The social entrepreneurship discourse in Germany has become more prominent at a time when the deeply rooted corporatist traditions of social provision have come under pressure for marketization. This article examines the potential role of “social entrepreneurs” in the institutionally established German welfare state. The article analyzes the opportunities and constraints that new players face. Drawing on survey data and case studies in the areas of elderly care and advancement of children with immigrant background, the analysis retraces the structure and diffusion of social entrepreneurial projects. It concludes that the simple transfer of the social entrepreneurship model is unlikely. The analysis suggests that successful social ventures in Germany adapt the notion of social entrepreneurship to prevalent institutional realities. In the context of more encompassing social services, dense decentralized networks, and different cultures of philanthropism, new players have a complementary role that stimulates rather than dominates the process of social innovation.

Increasing societal heterogeneity, changing demographics, and increasing public debt and fiscal constraints have recently challenged traditional “regime” approaches to welfare state development. Some scholars argue, against this background, that welfare states might plausibly move out of their “regime container” by opting in favor of similar solutions and responses. This potential trend toward “convergence” might, furthermore, be facilitated by the widespread use of new public management ideas and techniques for “reinventing government” by adopting market solutions to public problems. This article investigates whether such trends of convergence can be identified by comparing three different countries each traditionally looked upon as belonging to different welfare state regimes: Denmark, Germany, and the United States. More specifically the article looks at one important segment of welfare state activity, namely social services and related health care. To further focus the analysis, special attention is devoted to the changing role played by the third sector in delivering services. The research design, thus, differs from most comparative welfare state research. Instead of analyzing a broad set of quantitative indicators in a large number of countries, it is scrutinized how some of the same problem pressures and policy ideas are being interpreted and implemented in a small number of countries within one policy area. The analysis reveals that trends of convergence—conceptualized along four dimensions: ideas, regulation, mix of providers, and revenue mix—can be identified across the three cases, though this does not mean that the market share of nonprofit providers becomes the same. The study also reveals that fundamental aspects of state–nonprofit relations persist despite trends of convergence.

In the article, we analyse the impact of changing policy environments on the development of the third sector in Europe. Based on the results of systematic comparative research in eight European countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK), we identify commonalities and differences. In a three-step analysis, we examine policy changes, effects on the third sector and responses by third sector organizations (TSOs) in the social domain. Overall, the third sector in Europe has proven resilient. However, not only have public and private funding decreased, the process for acquiring such funding has become more demanding for TSOs, as have requirements to be accountable. There are signs of a proliferation of more market-based, hybrid organizations. Despite this general trend towards marketization, the impact of policy changes varies across Europe with TSOs being better equipped to adapt and survive in countries where collaborative ties between the state and the third sector have traditionally been strong.

The paper proposes to discuss the issue of civicness in the governance of social services by analyzing policy changes relative to the regulation and governance of social services in Europe. The empirical analysis is structured around the concept of “governance regime.” The paper shows that modernization processes within the field of social services in Europe develop along two radically different regulative conceptions reflected into two different governance regimes: market-based or competitive governance vs civic-based or partnership governance. The governance of social services in Europe appears to take place within a mix between two ideal-typical governance regimes: the market-based and partnership-based governance regimes.

Civicness and civility are discussed as intertwined notions. To the degree they flourish, societies can be seen as civil societies. Providing some reflection on them may make a difference to the usual civil society and third sector debates. These concepts are not based on or confined to a specific sector like the third sector; basically all social sectors can contribute to and be marked by them, depending on their constellations and interplay. Therefore, a mediating public sphere and democratic governance have a key role to play. However, beyond an overlapping consensus, civicness and civility can mean different things and the dominant meanings change over time. This is discussed with respect to changing discourses on welfare as they have crystallized in the field of social services. Despite the contested meanings of civility and civicness shown here, introducing these points of reference could help to enrich concerns with the quality and overall designs of personal services in a civil society.

