“We Have Our Hands on and Off”: The Role of Private-Public Partnerships In Reducing Administrative Burdens

Introduction

While non-profit actors can reduce costs constituents experience when engaging the state, the potential for public-private partnerships in reducing administrative burdens remains underexplored. Particularly in the case of school-administered safety net services where public districts often partner with non-profits to deliver services. Through qualitative data from the extended case method, I explore the case of Better Horizons- a non-profit formed by the local school district to address gaps in local safety net services. I answer the following questions, “What institutional logics influence public and private organizational actors’ beliefs about the scope of programs at Better Horizons and who should be served? How do these logics shape the organizational structure, norms, and frontline processes at Better Horizons?” My analysis extends scholarship on administrative burdens to public education with an emphasis on the role of public-private arrangements in addressing administrative burdens.

Method

Findings derive from in-depth interviews with 20 participants, including administrators, board members, and frontline workers, as well as 20 hours of frontline observations. The role of place was salient across all participant interviews. Better Horizons is situated in the Deep South where state-level discretion in policy design creates costly experiences for constituents seeking out government programs and where safety net programs frequently fall under political attack. After investigating the role of place in shaping local governance structures more closely using the flexible coding method, I recognized that in lieu of shifting state and federal policy, the organizational structure, routines, and use of cultural-political discourse to naturalize frontline practice became strategies to reduce administrative burdens.

Findings

Three findings emerged: 1) district administrators partnered with the business and non-profit sector to create more robust localized safety nets, 2) district administrators, Better Horizons managers, and workers wielded discourse to create a flexible organizational identity, and 3) district administrators used the financial structure of Better Horizons as a 501(c)3 to entrench safety net services. District leaders used discourse and relationship building to engage the business sector, framing the district and local businesses as organizational actors that could work together to “build a healthier city.” The district then leveraged these partnerships with the business sector to establish Better Horizons, placing business leaders on the non-profit’s board. Though Better Horizons’s “sole purpose is to serve the district,” the financial structure of Better Horizons takes no money from the district’s operating budget, relying on state funding streams, local donations, and grants. This shielded the safety net services at Better Horizons from accountability monitoring and political scrutiny.

Conclusion

In this paper, I build on theories on administrative burdens to explore the conditions under which public-private partnerships form to reduce such burdens. Scholarship on administrative burdens has not sufficiently engaged with school-administrated services nor the role of public systems in reducing burdens. It is not surprising that discourse was a strategy to build an organizational ideal, but how these partnerships were leveraged to entrench localized safety net services is an important contribution for social work and organizational scholars to consider.