ABSTRACT
This is an organizational study of the institutionalization of social welfare. In this book I explore how a social welfare organization becomes an institution. I am analyzing this formal organization as something that takes on a life of its own, and that primarily seems to be concerned with maintaining itself as a result of continuously adapting to its experiences of the demands and requirements of prospective and current clients. There is, of course, a large literature on organizational institutionalization, some of which has analyzed the substantive area of social welfare. This literature raises significant questions and reveals central insights. Nevertheless, my study suggests some important revisions of the general understanding of organized institutionalization and of the institutionalization of social welfare in particular. This revision is based on the observation that essentially social welfare organizations do not adapt to any objective needs in their environments; rather they enact them through ‘medicalizing management’ that becomes the foremost means by which they become institutions.
