. At the same time, nonprofits serve as advocates for their clients by seeking funds for services. When government relies upon nonprofits to provide services to citizens, these organizations play an important role in promoting civic engagement and serving as the voice of its clients to policy-makers. As the border between the government and nonprofit sectors blurs, the study of public engagement in government must include client participation in nonprofit organizations. This research studies participation of clients in the decision-making of homeless shelters and domestic violence agencies in North Carolina, Michigan, and Washington. It uses models of bureaucracy and collectivism to classify organizational structures and creates a scale of participation to compare engagement practices.;A self-administered quantitative survey of shelter organizations was used to generate cross-sectional data. The final sample comprises 231 cases. The first stage of the analysis uses exploratory factor analysis to reduce a large number of variables to a smaller number of factors and provide information about the pattern of correlations among the larger set of variables. Using principal components analysis, seven factors are extracted and interpreted. In the second stage, K-means cluster analysis uses the final factor scores to create discrete groups of cases based on the seven factors. Using a five-cluster solution, the individual mean for each cluster on each factor is compared to the overall mean on that factor to identify the clusters on a continuum of collectivist to bureaucratic. The collectivist group, combining two clusters, comprises 16 organizations; the remaining three clusters are combined into one group comprising 215 cases.;To compare participation across organizations, a weighted index or "Total Participation Score" is computed from responses to 20 survey questions. The survey instrument is designed to capture opportunities for both input and final authority. The participation index, calculated using a 100-point scale, provides a single continuous measure of client participation for each case. The index, or Participation Score, represents the extent of formal mechanisms for participation that each organization makes available to its clients. Values of the individual index components are assigned based on the existing research on participation in organizations.;The Mann-Whitney U test and the Welch t-test with rank transformation are used to compare the underlying distribution of Total Participation Scores between and within the bureaucratic and collectivist groups. Organizations in the sample with more bureaucratic structures have higher participation scores than groups with more collectivist structures. Among the more collectivist organizations, no difference in participation scores is found between those organizations receiving government and foundation funding and those without such funding. The more bureaucratic organizations with requirements from funding agencies for client participation show higher participation scores than those organizations without such funding requirements. Implications of these findings for this study and future research on participation in organizations are discussed.