Lieske van der Torre

Between State, Market and Community

Abstract Hybrid organizations operate in complex and diversified institutional environments that combine characteristics of the state, the market, and the nonprofit sector. These environments impose challenges on the marketing of hybrid organizations. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas in the marketing of hybrid organizations by analysing the slogans of Dutch sheltered work companies. These slogans reflect the core values and distinctive competences of these organizations. Our analysis accentuates the tensions between the demands from the multiple domains and shows how a specific group of hybrid organizations – sheltered work companies – deals with these tensions in the formulation of their slogans.

The responsiveness of social policies. Explaining institutional change in three policy domains

This article analyses and explains the responsiveness of social policies by comparing the impact of institutional logics, public preferences and external conditions on the evolution of three social policy domains in the Netherlands. It focuses on the institutional development of the policy domains of social assistance, labour market regulation and sheltered work over the last 15 years. The article integrates exogenous and endogenous explanations for institutional change. It shows that the analysis and explanation of processes of institutional evolution require in-depth analysis of the interaction between public preferences, the institutional logic and external conditions of the policy domains. Points for practitioners Many countries in the world are currently reforming their welfare states. Often these reform processes are designed according to institutional logic: the ideas and opinions of important internal stakeholders. Moreover, the decision to start a reform is also taken from the internal institutional perspective. This article highlights the importance of taking external conditions into account in processes of institutional reform. It shows how three different logics can and should be combined in designing and implementing reform processes and illustrates this by comparing three cases of institutional reform in the Dutch welfare state.

The responsiveness of social policies in Europe : the Netherlands in comparative perspective

Preface Introduction Responsive policies in contested welfare states? A framework for analysing policy responsiveness The responsiveness of social assistance policies The responsiveness of labour migration policies The responsiveness of sheltered work policies Conclusions: The responsiveness of social policies in three domains.

Belofte, pijn en medicijn: het verantwoorden van publieke waardecreatie aan de lokale politiek en maatschappelijke partners

Public value management encourages public organizations to move beyond existing frameworks and create value in flexible collaboration with societal partners. However, this approach creates problems for the accountability processes, because reports to politicians are often still directed at quantitative goals and rigid frameworks. This creates uncertainty and disagreement around the definition of value, the legitimacy of the new governance styles and the complexity of the new collaborations. This article describes the experiences of a large Dutch municipality where we conducted an experiment with an innovative accountability process for public value creation in the public health domain. Political administrators, council members, civil servants and societal partners have jointly assessed, through an interactive Public Value Table meeting format, what value their combined efforts in complex societal challenges have created. This experiment gives insight in the growing pains of public value creation, but also shows some possible solutions to address these tensions.