Mediating Cutbacks in Human Services: A Case Study in the Negotiated Order

The nexus between the social world of private nonprofit service organizations (NPOs) and their environment is examined through data from a national study of reductions in fiscal support and through focused interviews with a sample of chief personnel in agencies in Maricopa County, Arizona. As a study in how some organizations adjust to changes in their funding environment, these data provide a basis for assessing the relative impact of fiscal restraint on organizations, as well as accounting theoretically for the impact of structure through interpretive process, social order through social control, and the construction of a negotiated order. When faced with reductions in federal support, NPOs took different courses of action in order to avoid negative impacts. Interpreting the data from a negotiated order perspective suggests that agencies' adjustments were mediated by an awareness of the national and local contexts, the services they offered, the clients they served, and their general capacity to maximize their resource mobilization potential. In some instances this adjustment amounted essentially to redefining their relevant environment, which was accomplished by integrating the format, logic, and criteria of the external world of business. The agencies survived and in some instances prospered, but their distinctive symbolic structure was compromised.