The Digitalization of the Third Sector Organizations Involved in Welfare Services Provision: First Insights from a Quantitative and Qualitative Research

The presentation provides first insights from a quantitative and qualitative research project aimed to explore how digitalization is being implemented by social cooperatives organizations belonging to Confcooperative FVG-Federsolidarietà. Since their foundation this organizations distinguished themselves from the public ones by a peculiar capacity of innovation. Nowadays they cover a substantial share of the so called Third Sector and represent one of the most important partners of the State in social, health and educational services provision. The research aimed to esplore how these organizations are coping with the digitalization imposed by the Next Generation EU Programme and the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The main research questions are: is digitalisation considered an opportunity for innovating these organizations or does it remain a red-tape fulfillment? Is digitalization an opportunity for improving organization knowledge? What kind of support has been set up to implement digitalization in these organizations? What is the impact of digitalisation on managers’, professionals’ and service users’ roles, practices and their relationships?

To answer these questions quantitative and qualitative analisys have been conducted. First of all, a quantitative recognition has explored digitalization processes implemented by a sample of social cooperatives beginning to Confcooperative FVG_Federsolidarietà involved in the provision of social, health and educational services. Then, a qualitative analysis has been carried out to deepen in the main issues arised from the quantitative recognition, through interviews and focus groups with managers and professionals of the sampled cooperatives.