Human Service Agencies and the Question of Impact: Lessons for Theory, Policy, and Practice
Human service agencies are facing an environment in which demands for impact, effectiveness and performance are rising faster than our knowledge about how to best to achieve those goals. Managers face serious dilemmas: embrace evidence based practice or co production of services? Expand services to achieve economies of scale or focus expertise in specialized areas? Embrace market principles or an ethic of care? Organizations are increasingly pressured to do it all with little guidance about what these changes might mean for the long term well being of their organizations, the consumers of their services, and the communities in which they are embedded. Thus, the goal of this special issue is to bring together articles that shed empirical light on how organizations are internally coping with external pressures to show impact. We are particularly interested in papers that use a strong theoretical framework to empirically explore one of three themes related to impact: 1) the interplay between performance goals and civil society functions, 2) the implications of social innovation approaches, and 3) the consequences of evidence baseddecision making. Papers that use either quantitative or qualitative approaches, as well as those that point to negative, mixed or positive outcomes are all welcome. A major concern for scholars has been the effect of performance demands on organizational mission, willingness to undertake advocacy, and the commitment to community building. Yet, we lack systematic studies that investigate that concern. Organizations may be adopting strategies to ensure that multiplex goals are being met, or finding new ways to balance client centered goals with funder mandated goals. In this symposium we are interested in papers that address questions such as: What innovative strategies are organizations putting in place to protect mission? Does an emphasis on performance change advocacy engagement? Are changes occurring in the way human service organizations are governed? Because a connecting theme of many social innovations is an emphasis on performance, we are also interested in papers that explore the implications for human service agencies of the widespread interest in social innovation. This includes market incentives and "pay for success" models such as social impact bonds and performance based contracting. In this symposium, we are interested in papers that address questions such as: how have traditional human service nonprofits responded to the social innovation revolution? What outcomes have human service organizations experienced when they have adopted social innovation approaches? How can so called traditional human services agencies successfully adapt to the expectations for social innovation? Demands to show impact are also related to the push among policymakers, scholars and practitioners for evidence based decision making. Increasingly, the policy community expects human services to be evaluated according to classic principles of social science research including experimental designs with control groups, rigorous data gathering, and robust outcome evaluations. Yet, the implications for human services remain unclear. Does evidence based practice preference large providers at the expense of smaller, community agencies? What is the role of the board of directors and staff in evidence based decision making? Does the push for evidence based decisionmaking make it more difficult for agencies to take a client centered approach?