Day Conference 30 November 2005

Jeremy Kendall wrote:-

As usual, the meeting's primary focus was the presentation and discussion of research in progress, or recently completed. Mariana Bogdanova considered NGO mentoring in relation to wildlife in Bulgaria; Nick Fyfe examined the geography of voluntary sector support for migrants in the UK; Philip Holden explored how leading French social theorist Pierre Bordieu might approach the field of voluntary sector studies; and Julia Burdett looked at accountability and control issues in relation to legal services in England. There was thus a good range of material combining theoretical and empirical emphasises, different sub-fields of interest, and comparative angles. As ever, each paper was followed by an engaged debate.

The following papers were presented:-

• Mariana Bogdanova: NGO mentoring and development in a transition  economy: A fledging organisation in Bulgaria?
• Nick Fyfe: Making space for ‘Full and Equal Citizens’? : Forced migrants,  citizenship and the role of the voluntary sector in the UK
• Philip Holden: What would Bourdieu make of the Voluntary Sector?
• Julia Burdett: Professional Accountability and Community Control in Legal Services Provision: A Study of Community Law Centres in England 

The Annual General meeting of VSSN also took place, at which chair Professor Peter Halfpenny was able to report on the successes of the year - including encouraging membership and listserve subscriber trends - and point to plans for the future. Minutes of the previous meeting were reviewed; the Annual Report and Accounts presented;  and Treasurer Gareth Morgan commented on the network's financial situation and charitable status. The process of electing volunteers to the steering group was also conducted as part of the meeting. Details available here

Abstracts and biographies

Mariana Bogdanova is a research assistant at the Centre for Charity Effectiveness in CASS Business School working with Professors Jenny Harrow and Paul Palmer on voluntary sector issues such as governance and management learning. Mariana has completed her MA on Organization Studies in the University of Warwick in 2004. Her first degree is a BSc in Business Administration in the American College of Thessaloniki ACT, Greece completed in 2003. Her interest is transformational environments (transitional countries and societies, developing organizational cultures) observing the dynamics of social understanding, interaction, and self-reinvention through a lens of organizational activity. Academic experience is complemented by working experience in the business sector mostly in her native country Bulgaria.

NGO mentoring and development in a transition economy: A fledging organisation in Bulgaria?

NGOs in societies undergoing socio-economic transition are widely regarded as central to civil society building. Where national or local organisations mirror or have access to well-established NGOs in other countries, and are thus facilitated in their membership of relevant international networks, it may be expected that such civil society building becomes the more secure. Where these ‘other country’ NGOs offer tangible, intellectual and moral support, implicit and explicit mentoring among NGOs may be said to occur. Inter NGO dependency may also arise (Edwards and Fowler 2003; Mercer 2002). The nature and outcomes of these relationships however are not widely researched. How are new NGOs’ goals and values affected by relations with their NGO mentor? What kinds of support are on offer, and what kinds of dependency relations, if any occur? To what extent do new NGOs model their external relations as well as their internal management and practice on their NGO mentor and with what results?  

This paper explores these questions in the context of case study research on the development and growth of the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, founded in 1988 and the biggest NGO dedicated to biodiversity conservation in that country. Whilst more than a ‘fledging’ organisation in its national context, BSPB  has received significant support since1994 from the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds under a sustainable development project ; with RSPB acting as a major knowledge facilitator in the NGO management field in three critical areas – conservation, advocacy/advice and education and public awareness campaigning. A partner of Birdlife International, a global partnership of conservation organisations in over a hundred organisations, BSPB models its objectives on those of this network, as well as on the RSPB’s objectives (the latter being the UK’s representative).

The case study research posed an overarching question – ‘to what extent are the values and goals of an environmental NGO, underlying its function and mission converted into practice’ (Bogdanova, 2004). Research methods were discovery –oriented in the intepretivist tradition of qualitative methodology (Hammersley 1981, Bryman 2001); and data gathering followed Strauss and Corbin’s model for generating grounded theory (Heath 2004). Interviews were conducted with a range of organisation actors in Bulgaria and with the relevant RSBP officer in the UK.

