Manufactured turbulence: Nonprofit adaptation in changing organizational fields

The welfare reform legislation of 1996 created an exogenous shock resulting in altered expectations for all concerned, new operating rules, and new opportunities for those able to take advantage of them. This study documents the challenges to organizations that are forced to comply to new rules and production expectations. Utilizing a conceptual framework suggested by policy studies, neoinstitutionalism, and nonprofit studies, this dissertation examines the experiences of a network of nonprofit organizations who contracted to provide services as part of a new state strategy for welfare delivery. Implementation policy studies offers alternative perspectives for understanding the nonprofit experience as implementers. Neoinstitutionalism suggests the use of organizational fields as a powerful level of analysis for documenting the challenges to management resulting from change.; As a part of the reconfigured service delivery to welfare recipients, these organizations were subject to a number of changes within the organizational field that altered the institutional patterns to which each was subject. Organizational adaptation to both new technologies and institutional arrangements demonstrates the reflexive nature of organizational and institutional fields. Capturing lessons learned by the organizations involved offers a window into field formation. Findings from the research suggest that assumptions held at the beginning of the contract period were maintained throughout. These assumptions limited the learning and the adaptability of the organizations in the sample. Organizations opted for coping strategies consistent with the values that each expressed. For smaller nonprofit organizations, attempting to comply with the full expectation of the contract placed their organizations in crisis. A strategy on partial compliance proved advantageous for other organizations.