Page 49 - WCEN Dr Rochelle Burgess evaluation report\ Baloon

Loosing Organisational Identity

As it stands WCEN situates its approach and activities in a critical framework, this has been fundamental
for the systemic changes that has occurred so far. As a move towards becoming more accountable and
systematic with monitoring and evaluation, with a view to demonstrating the ability to becoming a
potential public service provider (one of the recommendations of this report) there needs to be great
caution taken in regards to mission drift, professionalization and isomorphism. Research since the
1990’s has indicated that the voluntary and community sector has been greatly impacted by its increased
role as a contracted service provider. There has been evidence of mission drift, increased business-like
practices, a loss of its campaigning and advocacy role and lastly a shift to operating in ways that replicate
the work of local government as opposed to one, which addresses and tackles social injustices (See
MacMillan, 2010 for detailed discussion). For WCEN, the risk maybe somewhat mitigated by the strong
infrastructure that has been developed by the network in phase 0 of the coproduction process; an
infrastructure that has social justice as one of its central pillars. However, this risk still remains paramount
as contracting is increasingly more stringent and punitive. One aspect of mitigating this risk can be to
ensure that values, aims, objectives and visions for the organization are set out in coming stages of
WCEN development. They can therefore, be used to shape funding applications, to ensure work is
closely aligned and to ensure the organization is held accountable to its core values by a board of
trustees, other key stakeholders and members.

Instrumental Participation

The increasing interest in coproduction has largely come around because of public spending cutbacks.
The link between cost-saving and coproduction is a significant risk, as it only requires instrumental
participation from the community. Instrumental participation is characterized by means to achieve a
particular goal, and in context of public expenditure saving, this would refer to cost-efficiency. In one
interview, it was expressed that the stance of some key figures in statutory agencies was merely to
save money.

‘…I said it’s not like the council or any of the statutory partners have suddenly grown a heart,
it’s because they truly, it’s true, but they’ve suddenly realised that the community can do a lot
of work themselves, far cheaper than if we were to commission it, so that’s the sort of reality of
it, that in practice that’s the way forward…’

Whilst cost efficiency is one argument for coproduction (Ostrom, 1996), it cannot be the only basis as
the cost-benefits of coproduction can take years to emerge. Therefore, by focusing on cost-efficiency
as rationale is more likely to lead to an imbalanced redistribution of responsibility to the communities
with devolved responsibility from statutory agencies. This potential risk needs to be mitigated by WCEN
by continuing to build a network based on values such as solidarity and equality; in doing this it will
promote transformative participation and minimize the likelihood of being drawn into tokenistic or
instrumental forms of participation.

49