1. Hostedby:
Fundedby:
All in it together? Exploring ‘isomorphic’
pressures that drive convergence in approach
and delivery
TSRC Seminar 19 June 2013
James Rees, with Rebecca Taylor and
Chris Damm

2. Context
• Outsourcing / contracting out
• Public service reform
• Welfare to work
• Role of third sector in ‘Big Society’
Seeking to understand this…
Quasi-markets
Network governance
Third party government
New institutionalism

3. The Work Programme
• Single programme for all jobseekers
• Black Box and payment by results with a back-ended
profile to reward ‘job outcome’ sustainment
• Differential payments by customer group
• Supply chain subcontracting divided into Tier 1 (end
to end provision) and Tier 2 (specialist)
• DEL-AME funding, part funded by savings from
benefits budget
• Designed move from specialist programme(s) to
single generic programme.

4. Prime Contractor
End to end
providers
(tier 1)
Specialist provider
(tier 2)
call-off contracts
Delivery / Job
Outcomes
Referrals
from JCP
Direct (in
house)
Delivery
End to end
providers
(tier 1)
18 contract package areas (CPAs)
covering the UK with 2-3 primes in
each area = 40 prime contract

5. Our research
• 1. What is the role of the third sector in the Work
Programme?
• 3. How have (all sector) subcontractors experienced
the Work Programme?

6. Theory building
• So we set out to ask, ‘what is distinctive about
the third sector’s role’? (expecting difference)
• Implicit assumptions about
difference/distinctiveness:
– Unique approaches
– Ethos/attitudes/‘mission’
– Management practices
• Instead we found a variety of evidence
pointing towards similarity and the existence
of an area or ‘field’ public policy

7. Organizational fields
• The field in question is ‘welfare to work’
– Synonyms: sector, sub-sector, field, industry,
market
• Intermediary organisations shaping field
• Brings into play large literatures on
organizational fields

8. Theoretical traditions
• New institutionalism
– Di Maggio and Powell (1983) argue that homogenization of organizational forms
emerge out of the structuration of organizational fields (defined as those organizations
that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life). Specifically, they
argue that highly structured organizational fields provide a context in which the efforts
of specific organizations to deal rationally with uncertainty and constraint often lead,
across the field, to similar structures, cultures, and outputs. (Bovaird and Downe, 2006)
– (key text: DiMaggio and Powell, 1983, henceforth D&P)
• Bourdieu, Field Theory
– Good on culture and power but less so on mechanisms?
• Fligstein and McAdam (2011)
– Theory of strategic action fields
– Nested fields, goes wider than D&P and can help explain
operationalisation of sector
– Massive potential

9. Claims about the field
• “It’s not about about sector it’s about size” – ERSA,
various policy messages
• Sector respondent:
Q: what do you think the unique role and contribution of the third sector is in general within the
employment services field?
R: There isn’t one. *!!+
• Rees et al., our message:
– Sector not reliable guide to experience in work programme
– Crucially about place in the model, in other words how the
field is structured
• Which is precisely what D&P claim:
– That institutional isomorphism is driven by pressures from
the state and professions

10. Some intermediate implications
• Questions the basis of sector
distinctions/boundaries
• Isomorphism usually viewed as normatively, a
bad thing (Milbourne 2009, Macmillan, 2010)
– (third) sector becoming more like others
– Typically more like bureaucratic public sector
– But D&P suggests: would expect this in
contracting environment
• aa

11. Isomorphic Pressures
(DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Bovaird and Downe, 2006, Mizruchi )
1 There is a trend to organisational isomorphism:
• Competitive isomorphism (but, quasi-market)
• Institutional isomorphism
– Coercive
– Mimetic
– Normative
2 There are deviations and resistance to organizational
isomorphism:
• Differences in local external environment (e.g. allowing an organisation to
resist resource dependencies; i.e. having reserves?)
• Organizational resistance to institutional pressures towards isomorphism
(e.g. ‘mission’)

12. Coercive
Financial model
- Convergence to standardised models/generic provision:
if we wanted to stay in the market, we had to offer an end-to-end service
rather than just on a call off basis, which is where a lot of Third Sector
organisations end up, as a Tier Two supplier, on a call off basis [TS sub]
Regardless of what the government are saying… they haven’t funded it
properly to be able to get a good service. [Private sub]
Prime management practices
– Performance management systems
– League tables / Perform or be sacked
That black box is a matchbox, by the way, you know, in terms of “Do it how
you want to do it, how you feel it should be done,” it’s just not
being...[realised]…well it’s bobbins. [local authority subcontractor]
[good orgs...] they’ve got really good management … good staff who manage
well, who deliver well, and you get the right results. [Prime]

13. Mimetic
Standardardised approaches to uncertainty and risk,
imitated across orgs.
– Response to risk and institutional environment
– Merger / acquisition to move into more ‘generic’ provision
– TSOs shifting focus, reading the market
e.g. disability charity moving to more mainstream provision:
And it’s that balance between obviously commercial, the mission statement, and then in the
middle of that the fact that we know from the contracts that we’d run previously and the
comments that we’d had that actually there were going to be a lot of people referred to
Work Programme who could do with the support that we could offer. So even though you
can’t control who’s coming through the door, there'll be lots of people who benefit from
that and we’ll have disabled people, people with mental health issues, whatever. [TS sub]
Claims that specialist to generic is ‘natural transition’:
when we went and opened up in a white working class part of Leeds, followed a similar
approach i.e. recruiting local people, and running the service in exactly the same way, lo
and behold, we were just good at getting people jobs [Prime]

14. The old structure/agency problem
• Savvy TSO @ tier 1:
[Primes] saw us as a health and social care provider and just thought all we wanted to
do was hug people and have a chat... a lot of the big guys just think that the third
sector isn’t outcome focused enough. *...+ It was a continual battle... that’s why
people just wanted us to do specialist interventions and not the end-to-end
because they though we were just... yeah... They liked the name... We could
evidence job outcomes but the primes still weren’t really confident we could do
it. [TSO]
• Savvy private @ tier 1:
Q. So... as an organisation, you could see the writing on the wall?
R. Absolutely, yeah absolutely...
R. Which again, is why [name] decided we cant exist on this kind of business model.
We need to have geographical coverage, hence he bought geographical coverage.

15. Normative and resistance
• Normative – not so relevant but developing?
– Professional standards/accreditation
– Intermediary bodies
• Resistance
– Going beyond the contract
– Service with human face / mission
e.g. Small TSO doing in work support, Prime wants basic checks, not
people-centred service, Prime staff don’t ‘get it’
• Local environment / resource dependencies
– Almost certainly a factor but hard to research

16. Summary
• Tier 1 is place to be, in this contracting
environment, clear evidence of institutional
isomorphism
• Amount of ‘movement’ T2s make depends on
commercial knowledge and resource dependence
• TSOs have to ‘move’ to become more like private
sector orgs, in a variety of ways
• Isomorphism suggests ways in which
pressures/movements operate
• Unifying theory: Isomorphism + SAF

17. Questions for you
• Is isomorphism a useful approach (worth
publishing on) or is this merely a confirmatory
case of isomorphism (banal)?
• Does this add to third sector academic
debates? Particularly on sector boundaries,
categories, shape of the sector, fields?
• Useful theory? Linking D&P/iso with Fligstein
and McAdam...
... Isomorphic pressures interacting with
positioning, incumbents and niches in SAF

18. Hostedby:
Fundedby:
j.e.rees@bham.ac.uk
twitter @JamesRees_tsrc