Building Bridges for Refugees

Thomas B. Lawrence, Cynthia Hardy
1999 Journal of Applied Behavioral Science  
In this article, the authors examine the dynamics of bridging organizations in activist domains. The purpose of these organizations is to serve as a link between other organizations and individuals. Drawing on a comparative case study of three national refugee systems, they develop a typology of bridging organizations based on the degree to which each organization shares the values of other organizations in the domain: center extension, border federation, pure bridge. The center extension
more » ... the values of center organizations, transmitting them to the border. The border federation operates much closer to the border, voicing its values and negotiating on its behalf with the center. The pure bridge is a classic bridging organization: It attempts to incorporate values from both center and border, mediating, translating, and negotiating them in an attempt to connect the two sides in a workable relationship. In this article, we examine the dynamics associated with "bridging organizations" (Brown, 1991) whose primary purpose is the connection of other organizations and individuals in activist domains. The nature of bridging organizations necessitates a theoretical and empirical approach that is sensitive to their context because bridging Thomas B. Lawrence is a professor on the Faculty of Business at Downloaded from center of society-the powerful institutions of government and corporations that dominate contemporary western societies-and those at the border-the low-status, low-power individuals and organizations that operate at the margins of society (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982) . Note that positioning government and large corporations at the center is not to say that they necessarily operate at the center of public attention or even that their various publics perceive their centrality as legitimate. Rather, their centrality is based on their activity in a wide variety of domains and on their power within the capitalist system. From this perspective, the border of society comprises a large number of small organizations and individuals scattered across it, whereas a relatively small number of powerful organizations are condensed into the center. Between the center and border lie organizations whose role it is to connect center and border organizations-bridging organizations.
doi:10.1177/0021886399351006 fatcat:wvlp7jsvb5cwbjjaubgj4yr6e4