Organizational configurations and performance of Dutch social housing associations

This paper starts from the idea that organizations “are best understood as clusters of interconnected structures and practices” (Fiss, 2007:1180). At the beginning of the study, organizational features of Dutch social housing associations were identified (Cloudt & Geurts, 2013) and checked for empirical evidence. This study investigates in what way these organizational features differ in respect to organizational performance. Combinations of certain features were conceptualized as organizational configurations: as constellation of interconnected organizational features of social housing associations. FsQCA was applied in the analysis of organizational configurations and performance. I used standardized data on customer satisfaction and operating expenses as performance indicators. By mans of a newly developedquestionnaire, data was gathered on 61 housing associations and their organizational forms while existing data on performance outcomes could be used. The analysis revealed several necessary conditions for high performance, which were additionally evaluated on the amount of deviant cases by means of a plot. By using intermediate solutions I found three solution paths for high customer satisfaction - containing two necessary conditions – and two paths for low operating expenses. This paper deals with a ‘conservative’ application of QCA and a way to deal with small variance in data.