Organizational Change in Social Cooperatives: Implementing the Shared Administration Paradigm in Italy

The Italian Third Sector Code established the shared administration paradigm as a new mode of relationship between Public Administration and non-profit organizations based on a collaborative mode of governance. Under the new paradigm, third sector organizations can be involved in co-programmazione (co-planning) and co-progettazione (co-design) exercises with public sector organizations, different from the traditional client-provider contractual relationship. The exploratory paper investigates whether the shift from the contractual to the collaborative mode of relationship with Public Administration requires social cooperatives, as a particular type of third sector organizations, to undergo organizational change processes, and what such processes entail. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with eight highly reputed expert of shared administration belonging to social cooperatives that experienced both the contractual and the collaborative mode of relationship with Public Administration. From the interviews it emerges that the establishment of the shared administration paradigm is perceived by social cooperatives as an environmental evolution that requires them to change their mindset, their strategies, their operational modalities, and their management system. Fostering organizational flexibility and inter-functional (horizontal) integration, developing better planning and design capabilities, and improving management practices to support organizational and social entrepreneurship are the measures that social cooperatives should implement under the new regime.