The Blurring Hypothesis Reconsidered: How Sector Still Matters to Practitioners

Abstract

This article asks: Is sector still a useful concept for social science research on nonprofit organizations and related fields, such as social entrepreneurship? We answer that it is relevant to practitioners for whom sector boundaries remain an important orienting feature of their organizational worldviews. This observation is at odds with the recent scholarship on “blurring” sector boundaries, much of which suggests that sector is increasingly an outdated concept. Data from one uniquely blended space—the fair trade industry—coupled with insights from Scott’s (Institutions and organizations: ideas, interests, and identities, 2014) theory about the three pillars of institutions suggest that sector remains meaningful despite developments that appear to render it obsolete.

Résumé

Cet article pose la question suivante : le secteur est-il encore un concept utile pour la recherche en sciences sociales sur les organisations à but non lucratif et les domaines connexes, tels que l’entreprenariat social ? Nous répondons qu’il est pertinent pour les praticiens pour lesquels les limites du secteur restent un élément important d’orientation de leurs visions du monde organisationnelles. Cette observation est en contradiction avec la bourse d’études récente sur la « dilution » des limites de secteur, dont la majeure partie suggère que ce secteur est de plus en plus désuet. Les données d’un espace unique mixte — le secteur du commerce équitable — associées à l’éclairage apporté par la théorie de Scott (2014) sur les trois piliers des institutions suggèrent que ce secteur demeure significatif malgré les évènements qui semblent le rendre obsolète.

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob der Begriff „Sektor“noch immer ein nützliches Konzept ist für sozialwissenschaftliche Studien über Non-Profit-Organisationen und damit verbundene Bereiche, wie beispielsweise das soziale Unternehmertum. Unsere Antwort lautet, dass es für Praktiker relevant ist, für die Sektorgrenzen weiterhin ein wichtiges Orientierungsmerkmal in ihren organisatorischen Weltanschauungen darstellen. Diese Beobachtung widerspricht der jüngsten Forschung zur „Verwischung“der Sektorgrenzen, wo häufig behauptet wird, dass der „Sektor“zunehmend ein veraltetes Konzept ist. Daten aus einem einzigartigen gemischten Bereich - der Branche des fairen Handels - einhergehend mit den Erkenntnissen aus Scotts (2014) Theorie über die drei Säulen von Institutionen weisen darauf hin, dass der Begriff „Sektor“trotz der Entwicklungen, die ihn überholt erscheinen lassen, ein wichtiges Konzept bleibt.

Resumen

El presente artículo se pregunta: ¿Sigue siendo el sector un concepto útil para la investigación de la ciencia social sobre las organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro y campos relacionados, tales como en el emprendimiento social? Respondemos que esto es relevante para los profesionales para los que los límites del sector siguen siendo una característica orientadora importante de sus visiones del mundo organizativo. Esta observación está en desacuerdo con eruditos recientes sobre el “desibujamiento” de los límites sectoriales, muchos de los cuales sugieren que el sector es cada vez más un concepto desfasado. Los datos de un espacio combinado de forma única - la industria del comercio justo - junto con percepciones de la teoría de Scott (2014) sobre los tres pilares de las instituciones sugieren que el sector sigue siendo significativo a pesar de los desarrollos que parecen hacerlo obsoleto.

摘要

首先提出一个问题:“行业”是否仍然是非盈利性组织及相关领域,例如,公益创业,社会科学研究的一个有用的概念?我们的答案是,这个概念对认为行业界限仍是其组织世界观导向性特征的从业者来讲仍然重要。这一发现与最近的行业界限“模糊化”学术研究存在矛盾,后者表示,行业正在成为过时的概念。一个独具特色的混合领域,即公平贸易行业,的数据以及有关机构三大要素的Scott’s(2014)理论的见解表明,虽然发展形势使其看似过时,但行业这一概念仍然具有意义。

ملخص

يسأل هذا المقال: هل القطاع لا يزال فكرة مفيدة لبحوث العلوم الإجتماعية في المنظمات الغير ربحية والمجالات ذات الصلة، مثل المشاريع الإجتماعية؟ نحن نجيب أنه وثيق الصلة للممارسين الذين حدود القطاع لا تزال سمة مهمة موجهة لوجهات نظرهم العالمية التنظيمية. هذه الملاحظة هي على خلاف مع المنح الدراسية الحالية على “عدم وضوح” حدود القطاع، الكثير منها يشير إلى أن القطاع بشكل متزايد مفهوم قديم. بيانات من مزيج فريد مكان- معرض التجارة و الصناعة يقترن مع رؤى من نظرية (Scott) (2014)عن الركائز الثلاثة للمؤسسات تشير إلى أن القطاع لا يزال ذا معنى على الرغم من التطورات التي تظهر لجعله عفا عليه الزمن.

Appendix

Analysis for this article extends earlier work we conducted on a related topic. In a prior study, we used these data to examine the initial incorporation decisions of founders (Child et al. 2014). For the current article, we revisited and recoded the data with an eye towards founders’ present evaluations of sector. Sometimes they are different, as in the case of Jack Hamilton (NPO), who explained that he initially thought incorporating as a nonprofit “would be important” to his store’s customers. But “in hindsight… it doesn’t seem to be as important to [people] as I might have expected it to be.” Being able to attract and maintain a staff committed to the nonprofit mission, however, “wasn’t important” to Hamilton “when [he] made the [incorporation] decision but has now become very, very important.” We thus identified and coded evaluative statements made by interviewees, which we defined as present-oriented judgments about the perceived benefits or drawbacks of managing a nonprofit or for-profit organization. Some such statements were made in direct response to questions in the interview guide. Others were made incidentally throughout the interview. In all, we considered approximately 430 evaluative statements. Two of the authors coded these data, regularly checking on each others’ work for consistency.

Through multiple rounds of reading and coding, we identified for which issues, if any, sector is salient for the entrepreneurs in question. We first located the relevant parts of the interview and applied first-level codes. For example, a statement made by Kristi Sullivan—“The huge downside of having a nonprofit is having a board”—received a first-level code that flagged this as an excerpt dealing with the negative aspects of having a board of directors. Later, through a process similar to what some call axial coding (Strauss and Corbin 1998), we grouped the codes according to thematic similarities. Thus, codes for boards of directors, flexibility, ownership of the enterprise, and so on were linked under a broader, second-level code named control, referring to the issue of control that many entrepreneurs discussed during the interviews. First-level codes dealing with issues such as government grants, charitable donations, volunteers, and the like were subsumed under the second-level code, resources. And first-level codes referring to the sustainability of the enterprise, its effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, and mission-orientation were grouped under performance, which we later came to understand as related to ideas about the market. The first-level code for public perceptions required no second-level code, since there were no comparable codes with which to cluster it. These themes appear throughout the narrative. Not all evaluative statements fit into these four main themes, and we mention them in the text where relevant.

To ensure that we were judicious in our statements about patterns in the data, we created multiple analytical matrices (Miles and Huberman 1994). For each broad theme (control, resources, etc.), we listed the interviewees and identified whether, read holistically, the codes for that theme in that particular transcript favored the nonprofit form, the for-profit form, or both. We further identified the nature of the evaluative statement by determining whether it favored the particular form by extolling its virtues or criticizing the opposite form (or some combination). The illustrative quote in the preceding paragraph, for example, would be coded as favoring the for-profit form by criticizing the nonprofit form. In the aggregate, these matrices provide a bird’s-eye view of the data. They were constructed primarily for heuristic purposes during analysis and as a validity check while reporting on the results, but they are available to the reader upon request.