An Organizational Landscape in Transformation

Abstract

This chapter looks at changes in the population of associations, organization structures, and patterns of collaboration with other organizations, businesses, and the public sector, harnessing data from several censuses and surveys conducted among national and local voluntary organizations in Norway from 1980 to 2013. The purpose is to provide an empirical overview of changes in the voluntary sector since the 1980s and assess how the processes of individualization, immigration, digitalization, and development of New Public Management (NPM) have affected the structural features of the Norwegian voluntary sector and transformed the popular movement model that has been dominant in Norway since the 1840s. The organizational landscape at the local level has been transformed resulting from an increased local community orientation related to the decline of the popular movements. At the national level, there is a significant increase in public interest organizations and no decline in traditional organizations. The findings support the thesis of a weakening of the hierarchical organizational model, seen from both the local and national levels, resulting in a development toward a two-tiered organizational society. However, there is also an array of evidence pointing toward an increasing prevalence of network-based communication as an alternative to a hierarchical structure and as a means of linking members and decision-makers in national organizations as well as local organizations.