Social Enterprise, Localism and Civic Participation: A Psychosocial Perspective

Abstract

Third sector organisations (TSO’s) increasingly provide alternatives to public services, manage community ownership of local assets, and offer relational models of production and exchange. Many TSO’s have relatively flat structures, valorise peer relations and are seen as a democratic alternative to local state bureaucracies. This chapter argues that a psychosocial understanding of lateral peer relations is essential if displacement anxiety and rivalry are to be avoided and conflict used as productive feedback for organisational development. It concludes that TSO’s may still need the vertically organised mediating functions of the local state if they are to carry out their roles effectively

Public Innovation, Civic Participation and the Third Sector: A Psychosocial Perspective - ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/264540890_Public_Innovation_Civic_Participation_and_the_Third_Sector_A_Psychosocial_Perspective [accessed Sep 9, 2015].