Overt Funding, Buried Goals, and Moral Turnover: The Organizational Transformation of Radical Experiments

Abstract

Over recent years, there has been a growth in the development of organizational initiatives by local community groups, particularly those espousing radical values and goals. However, often these groups must obtain funding from more powerful sponsors, usually national or local government agencies. In order to obtain such funding, the community organizations must disguise their founding values and goals which are contradictory to the understanding upon which public policy is based. The resulting tension between public and covert goals leads to turnover of personnel subscribing to founding values, and thus to transformation of the organization away from radical intent. This paper analyzes this process in the case of two major radical organizational experiments.