ABSTRACT
This chapter considers moves beyond any crude state/market binary divide to explore questions of strategic management and governance within a growing arena of ‘third sector’ organisations, neither part of traditional government (though often now funded by it) nor conventional firms with shareholders. This hybrid group of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) includes various subcategories: voluntary and ‘social movement’ based organisations, worker owned co operatives and mutually owned organizations, and a new wave of social enterprises which may be more ‘business like’. The chapter starts with an overview (5.1) of recent policy and organizational developments in the NGO field. It then examines the simplest case of the entrepreneurial school (seen in chapter 3), also applicable to some social enterprises (5.2). It moves on to consider if generic strategic management models may be appropriately adopted in these NGO settings as they grow their scale and commercial operations or whether they still require customisation (5.3 and 5.4) (concluding they still require substantial adaptation to mission based NGOs). It finally (5.5) highlights governance and accountability mechanisms – and their possible weaknesses - as a theme of great interest (some dilemmas faced by small NGOs are highlighted in the US-based case reported in Box 5.1).
