This study addresses how personnel stability in nonprofit organizations relates to an organization's ability to maintain program performance during the societal disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We specifically apply Meier and O'Toole's buffering function to explain variation in disruptions to organizations' program services, as indicated by changes in the number of people served from 2019 to 2020, using data from a nationally representative sample of service-providing nonprofit organizations across U.S. communities. We find that maintaining personnel structural stability is associated with reduced negative impacts on nonprofits' service provision during the pandemic. This study is among the first to apply longstanding theoretical work in public management to the nonprofit sector, offering implications for nonprofit management theory and practice.
Why do improvement initiatives in public service ecosystems fail, even when individual actors are competent and well-intentioned? This article argues that such failures are not merely the product of isolated organizational deficiencies but are influenced by a configurational dynamic.our meso-level mechanisms-lack of direction, lack of management support, lack of autonomy, mandate, and ownership, and insufficient knowledge management-interact in a self-reinforcing cycle that converts localized value failure into systemic value decline. Drawing on a four-year longitudinal study of an improvement program in Sweden's sick leave system, we identify a lack of management support as the primary mechanism for escalation, and the withdrawal of organizational legitimacy and resources prevent corrective responses to other failures. We further demonstrate that this cycle is reproduced by a structural ownership gap at the macro-level: because no single actor holds both the mandate and the incentive to claim stewardship of cross-boundary public services, the meso-level conditions necessary for sustained improvement are never stabilized. The implication is that meso-level value co-destruction in public service ecosystems cannot be addressed by improving individual mechanisms in isolation; it requires resolving the governance architecture that makes the self-reinforcing cycle inevitable.
Communities increasingly face complex problems that demand coordinated public responses. While collaboration has been an operational mainstay of local governments for several decades, attention to how communities approach and manage multiple demands from the same set of resources has been underexamined. This study examines ten communities navigating the opioid crisis and the onset of COVID-19 in early 2020. Using two waves of survey data, we assess the evolution of collaborative capacity and explore how pandemic response efforts interacted with existing opioid initiatives. Findings reveal that communities mobilized existing collaborative assets without degrading prior efforts. Notably, these assets were predominantly intangible-such as trust, norms, and shared understanding-rather than material resources. This distinction is critical for understanding resilience in public systems. We apply a common pool resource framing to conceptualize the supply and deployment of collaborative assets across concurrent challenges, offering insights into sustaining effective governance under pressure.
Coordination is a critical yet challenging aspect of organizational functioning, particularly in public sector organizations characterized by formalized structures and siloed operations. These challenges are exacerbated during crises, which often disrupt established practices and require adaptive responses. Despite the significant role HR managers are assumed to play in navigating such disruptions, limited research has explored how their coordination practices evolve in times of crisis. This in-depth qualitative study draws on interviews with senior HR managers across Swedish public sector municipalities during the COVID-19 pandemic to address this gap. According to HR managers' accounts, the pandemic disrupted traditional coordination arrangements by challenging the three integrating conditions of coordination: accountability, predictability, and common understanding. Prior to the pandemic, coordination was described as relying heavily on formal, predefined mechanisms tied to specialization and hierarchical structures. During the pandemic, however, HR managers experienced a shift toward more emergent and relational forms of coordination characterized by cross-boundary collaboration and adaptive, real-time problem-solving. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating how crises can reconfigure coordination practices within public sector organizations and by highlighting the importance of flexibility and emergent coordination even in traditionally bureaucratic contexts. Furthermore, the findings advance our understanding of HR managers as boundary-spanning coordinators who facilitate organizational adaptability and integration during disruptive events.
