and groups to secure funding. Craig ( 2011 : 368) criticised some of the research on the minoritised community voluntary sector for being ‘colour-blind’. That is, when minoritised communities are discussed, it entails drawing out shared experiences rather than specific experiences of the individual groups within the umbrella. Therefore, it is important to identify when a group faces issues that are specific to them, for example the experiences of Black-led organisations. The micro-organisations examined in this article are run by and for Black people with African or
391© The Policy Press • 2011 • ISSN 2040 8056 pr ac tic e Key words micro organisations • BAME • infrastructure Voluntary Sector Review • vol 2 • no 3 • 2011 • 391–8 • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/204080511X608799 Have voluntary sector infrastructure support providers failed micro organisations? Kim Donahue This paper examines the role of infrastructure organisations in relation to micro organisations with no or few paid staff. It discusses the distinctive features of micro organisations, their ‘comparative advantages’ and their limitations before
Shifts to independent delivery of health and social care services have led to increased numbers of micro-enterprises. Could these tiny organisations with just 5 or fewer employees be the best way of delivering cost-effective health and social care services in the context of decreased budgets and increased demands? What size is ‘just right’ for a care provider?
This book explores size as an independent variable in care services, comparing outcomes and value for money across micro, small, medium and large organisations. Using interviews and surveys with 108 people using services and carers in 27 case-study organisations it focuses on the contribution micro-enterprises can make to the care sector.
‘Active ageing’ has become a key phrase in discourses about challenges and remedies for demographic ageing and the enrolment of older adults into voluntary work is an important dimension of it. The pattern and factors conditioning volunteering among older people has so far been an under-researched topic in Europe and this is the first book to study volunteering among older people comparatively and comprehensively.
In this topical book older people’s volunteering is studied in eight European countries at the structural, macro, meso and micro levels. Overall it highlights how different interactions between the levels facilitate or hinder older people’s inclusion in voluntary work and makes policy suggestions for an integrated strategy.
This book provides important new insights for academics and students interested in ageing societies, active ageing and voluntary work. It will also be of great value for policy makers and practitioners in third sector and voluntary organisations.
Presenting the complexities of doing planning work, with all its attendant moral and practical dilemmas, this rich ethnographic study analyses how places are made through stories of four diverse public and private sector working environments.
The book provides a unique insight for educators, students and researchers into the everyday lives of planners and those in associated built environment occupations. This exceptional account of the micro-politics of a knowledge-intensive profession also provides an excellent resource for sociologists of contemporary work. The authors use team ethnography to push the methodological frontiers of planning research and to advance organisational ethnography into new areas.
The idea of policy is ripe for critical reappraisal. Whilst the context for policy making changes constantly, multiple questions endure, such as how policy is conceived and why; what is taken for granted and what gets problematised; and how policy should be informed, analysed and understood.
This book identifies key topics within the policy arena and subjects them to theoretical and practical analysis. It explores the meaning and framing of policy, and examines its practice from the micro- to the supra-national levels, using illustrative case studies to demonstrate how policy is contested, shaped and accounted for. Given the significance of policy as a means to organise and direct social, economic and political life, this book presents the case for a critical restatement of its origins, development and form - without which we risk being caught up in a cycle of change without understanding why or how.
The book presents a productive encounter between the three themes of meanings, politics and practices, themes normally not brought together in a single text. It emphasizes the multiplicity of perspectives that can be directed towards understanding the policy world, opening up new ground as well as visiting anew some familiar terrain. Targeted at upper undergraduate and postgraduate students and their teachers, it will also be of interest to researchers and policy actors wanting insight to their project.
Throughout history there has always been an ‘other’, often based on culture, race, gender or class, that has been demonised by the majority. This attribution of negative features onto others affects everyone, but Whitehead challenges the idea that this is an inevitable fact of life.
While looking at the historical criminalisation of the ‘other’ and the subsequent modernising transformations in criminal justice and penal policy, such as ‘Big Society’, Whitehead also questions if this is the most effective way to dismantle the conditions of existence responsible for ‘othering’.
This important book not only looks for the origin of the ‘other’ but also offers insights for a resolution that benefits society as a whole rather than just the powerful few.
In the past decade community groups have been portrayed as the solution to many social problems. Yet the role of ‘below the regulatory radar’ community action has received little research attention and thus is poorly understood in terms of both policy and practice.
Focusing on self-organised community activity, this book offers the first collection of papers developing theoretical and empirically grounded knowledge of the informal, unregistered, yet largest, part of the voluntary sector. The collection includes work from leading academics, activists, policy makers and practitioners offering a new and coherent understanding of community action ‘below the radar’.
The book is part of the Third Sector Research Series which is informed by research undertaken at the Third Sector Research Centre, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Barrow Cadbury Trust.
The book is distinctive in combining theoretical discussion on the role of networks, resources and social capital with fieldwork evidence and interviews with members of RCOs, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and statutory authorities. It critically examines the impact of dispersal and current legislative change on refugee communities and RCOs; explores the integrative role of RCOs; assesses the race relations framework in Britain and its effects on refugee organisations and provides a thorough and up-to-date literature review.
Refugee community organisations and dispersal is essential reading for practitioners and policy makers, academics, researchers and students of social policy, social geography, sociology and politics. Members of NGOs working with refugees or in local government, community workers and members of refugee communities themselves will also be keenly interested in the book. Comparative issues raised by the research will be of direct interest to readers in other countries.
From Occupy, to the Indignados and the Arab Spring, the uprisings that marked the last decade ignited a re-emergence of participatory democracy as a political ideal within organizations.
This pioneering book introduces cybernetic thinking to politics and organizational studies to explore the continuing development of this radical idea. With a focus on communication and how alternative social media platforms present new challenges and opportunities for radical organising, it sheds new light on the concepts of self-organization, consensus decision making, individual autonomy and collective identity.
Revolutionising the way in which anarchist activists and theorists think about organizations, this unprecedented investigation makes a major contribution to the larger discussion of direct democracy.
