Ideella organisationer - norr och söder om ekvatorn. En kvalitativ studie om ideella organisationers arbete med missbruk i Skåne och Kapstaden.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to examine what people working closely with clients for non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Skåne and Cape Town think about conditions and challenges in regard to the organizations’ operation. The focus is on organizations working with substance abuse. We have had seven semi-structured interviews with people who work closely with clients in the organization. Three of them are with people from organizations located in Cape Town and four of them are from Skåne. We chose to analyze our material with the help of the new institutional perspective to highlight the organizations' search for legitimacy and how they get inspiration from others and one another, which is discussed with the term isomorphism. We also used organizational flexibility to analyze how organizations handle their challenges. The results of the study showed that NPOs have a different kind of role in Skåne and in Cape Town. In Skåne, they have more of a complementary role while in Cape Town, they have more of a relieving role in relation to the official and private welfare sectors. Another finding is that the most common challenge for organizations is finance-related. This also affects their access to an office or meeting place. To handle these struggles, NPOs cooperate a lot with other organizations and institutions. They also adapt their operation to promote longevity. The study showed that NPOs are very flexible organizations that can find many different kinds of strategies in order to survive.