This article examines the role of nonprofit organizations in government-nonprofit collaboration in the provision of social services in China. A single case study design is implemented to explore how and why the government engages nonprofit organizations in providing social services. A theoretical framework for government-nonprofit collaboration is articulated by analyzing the case of organization A. The role of nonprofit organizations has been found to mainly be manifested in service delivery and capacity building. The case further reveals that nonprofit organizations that establish close ties with the government demonstrate strong capacities for delivering services, in which government support is critical to the survival of nonprofit organizations. On the one hand, whether a nonprofit organization can survive depends not only on its capacity to provide services but also on the capacity to partner with the government in a sustainable manner. On the other hand, the provision of social services is largely government guided, in contrast to the citizen-initiated approach practiced in some European countries. These findings also suggest the necessity of government-nonprofit collaboration for long-term social service delivery.

Questioning the popular point-blank juxtaposition of “new social enterprises” and “old providers” of social services, the paper argues that contingency is an important feature of any organizational setting. Drawing on the case of Germany, it suggests a time-contingent typology of social enterprises covering the roots of social entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century over the rise of the Free Welfare Associations up to the often highlighted “new generation” of social entrepreneurs. Against this background, today’s social enterprises appear to be less novel and unique but again a time-contingent outcome of an adjustment to a zeitgeist-specific governance arrangement.

This article examines the evolving pattern of government–nonprofit relations in China and assesses how this relationship seems likely to evolve in the years ahead. To do so, it documents the diverse types of institutions this sector contains, the considerable scale of institutions it already includes, and the significant shifts that have occurred as the state seeks to take advantage of the important contributions the nonprofit sector is making, while seeking to retain a degree of control over nonprofit operations. Of particular note is the variety of tools the government has deployed to support the nonprofit sector and the remaining issues the sector faces as it finds its way in the highly constrained atmosphere of this biggest remaining socialist country.

Literature describing the social change efforts of direct social service nonprofits focuses primarily on their political advocacy role or the ways in which practitioners in organizations address individual service user needs. To elicit a more in-depth understanding of the varying ways that these nonprofits promote social change, this research builds off of the innovation literature in nonprofits. It presents a model of the typology of social innovations based on the empirical findings from survey data from a random sample (n = 241) and interview data (n = 31) of direct social service nonprofits in Alberta, Canada. Exploratory principal factor analysis was used to uncover the underlying structure of the varying types of social innovations undertaken by direct service nonprofits. Results support a three-factor model including socially transformative, product, and process-related social innovations. The qualitative findings provide a conceptual map of the varied foci of social change efforts.

Governments depend on nonprofit, voluntary sector organisations to deliver social and community services, and public funding is the sector’s most important income source. However, in many countries, public funding for social services is becoming more limited, conditional and precarious, and governments are encouraging nonprofits to diversify their funding base, and shift their reliance to income from market activity and private donations. This article is concerned with access to philanthropic and commercial funding among nonprofits, and the factors affecting it. It firstly discusses an emerging policy agenda to promote private funding among nonprofit community service providers. Then, multivariate analysis of survey data from 521 Australian nonprofits shows which organisations access income from client fees, business activities, community fundraising, and philanthropic foundations. By exploring inequalities in the distribution of these main sources of private funding, the article helps identify the types of organisations that face challenges in establishing and sustaining streams of private income, and which are likely to require ongoing public support.

This paper examines a recent effort to reform the laws on outsourcing to nonprofit organizations in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. To do so, it first examines Kyrgyzstan’s pattern of outsourcing during the era of Soviet control of the country. It then examines early post-Soviet efforts to establish an effective system of outsourcing to nonprofits and the difficulties that these early efforts encountered. Finally, it looks in more detail at a major effort to reform this system undertaken during 2014 and 2015 and draws some significant lessons for the redesign of contracting and outsourcing provisions that are relevant not only for former Soviet countries but more generally as well.

