Abstract:

For years, public service is progressively perceived as a ‘competitive tendering’ industry in which third sector organisations (TSOs) need to compete internally and in an equal footing with other sectors to win a contract. This conceptual paper aims to provide a solid glimpse of Third Sector as a highly-institutionalised setting and to shed light on the avalanches of contract’s performance measurement system that may lead to the destruction of social values and distinctive characters the third sector is trying to preserve. This paper is drawn mainly from literature around the UK and use institutional theory as the framework for analysis.