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Abstract: In the last two decades increasing interdependencies and processes of convergence between the public, market and third sector have been observed. One feature of this processes is that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) “become more market like in their actions, structures and philosophies” (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004: 133). One simple reason is that often stakeholders, most notably funding bodies, insist on stricter standards of governance. Sometimes national legislation also imposes particular structural constraints (National Council of Social Service & Goodman, 1976; Alexander, 2000). The net effect is a tendency toward corporate models of governance (Alexander & Weiner, 1998), often accompanied by loss of independence or spontaneity. These trends are described in various ways by using and establishing different terms with varying meanings and focuses like professionalisation (Hwang & Powell, 2006), commercialism and commercialisation (Tuckman, 1998; Young, 1998), “being business-like” (Dart, 2004), or marketisation (Weisbrod, 1998; Salamon, 1993). Above all this, rationalisation guised as managerialism increasingly diffuses into Civil Society Organisations and consequently affects their operations and structures. Amongst many explanations for the spread of rationalisation, such as resource dependency theory, strategic choice concepts, it can also be explained by world polity theory, a field of neo-institutionalist theory. World polity refers to a broad cultural order rooted in Western societal ideals. Its central elements are rationalisation and its result and counterpart, the rising notion of actorhood and empowerment (Meyer, Boli et al., 1987). Rationalisation refers to a systematisation of social life around standardised rules that explicitly differentiate and seek to link means and ends, and to a reconstruction of all social activities as means to the pursuit of collective purposes, which themselves are subject to increasing systematisation (Jepperson, 2002). By managerialism, we refer to the application of rationalist thought to the structuring of organisations. In a rationalised world, capable and responsible actors become conceivable and, in fact, the only conceivable addressees for solving the pressing problems of our time (Meyer, Drori et al., 2006). As organisations are an important type of a legitimate modern actor, the central elements of world polity, i.e., rationalisation and increasing actorhood will also shape modern organisations (Drori, Meyer et al., 2006a). Against this backdrop, this paper conceptualises dimensions of managerialism. We review notions of managerialism from prior research and use elements of neoinstitutional theory and systems theory to develop a framework of managerialism and to capture possible dimensions. We develop some initial propositions how managerialism impacts on the way CSOs fulfil their societal functions. Furthermore we present a first empirical approach towards managerialism in CSOs by constructing a Managerialism-Index and applying it to analyse the innovativeness of Civil Society Organisations.

Keywords: Managerialism; Civil Society Organisations

21 pages, July 4, 2007

Note: Paper submitted to EGOS-Colloquium 2007, Vienna, Austria, July 4-7, 2007

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