Integrate Inc. is a disability services organisation. They opened their doors in 1987 as a result of liquidation and dispersion of a state-wide service. At the time, the culture of disability services focused on large hostel accommodation, command hierarchies and authoritarian structures that focused on discipline and control. Rapid changes in disability legislation, coupled with a shift toward deinsitutionalisation made Integrate Inc. one of the first organisations to implement a new model of service. Three years after its inception, most of the staff and much of the old style accommodation had been shut down. Integrate Inc. runs a community-based supported living service that focuses on individual ability.
The project was funded by the Commonwealth as a demonstration project early in its development. It is still about 85% government funded, with 15% coming from its two small business enterprises that were operated internally.
The small businesses began in 1991. Although neither is particularly lucrative, these initiatives have evolved and changed over the last decade and appear to be in constant development. One of the most salient consequences of this shift into small business operation was a loss of most core entire staff between 1992 and 1995 when individuals reacted negatively to the organisational shift into for-profit territory. New employees who have been hired since that time have all been recruited with an understanding of the dual nature of Integrate Inc.
There are nine permanent staff in a flat organisational structure and forty direct service staff who work part-time. At the time of interviews, the Chief Executive Officer was in the process of recruiting a manager for one of the small businesses with marketing expertise. The Director and three other permanent staff were interviewed. All staff interviewed had been with Integrate Inc. for at least five years. Staff included the Chief Executive Officer (Dawn), a Manager (Linda) and two Program Co-ordinators (Kerri and Janet).
Integrate Inc. presented a variety of similarities and some intriguing difference from the first two organisations studied. As with the previous chapters, linguistic threads are the basic tool of analysis to understand how language and power interact in relationships between this nonprofit and its for-profit ventures. This organisation is a small disability services provider. Four interviews were conducted there, including top management, one middle manager and two service co-ordinators.
As with the Care & Share Association and Nightlight, Integrate Inc. presented a number of linguistic threads that echoed discourse found in earlier studies. Language matching, social identification, understanding the relationship building process, recognising the institutional context and intra-organisational communication were evident in the data. However, Integrate Inc. offered some new threads in the discourse between nonprofit and for-profit viewpoints that were key to understanding the dynamics of this organisation. Anchor shift and leadership were first identified through data in Integrate Inc., although as described in the section preceding the pilot study these threads were subsequently applied to the other cases for any relevant matches. Finally, organisational documentation filled a unique niche in this organisation and so has been accorded extensive comment in the section on weaving the threads.
Integrate Inc. is involved in the for-profit world in two ways. Firstly, it currently runs two small businesses on its own. Secondly, it is working with a legal firm on a reduced-fee basis. These two relationships will be clarified and expanded upon through the course of the linguistic thread analysis.
Language matching was the way in which staff in the nonprofits used parallel language to that of business partners. It was rampant in Integrate Inc. Three out of four of the informants engaged in language matching that illustrated a shift in their view of their organisation as strictly ‘welfare’ to a business enterprise. The excerpts here are deliberately lengthy, because language matching is present in multiple phrases, structures and processes described.
This is my prime focus [pointing to core business]. To get this prime focus together, I have to get that right too. I mean I actually try and sell them the match as to why and how. Yes, acknowledge that it’s never easy, but there are some ways that you can make it easier for yourself. I mean, picking up that phone and making the cold calls is hard, it’s hard for everybody. So, one of the strategies is you do it without thinking about it. You pick it up, you dial the number and you’re in and you get it out of the way without sitting and thinking about it for a half an hour.
Dawn
Interviewer: And that would be the business ventures and those other kinds of things…
Dawn: Yeah. Yeah, and we’ve got to diversify…Yes, absolutely. So [the business] started as courses and training. It’s now moving into consultancy and personalised training according to people’s wants. Um, [other business] started off as housecleaning, it diversified into highly complex co-ordination um, and but it’s shifting as well now, because other people are picking up the cleaning and undercutting us in terms of those things…So some of the previous market that we had along there which was about long-term support for people with disabilities, they’re now going into some of those other programs.
That’s a big issue, customer satisfaction and managing customer complaints. Very difficult.
Dawn
So, marketing for me is easier than fundraising. I’d sooner market than fundraise. We’re out there saying what it is, but you’re not out there, …we’re selling on strengths rather than selling on weaknesses.
Dawn
Here Linda described the reason for developing markets and explained the ‘spiel’ for her efforts:
Opportunities for the organisation. When you, when you’re selling something like what we do, it’s a lot easier because there is a need there, you’ve already identified the need. And if you can solve somebody’s problem, they’re very willing to listen to you…finding consistency of a reasonable service is not easy. It’s the comprehensiveness of the service. The fact