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Organisational Hybridity in a Post-Corporatist Welfare Mix: The Case of the Third Sector in Belgium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2014

LESLEY HUSTINX
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Korte Meer 3–5, B-9000, Gent email: [email protected]
BRAM VERSCHUERE
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Henleykaai 84, B-9000, Gent email: [email protected]
JORIS DE CORTE
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology and Eductional Sciences, Department of Social Welfare Studies, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000, Gent email: [email protected]

Abstract

Although mixed public–private provisions of welfare have always been a typical characteristic of continental welfare states, recent international scholarship has pointed to a historically new process of institutional hybridisation, with a more systematic intermingling of rationalities of the state, market and third sector within one and the same organisation. In this article, we address two limitations in the current knowledge: first, the absence of an indicator-model for exploring organisational hybridity empirically; second, the lack of sensitivity to cross-national variation depending on the welfare regime. We develop a multi-dimensional analytical framework that takes regime differences into account and empirically assess organisational hybridity in a (post-)corporatist welfare regime. Based on a survey of 255 third-sector organisations (TSOs) in Flanders (Belgium) and using latent class analysis, we find three clusters of TSOs that reflect different types of organisational hybridity. Contextualising our results further shows that the positioning of TSOs in our cluster model to a large extent results from the institutional context in which TSOs operate.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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