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"This is a neat book. Grounded in his study of eight voluntary, grassroots organizations in 'Smallville', Milofsky shows that their participants are linked in a network of shared values, community obligations and a shared history together from which they derive their sense of community. In this way, they have become 'transorganizations', a key concept that Milofsky introduces to make sense of their overlapping purposes and embeddedness in the same community. This book opens our eyes to the creative strategic possibilities that can be seen in the re-birth of local, voluntary and grassroots associations developing all around us."
—Joyce Rothschild, Professor, School of Public & International Affairs, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
A path-breaking study of organizational dynamics in community movements and in small, local, nonprofit organization
Familiar organizational theories often do not fit comfortably when applied to community-level associations or small, local, nonprofit organizations. In Smallville, Carl Milofsky empirically and theoretically studies the organizational dynamics involved in this common American model. Organizations functioning within a community are usually treated as separate units, but when they all exist in the same place and tend to be made up of the same people who are living out different aspects of their identities in various settings, a new analytical paradigm is required. Milofsky’s study culminates in the formulation of an innovative way of understanding this phenomenon—an essential, pioneering theory of “transorganizations.”
Endorsements:
"Using carefully accumulated and meticulously analysed case studies of associations and small nonprofits, Dr Milofsky succeeds well in throwing new theoretical light onto the hitherto neglected area of community-level organizational challenges. This book will be warmly welcomed by both students and practitioners of grassroots public action."
—Margaret Harris, Emeritus Professor of Voluntary Sector Organization, Aston Business School, UK
Carl Milofsky's SMALLVILLE examines organizational life in the heart of America's civil society with a penetrating and insightful sociological eye. It's not another census of the size of the nonprofit world; it's a page-turner about nonprofit organizations and the real challenges they face. At the same time, it's the best book about small town realities since Vidich and Bensman's classic SMALL TOWN IN MASS SOCIETY."—Jon Van Til Professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy, Rutgers University, and author of, Growing Civil Society
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
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CARL MILOFSKY is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Bucknell University. He is a former editor of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
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