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Voluntary Agencies in the Welfare State: An Analysis of the Vanguard Role

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Ralph M. Kramer
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Abstract

While pioneering has long been assumed to be the unique function of voluntary agencies, the flow of private invention to public adoption has rarely been studied empirically. Drawing on an exploratory study of twenty national agencies serving the physically and mentally handicapped, this article re-evaluates the vanguard role of the voluntary agency. Much of what has been regarded as ‘innovative’ consisted of small-scale, non-controversial, incremental improvements or extensions of programs with few original features to under-served clienteles. A series of external and internal organizational constraints to the statutory adoption of new programs is identified, which suggests that the conventional notion of voluntary pioneering is no longer appropriate. A new model of program change is proposed based on multiple outcomes and a redefinition of the concept of innovation. Some hypotheses are offered regarding conditions conducive to the initiation of new programs.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 1979 , pp. 473 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Quoted in Owen, David, English Philanthropy, 1660–1960, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964, pp. 534 and 575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The background and methodology and a summary of principal findings are in Ralph Kramer, M., ‘VoluntaryAgencies in Four Welfare States’, paper presented at the Ninth World Congress of Sociology, Uppsala, 15 08 1978Google Scholar, publication forthcoming. See also Kramer, Ralph M., Voluntary Service Agency in Israel, University of California Institute of International Studies, Berkeley, 1976.Google Scholar

3 Topliss, Eda, Provision for the Disabled, Martin Robertson, London, 1975, pp. 4 and 30–3.Google Scholar See also Rooff, Madeline, Voluntary Societies and Social Policy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1957Google Scholar: although it deals primarily with the maternity and child health movement, mental health and the blind, and has long been out of print, this study is one of the most scholarly accounts of the relationships between voluntary and governmental effort in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Other more recent discussions of the role of voluntary agencies are George Murray, J., Voluntary Organizations and Social Welfare, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1969Google Scholar; Nightingale, Benedict, Charities, Allen Lane, London, 1973Google Scholar; Webb, Adrian, Day, Lesley and Weller, Douglas, Voluntary Social Service Manpower Resources, Personal Social Services Council, London, 1976Google Scholar; and The Future of Voluntary Organisations (Wolfenden Report), Croom Helm, London, 1978.Google Scholar In the United States a representative work is Manser, Gordon and Cass, Rosemary, Voluntarism at the Crossroads, Family Service Association of America, New York, 1976.Google Scholar

4 In addition to the standard historical accounts of the development of services for the mentally handicapped, a useful organizational perspective can be found in Hargrove, Aphra L., Serving the Mentally Handicapped, National Association for Mental Health, London, 1965.Google Scholar

5 Rooff, op. cit. pp. 176–250. A popular account of the development of welfare for the blind in Britain is Rose, June, Changing Focus, Hutchinson, London, 1970, pp. 15–44.Google Scholar

6 Franklin, Gordon, ‘Evangelical Charity in a Changing World’, twenty-fourth Shaftesbury Lecture, delivered on 5 10 1967, The Shaftesbury Society, London, 1967.Google Scholar

7 The use of the term ‘new’ program in this study is similar to that proposed in Zaltman, Gerald, Duncan, Robert and Holbek, Jonny, Innovations and Organizations, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1973, pp. 7–14Google Scholar, that is, newness as subjectively perceived. Respondents were not asked about new programs which had been proposed but had not been implemented.

8 Similar findings of a very small number of new programs among social agencies are independently reported in Carter, Novia, ‘Trends in Voluntary Support for Non-Governmental Social Service Agencies’, Canadian Council on Social Development, Ottawa, 1974, pp. 61–3Google Scholar; and Hage, Jerald and Aiken, Michael, ‘Program Change and Organizational Properties’, American Journal of Sociology, 5:72 (1967), 503–19.Google Scholar

9 Some evidence for these generalizations about the role of professionals and boards of directors can be found in Heydebrand, Wolf V. and Noell, James J., ‘Task Structure and Innovation in Professional Organizations’, in Heydebrand, Wolf V. (ed.), Comparative Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1973, pp. 294–322Google Scholar; and in Kramer, Ralph M., ‘Ideology, Status and Power in Board-Executive Relationships’, Social Work, 10:4 (1965), 108–14.Google Scholar The inhibiting effects of diversity and complexity on innovation are analyzed by Wilson, James Q., ‘Innovation in Organization: Notes Toward a Theory’, in Thompson, J. D. (ed.), Approaches to Organizational Design, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1966, pp. 195–218.Google Scholar

10 Franklin, op. cit. pp. 16–17.

11 Landau, Martin, ‘Redundancy, Rationality and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap’, Public Administration Review, 29 (1969), 346–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 This principle can also be inferred from the analysis of Rosengren, William R., ‘The Careers of Clients and Organizations’, in Rosengren, William R. and Lefton, Mark (eds), Organizations and Clients: Essays in the Sociology of Service, Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, Columbus, Ohio, 1972, pp. 117–36.Google Scholar See also Topliss, op. cit. pp. 123–5; and The Future of Voluntary Organisations, pp. 46–8Google Scholar, for some of the limitations on pioneering in the voluntary sector.

13 The Future of Voluntary Organisations, pp. 46–8.Google Scholar Compare the conclusion of Rodgers, Barbara, Country Project Director, Cross-National Studies of Social Service Systems: United Kingdom Reports, Vol. 1, Columbia University School of Social Work, New York, 1976, p. 47Google Scholar – ‘The British local authorities today do as much experimenting as do the voluntary organisations.’ In the counterpart report on the United States in this eight-country study of selected social services, Sheila Kamerman, B. and Kahn, Alfred J., Social Services in the United States, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1976, p. 449Google Scholar, it was also observed that ‘In fact there are few illustrations in recent years of new service models being developed in the private sector and adopted subsequently by the public sector.’

14 Zaltman, Duncan and Holbek, op. cit. p. 158.

15 Ibid. pp. 106–55. Some of the inconsistencies in both concepts and methods in the study of innovation and organizational change are discussed in Dovens, G. and Mohr, Lawrence, ‘Conceptual Issues in the Study of Innovation’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 21 (1976), 700–14Google Scholar; Wilson, James Q., Political Organizations, Basic Books, New York, 1973, pp. 12–13Google Scholar; and Corwin, Ronald G., ‘Strategies for Organizational Innovation’, American Sociological Review, 37 (1972), 441–54.Google Scholar

16 Wilson, op. cit., pp. 209–10 (my italics).

17 The critical role of the executive is the focus of Hage, Jerald and De War, R., ‘Elite Values versus Organizational Structure in Predicting Innovation’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 5:18 (1973), 279–90Google Scholar; and Mohr, Lawrence, ‘Determinants of Innovation in Organization’, American Political Science Review, 53 (1969), 11–26.Google Scholar