Voluntary and community organisations have attracted growing interest, as governments pare back the public sphere and welfare spending and locate ‘solutions’ with civil society and the private sector. This book explores growth and re-shaping in the UK voluntary sector following sweeping reforms to cultures and arrangements in public services, including the spread of welfare outsourcing, associated performance and risk management and shifts towards collaborative governance. Drawing on contemporary social and organisational theory, policy debates and empirical research focused on small voluntary ... More

Voluntary and community organisations have attracted growing interest, as governments pare back the public sphere and welfare spending and locate ‘solutions’ with civil society and the private sector. This book explores growth and re-shaping in the UK voluntary sector following sweeping reforms to cultures and arrangements in public services, including the spread of welfare outsourcing, associated performance and risk management and shifts towards collaborative governance. Drawing on contemporary social and organisational theory, policy debates and empirical research focused on small voluntary organisations, the book identifies an erosion of trust in cross-sector relationships and an incursion of governmental power into previously autonomous terrain. It questions whether voluntary sector health and survival now depend on re-aligning activities and compromising independent goals and values to state and corporate interests and the spaces that exist for alternatives. Changes in government illustrate continuities and shifts in ideology, strategy and discourse but this book highlights the effects of these on experiences at organisational level, where ambiguity, tensions and contested territory generate unpredictable local outcomes from both compliance and resistance. Many of the issues framing this research and posing dilemmas and hard times for the contemporary voluntary sector have wider relevance and also inhabit public agencies: issues around autonomy; values and approaches around delivering welfare; tensions around local accountability; unmanageable service demands; financial survival; and doing more for less. The book contributes to a growing field of research and offers important reading for scholars and practitioners in organisational study, public policy and voluntary sector domains.