Staying Afloat Amidst the Tempest: External Pressures Facing Private Child and Family Serving Agencies and Managerial Strategies Employed to Address Them

ABSTRACT

Private child and family serving agencies operate within a turbulent environment characterized by changing client needs, interorganizational competition, resource scarcity, and demand for accountability. Qualitative data regarding external pressures experienced by private agencies across six states, and managerial strategies to address them, were collected from a 2016 electronic survey of senior agency administrators (n = 182). Specific themes were organized into the following categories: funding; operations and practice-related issues; staff recruitment and retention; laws, regulations and licensure; contracts and contractual expectations; and, interorganizational relationships. Implications for management practice and research regarding how private human service organizations navigate different external pressures are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Human service organization
• nonprofit organization
• external pressures
• management strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the William T. Grant Foundation (ID #186134). The views presented here are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the William T. Grant Foundation.