Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Background and Purpose: Today, North American women's/feminist nonprofits find themselves at a crossroads. Following the 1960s-early 1980s period of experimentation with alternative, non-hierarchical organizational forms and the subsequent disillusionment with collectivism, most women's organizations (at least service-providing ones) seemed to have accepted hierarchy as a necessary evil. As a consequence, they faced an uneasy dilemma of balancing feminist goals and ideology with pragmatic operational tasks. Many activists felt that women's organizations were undergoing an alarming transformation from alternative institutions into mainstream social service agencies, losing their connection with the grassroots and becoming increasingly co-opted and apolitical. This resulted in a resurgence of interest in non-hierarchical organizing, particularly in the innovative organizational models emerging at the international level and especially those developed by women's international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Unfortunately, empirical research on women's INGOs remains meager and fragmented. The primary objective of the study was to help fill the existing gap by examining how non-hierarchical organizing is being conceptualized and how it operates within women's INGOs.

Method: The study employed qualitative methodology within an exploratory, naturalistic framework. Specifically, the grounded theory method was utilized. Using theoretical sampling, nine women's INGOs, which have had experience with non-hierarchical organizing in one form or another, were selected to participate in the study. The participants were identified primarily through various NGO directories and through word-of-mouth. The sources of data for the study included transcripts of in-depth, unstructured interviews with 20 key informants from nine participating INGOs, a wide variety of organizational documents, and video materials. Theoretical (open, axial and selective) coding was used for data analysis.

Results: The findings of the study suggest that non-hierarchy in women's INGOs could be understood in terms of four major dimensions – structural, cultural, ideational, and environmental. The structural dimension has to do with internal organizational structure, where non-hierarchical arrangements could be found in all or one of the three sub-dimensions – immediate (e.g., core collective), intermediate (e.g., coordinating councils, issue teams, project committees), and extended (e.g., member organizations within a network). The cultural dimension refers to the internal organizational culture, which could be highly collaborative even when organization is hierarchically structured. The ideational dimension concerns the organization's ideational (ideological and value) system and its application in real life. This has to do both with internal organizational arrangements and dynamics, and with how organization conceptualizes its relationship with the women it serves. All these three dimensions overlap, to various degrees, with the concept of anti-oppression. Lastly, the environmental dimension pertains to external organizational relations – i.e., how organizations build non-hierarchical partnerships with other institutions. The ideational dimension emerges as the crucial one in determining the general direction of the organizational hierarchy – inward (towards the organization's members) or outward (towards the service users).

Implications: The results of this research should help expand the range of possible structures and practices, from which we may select those best suited to achieve organizational goals in providing high quality human services and promoting the situation for women.