Abstract
We have learnt from the empirical analysis of health care and education, respectively in chapters 3 and 4, that individual organizations of service delivery in Germany, Britain, Italy and France are increasingly framed upon the ‘autonomous enterprise formula’. Organizational restructuring of delivery institutions is an empirically observable phenomenon particularly in those areas of the welfare state committed to the provision of services in kind, such as hospitals and schools. Although organizational changes may be dismissed as merely formal and legalistic, they are not inconsequential for the future transformations of the welfare state and need greater attention in the social policy debate about European welfare states. The empirical investigation of organizational changes of the welfare state in four European countries in the last 20 years has indicated a convergent process of homogenization. This chapter’s purpose is to explain convergence drawing upon institutional theories of organizational theory, in particular institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983: 148).
The insular path could become a continental passage.
(Leibfried, 1994: 22)
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© 2009 Paola Mattei
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Mattei, P. (2009). Towards the Managerial Welfare State: The Mechanism of a Silent Revolution. In: Restructuring Welfare Organizations in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234420_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234420_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30395-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-23442-0
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