Heather Buckingham

Capturing diversity: a typology of third sector organisations' responses to contracting based on empirical evidence from homelessness services

The impacts of government contracting on third sector organisations (TSOs) have attracted much discussion; however, the diversity of the organisations that comprise the third sector means that these impacts in fact vary considerably between TSOs. In order to better understand this complexity and to analyse and articulate TSOs’ experiences more effectively, it is useful to think about different response types. Based on empirical evidence from a study of homelessness TSOs in two South East England local authorities, this paper presents a typology of organisational responses to contracting. The four types identified are: Comfortable Contractors, Compliant Contractors, Cautious Contractors, and Community-Based Non-Contractors. The varied experiences of these different types of organisation with regard to contracting are described in the paper and point to the need for greater precision and differentiation within academic debates, and in the formulation of social policy relating to the third sector.

Hybridity, diversity and the division of labour in the third sector: what can we learn from homelessness organisations in the UK?

Both nationally and across Europe, the growing preference for third sector involvement in service provision has been concomitant with an increasing emphasis on monitoring the performance of organisations that receive state funding, and the development of competitive quasi-markets amongst prospective third sector providers. These changes have not only affected individual third sector organisations (TSOs), but have also disrupted and challenged our understandings of how the third – or voluntary – sector might be defined and its boundaries delineated. The ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between the different sectors that comprise the welfare mix is not a new phenomenon, but has arguably been accentuated through the increasing adoption by some TSOs of values and practices associated with the state and market sectors. The notion of ‘hybridity’ has consequently come to the fore as a means by which we might better understand and conceptualise the third sector.