An Ethnographic Account of an Organisational Response To Transformation in a Not for Profit Context

This research is an ethnographic account of a longitudinal study in the not-for-profit sector. The collaborating organisation is an Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider based in the north west of England and referred to as Company X throughout this thesis to protect its anonymity. Company X is a licensed ADR provider and a Not for Profit (NFP) organisation. It is licensed by the regulator to provide complaint handling services, from initial consumer enquiry through to investigation, for the companies who subscribe to their ADR scheme. The organisation has been struggling in recent years with a loss in market share. This has been caused by the digitalisation of the initial enquiry stage of the complaints handling service by new entrants to the sector. The digitalisation has facilitated new entrants into the market who have not only made the complaint handling process more efficient but maximised the information which they collect during the initial enquiry phase to offer an extended service to the subscribing companies to their ADR service. The additional service which the new competitors offer is outside of the traditional ADR licensed provision and represents an additional revenue opportunity for the ADR provider. The new entrants achieve this by selling data insights into the consumer behaviour which is derived from the consumer information obtained during the enquiry process. This thesis is a study of Company X’s response to this new competitive threat and their subsequent transformation programme.