Findings concerning this mentoring relationship and the degree of dependency or otherwise which it creates are still tentative. Respondents cited the organisation’s “luck” in linking to RSPB goals at an early stage; argued for a collaborative rather than imposed method of working; and felt that the relationship was not “burdensome”; whilst the RSPB respondent rejected the possibility of an “imperialistic attitude” towards partners. However these findings need to be set against the evidence of internal disagreements within BSBP (“opinions are not exposed… they are imposed”); and the perception of the RSPB respondent that “meetings in the UK are for the purpose of finalising things, mechanisms sort out emerging personality clashes, whereas in Bulgaria personality conflict causes real problems…”. The experience of acting on the national public stage for BSPB, modelled (implicitly) on its UK mentor has also been problematic. A vignette within the case study illustrates BSBP’s legal challenge to a large German tourist company’s development proposals, with great financial and public relations loss to BSPB.

The argument that BSPB remains a fledgling rather than a mature organisation is drawn from the external perspective of the RSPB respondent. This defines the need to reflect on the extent to which the case study example challenges NGO institutional theory concerning inter-organisation dependency whilst identifying a need for scrutiny of the extent to which cross NGO mentoring supports or inhibits the kinds of NGO development which fully reflect national or regional cultural practices. Further directions for the research are proposed, in the context of the linkage between NGO growth and the presence of “civil society”:

“..the goal of the BSPB is to protect birds not to build civil society as such. The reason that we work for creating a civil society is because there isn’t such a society and to protect the birds we need one” (central office manager in BSPB office, Sofia).

References:-

Bogdanova, M. 2004. ‘Implementing Organisational Values and Goals: a Reality of NGOs’, unpublished dissertation completed at the University of Warwick, September 2004

Bryman, A. 2001. Social research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Edwards, M. and A. Fowler 2003. ‘Introduction: Changing Challenges for NGO Management’ in Edwards, M. and A. Fowler (Eds.)The Earthscan Reader on NGO Management. London: Earthscan Publications

Hammersley, Martyn 1981. ‘Using Qualitative Methods’ Social Science Information Studies 1: 209-220.

Heath, H. and Cowley, S. 2004. ‘Developing Grounded Theory approach: A Comparison of Glaser and Strauss’ International Journal of Nursing Studies 41:141-150.

Mercer, C. 2002. ‘NGOs, Civil Society and Democritization: A Critical Review of the Literature’ Progress in Development Studies 2/1: 5-22.

Nick Fyfe is Reader in Human Geography at the University of Dundee.  His has written widely on issues concerning the geography of voluntarism and undertaken research in Glasgow on the role of voluntary organisations in addressing issues of social welfare within the city, specifically in relation to community safety and mental health.  He is currently supervising an ESRC funded CASE student working with Volunteer Development Scotland on the nature, meaning and impact of volunteering in Scotland, and is about to begin a two year ESRC funded project with colleagues at Bristol, Edinburgh, Lancaster and Auckland universities on comparing voluntary activism in the UK and New Zealand.

Making space for ‘Full and Equal Citizens’? : Forced migrants, citizenship and the role of the voluntary sector in the UK

In  Full and Equal Citizens (Home Office, 2000) and Integration Matters (Home Office, 2005), the Labour Government has spelt out a strategy for the integration of refugees into UK society. One of the key features of this strategy, however, is the way in which much of it is characterised by a ‘hands-off approach’ in terms of direct government involvement,  leaving many of the initiatives to promote the integration of refugees to the voluntary sector.  In this paper I examine the background to these developments, showing how government policy in the field of forced migration is informed by particular discourses of citizenship that have constructed a crucial distinction between the ‘deserving’ refugee and the ‘undeserving’ asylum seeker.  In the second part of the paper, I draw on interviews with voluntary organisations working with asylum seekers and refugees in London, Manchester and Glasgow to examine the pivotal role played by voluntary organisations in articulating the relationship between national policy and local forced migrant communities both in terms meeting welfare needs and in developing alternative discourses around citizenship to those set out in government policy

Phil Holden studied Anthropology at University College London before going into industry. After working in marketing for both clients and agencies and whilst marketing manager for CAF, he took his Masters at the University of Greenwich Business School and now teaches there. His interest is to take a sociological view of marketing theory and practice especially in the voluntary sector, social enterprise and small businesses. Philip is a PhD student with Professor Peter Halfpenny's at the University of Manchester.