This study analyzes the strategies displayed by non-governmental organizations in the social services sector to face the resource dependence on public administration in Southern Spain. We focus on the reorganization of the public subsidies system in Spain and its specific impact on the entities registered in Andalusia. In 2017, the Autonomous Communities assumed the management of a proportion of the subsidies with a charge to the Personal Income Tax for “social purposes,” which was previously managed by the General State Administration in its entirety. The case study combines the description of (a) the process of transferring the management of a line of subsidies from the state to the regional level, (b) the strategies of non-governmental organizations to face the context of instability and financial uncertainty, and (c) the impact of the regulatory bases of grant calls on programs implementation. First, the database with all the applications submitted in the calls of 2017 and 2018 is analyzed (n = 11,610 applications). Second, we describe the perception of the change in the management system, from the point of view of the third-sector social services entities. The combination of both strategies allows us to examine in detail the response of social service organizations to ensure the continuity of the budget and the continuity of services. The results show that the change in the management system gave rise to a wide debate among non-governmental social services organizations about the calls for grants managed by the regional government. However, the qualitative case study showed that the reaction of the entities has more to do with the needs of adaptation to an unstable, uncertain, and highly competitive financial environment, than with specific characteristics of grant calls.

Emotion is recognized as essential in human service work. Despite a recent surge of research on emotions in organizations in the past 20 years, communication scholars, however, have paid inadequate attention to workplace emotions. Yet, one key to promoting sustainable identity-based organizing lies in crafting alignments among identity, emotion, and action. This gap motivates the current study to examine emotions across organizational positions within a pan-Asian nonprofit organization serving underserved Asians and Asian Americans. Specifically, this study mapped via sentiment analysis eight primary emotions identified by the National Research Council of Canada across three organizational positions (i.e., staff, volunteering members, and clients). The statistical analysis identified trust as the most prevalent emotion. Moreover, fear and sadness were identified as affected by organizational positions. These results demonstrate the usefulness, importance, and necessity of examining emotions in the context of identity-based organizing.

This article uses the case of Japan to advocate for a new theoretical approach to the study of the nonprofit sector. In particular, it examines how theoretical models based on the European and North American experiences have difficulty explaining the relationship between the nonprofit sector and the state in Japan, and argues that a state-in-society approach is better suited to explaining complex state–society relations in diverse cultural contexts. It does this by examining the evolution of social welfare service provision in Japan. This article is motivated to explain an apparent paradox: Japan’s recent efforts toward greater government decentralization and privatization of services have empowered and enlarged the nonprofit sector even as they have also expanded the scope of state authority and enhanced its legitimacy.

The article describes the recent evolution of the Italian third sector, focusing particularly on its changing role in relation to welfare policies and on its contribution to the development of the provision of social services. In contrast with those considering the emergence and development of the sector solely, or mainly, as a consequence of decisions made by external actors, especially public institutions, the article shows a more complex and dynamic picture. The article demonstrates that the Italian third sector, although at the present time largely engaged in contractual services with the public sector, has maintained a level of autonomy that allows for continuous innovation both within and external to the social service sector. The Italian case supports the need for further debate on the role of the third sector in modern society.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 dramatically transformed the structure and goals of the public welfare system in the United States. The vast body of research and evaluation generated by the 1996 welfare reforms largely overlooked nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) despite their substantial historical and contemporary involvement in the delivery of social services to low-income populations. Therefore, this paper presents a unique assessment of PRWORA’s implications based on the perspective of 90 social service NGOs operating in the Detroit metropolitan area. Examination of their services, staffing, budgets, and clients reveals many changes experienced by NGOs between 1996 and 2000 related to the welfare reforms. Overall, the findings suggest an increased role for social service NGOs in the “public” welfare system as well as concerns regarding their capacity to adequately fulfill this growing responsibility in the future.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, social service providers worldwide have reported funding cuts, while the need for some social services has been increasing. This paper examines the combined and longer-term effects of such divergent developments on the nonprofit social services sector. The empirical analysis uses Austrian administrative data on six subfields of the sector covering the years 2003–2017. We investigate significant changes in the trends of four growth indicators applying interrupted time series analysis. We find that the 2008 economic crisis is associated with persistently lower growth rates in Austria’s nonprofit social services sector. The magnitude of this dampening effect differs across subsectors. Additionally, our findings suggest an increase in market concentration. Hence, the study discloses a long-term scarring effect of the economic crisis on Austria’s social services sector, raising doubts on the sector’s future resilience.