Organization by regulation: regulatory reform and the creation of National Health Service (NHS) Charities in England and Wales in the 1980s–1990s

This paper employs archival methods to explore the emergence in the 1990s of a group of English and Welsh charities known as National Health Service (NHS) Charities. We provide a detailed discussion of the changing regulatory, political, social, and technical environment in which charities were operating in the 1980s and, drawing on the Strategic Action Fields (SAF) framework, argue that changing managerial norms created new standards for both the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales and the wider charity sector. As a result, concerns about the extant management of charitable funds in the NHS gained traction. Subsequent action by the Commissioners then facilitated the creation of NHS Charities as a specific organizational identity, and, we argue, concurrently constructed the framework for an emerging NHS Charities’ SAF. This case study provides a model of how state regulation – shaped by wider political norms – can impact nonprofit organizational formation and identity.