"What would Bourdieu make of the Voluntary Sector?"

Bourdieu died in January 2002 having contributed some 40 books and 500 articles to a wide range of disciplines from anthropology to (the sociology of) sport.  His work was ambitious in its scope and, at times, opaque. He pursued a sociology which was revolutionary in declining to follow the broadly relativist (including post-modernist) trends that were increasingly influential over the late twentieth century. Instead, he was concerned with objective realities, but he required accounts of these to include researchers and their perspectives on the subject of the research; his reflexive sociology. This was to be achieved partly through Bourdieu's concepts of the field, of social (and other forms of) capital, and of 'habitus', which together provide the tools to understand the 'logic' of practice in different social spheres. His early work looked at both French and Algerian society, then literary and artistic fields. In so doing he was concerned not so much with the fact of certain social groups' existence (including families, genres of art, academies, indeed almost any kind of observed grouping) but with the production of meaning between and within such groupings. This production of symbolic goods and the struggle over the value of such goods offers us an analytical purchase on many aspects of human society and my interest is in extending this to the voluntary sector. 

Two striking themes for research emerge. One is the question of whether the rise of a 'managerial' approach to the sector is no more than a reflection of the more widespread acceptance of the market as a 'logic' for social organisation. The second is whether people who identify themselves as a participant in the voluntary ethos do so in accordance with their position within various fields of analysis, this position itself being an effect of the distribution of capital within these fields. I am pursuing these two themes in order to discern whether Bourdieu's theory offers a framework for a better understanding of voluntarism and its values.

Julia Burdett works as a freelance social policy researcher and consultant to voluntary  organizations. She has worked in and around the voluntary sector for more than thirty years and as a researcher for the last fifteen. Most of her work has been with socially excluded and disadvantaged groups and organizations representing their interests. Her current research interests include governance and the dynamics of individual and institutional involvement in governance systems, processes and structures. Her largest current commission is for fundraising and designing a fundraising strategy for a small London - based charity.

Professional Accountability and Community Control in Legal Services Provision: A Study of Community Law Centres in England

This presentation will be based on a doctoral thesis submitted in early 2004. An organizational study was undertaken which explored the ways in which professionals, mainly lawyers, specialist para-legal and community workers work with community representatives on management committees of Community Law Centres (CLCs) to provide legal services. 

CLCs offer an interesting conundrum for organizational research. Research literature suggests that organizational dilemmas exist where professionals are managed by non professionals or professionals from a different field. On the other hand much community development literature suggests that community empowerment might be achieved by community control of local services. An examination of this apparent contradiction is at the heart of the study on which the thesis is based.

The study found, amongst other things, that although communities did not “control” CLCs as founders had intended, client communities nonetheless played a critical role in mediating other environmental influences such as those of funders; that, although a seat on a management committee represented an important act of involvement in a CLC, it was only a first step on a “pyramid of involvement”; that, despite local variations in the organizational strategies to involve communities, both management committee members and professional staff  described their relationship as a “partnership” or expressed their desire that it should be so.

The presentation will explore the relationship between community and professionals by discussing the data from the four cases studied. It will focus on the similarities and differences in the composition of management committees and the organizational strategies used to achieve these, the relationship between management committee members, between management committee members and staff and the role of service delivery volunteers in representing community interests.

The concept of “community” features as an important element in contemporary social policy, not least as an identifiable unit of population capable of participation in local decision making processes. This study uncovers some organizational dilemmas associated with community involvement in decision-making and governance.