Although written before the implementation of the Big Society agenda, this book has much to say that is of relevance to those engaged with, or interested in, the third sector − or what should now, perhaps, be referred to as the civil society sector. It has long been recognised, and many have questioned, the blurring of the boundaries between the public, private and third sectors. This book uses the concept of hybridity to explore the challenges, tensions and dilemmas that face those involved at the frontline.

The book is structured in two parts, the first providing a context and conceptual base, from which the second part examines various elements of the third sector to understand the different manifestation of hybridity. David Billis starts by setting out the concept of hybridity as organisations possessing ‘significant’ characteristics of more than one of the public/private/third sectors. He qualifies this by suggesting that these sectors have features that have ‘roots’ and adhere to ‘distinctive principles’ and ‘rules of the game’ that become evident in hybrids.

In Chapter 2, Margaret Harris sets the policy scene and highlights the tensions between conflicting policies that both recognise and encourage the special values of third sector organisations and exert pressure to become more managerialist and quasi-public sector in operation. She refers to the ‘conflation of economic and social purpose’ that has led to the increased formation of hybrid organisations.

In the following chapter, Billis sets out to define the public and private sectors to arrive at a clear definition of TSO's from which to build his thesis of hybrid organisations. He uses the concept of decision-making to define ownership. Billis identifies four dimensions of hybridity: shallow and entrenched in terms of degree of hybridity; organic and enacted in terms of origin.

His model seems to avoid any reference to civil society and the political/democratic dimension of active citizenship which is often central to the discussion, and centres instead on an organisational model more useful to the intentions of this book. However, this omission is perhaps a weakness in the argument developed, particularly in the context of the smaller ‘associational’ model discussed later in Chapter 7.

In the final chapter in this first section, Chris Cornforth and Roger Spear provide a valuable discussion of the issues of governance of organisations and the tensions between governance and management boundaries that can emerge when staff are employed.

Part two starts with Chapter 5 in which Angela Ellis Paine, Nick Ockenden and Joanna Stuart discuss the implication for volunteers within organisations and explore issues such as professionalisation and resulting formalisation, the changed volunteer experience and the paid staff/volunteer tension.

The following five chapters paint a picture of the varied nature of third sector organisations. In the first of these, Colin Rochester and Malcolm Torry make the case for the uniqueness of faith-based organisations. They discuss the tensions that emerge when these groups engage with the statutory sector; motivated as they are to volunteer by ‘congregational’ and ‘worship-based’ reasons. This is often coupled with trust-based informal management/governance which does not sit comfortably with the demands placed on them by funders.

Romayne Hutchinson and Ben Cairns discuss the tensions of hybridisation experienced at the coal face by many of the small and more local organisations that carry out a variety of activities in their communities. They identify issues such as mission-drift and isomorphism (when these associational groups take on the characteristics of statutory agencies) and make some tentative suggestions at solutions. They also address the potential impact of hybridity on the advocacy role of these groups; but this is without, as suggested earlier, the benefit of a broader discussion of agency and citizen activism.

In Chapter 8, Mike Aitkin explores social enterprises, which by their very nature take on some form of business dynamics, but suggests that these are ‘entrenched hybrids’ that combine mutual and charitable traditions. Joanna Howard and Marilyn Taylor provide an overview of partnership working which is an area of great potential, but, by nature, fraught with tensions. To complete the picture of the variety of TSOs, David Mullins and Hal Pawson consider how housing associations are changing to become ‘super organisations’ that can lose the ‘added value’ that the roots in the third sector provided.

In Chapter 11, David Lewis focuses not so much on the organisations themselves, but the people who move, or engage, across the boundaries between the sectors. He makes the important point that whilst this movement and interaction challenges the notion of the sectors themselves, thus making the concept of hybrids more appropriate, the fact remains that without the typology of ‘sectors’ there can be no concept of ‘hybrids’.

In the final chapter, Billis provides an overview of part two and discusses the problematic area of ownership and accountability in the context of the shallow/entrenched and organic/enacted categories. He provides a sound justification for what the book aims to achieve when he suggests that it is a pipedream to attempt to fully understand welfare institutions, as is the belief that they can or could, be controlled. He believes that ‘somewhere between the haphazard and the pipedream appears a more feasible and attractive destination for policy and practice’ (p. 254).

Overall this book, and the key concept of hybridity around which it is based, provides a useful, but not totally comprehensive, understanding of the tensions and dynamics that are shaping third sector organisations. As suggested before, it avoids any in-depth discussion of the political dimensions of civil society and community activism, which have such strong historical links to voluntary and community organisations. It therefore lacks a broader political context and has, perhaps, reduced the debate to a ‘managerialist’ level.

That said, there is much contained within these pages of interest to those involved in the three areas referred to in the title. Firstly, at the theoretical level there is sound analysis and in the final chapter Billis begins to set out a research agenda to take forward some of the issues raised. Secondly, those engaged with the third sector will recognise the issues and dilemmas they experience daily, consciously or otherwise, in their practice. Lastly, this title is to be recommended to those involved in policy-making. For these last two groups, understanding the issues can help in avoiding the pitfalls.