HUMAN-SERVICES AND THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR - TOWARDS A THEORY OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

This article explores whether human service organisations in the volun tary sector possess characteristics which might assure them of possibl e comparative advantages over the for-profit and public sectors with r espect to certain sorts of users, We argue that there are inherent str uctural characteristics of organisations in each sector (for example, ownership, stakeholders and resources) which predispose them to respon d more or less sensitively to different states of 'disadvantage' exper ienced by their users. These states are defined as financial, personal , societal and community disadvantage, We suggest that voluntary organ isations have a comparative advantage over other sector agencies in ar eas where their distinctive ambiguous and hybrid structures enable the m to overcome problems of principal-agent gap, median voter reluctance , weak messages from politicians to staff and lack of market interest, By taking ideas of comparative advantage into account, a coherent cas e can be developed regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the expan ded role of voluntary agencies in welfare provision. In essence, the a rticle contends that a diminution in stakeholder ambiguity, resulting from organisational growth, lowers the comparative advantage of volunt ary agencies.