1 Introduction

Municipal governments around the world frequently turn to the private sector to help them meet their affordable housing needs. In doing so, they entrust a combination of for-profit and nonprofit organizations to develop, own, and manage affordable housing in ways that are both financially and socially responsible. The complexity of the work makes it imperative for municipal governments to partner with organizations that are adept at balancing competing interests. Yet the intraorganizational factors that affect an affordable housing provider’s capacity to strike such a balance have received scant attention from scholars to date. The analysis presented in this study seeks to fill the gap in the literature by drawing on organizational theory in general, and more specifically on a theoretical construct referred to as decoupling, to answer the following question: “What does decoupling look like for U.S. affordable housing providers, and what factors affect when and if it is used to manage competing interests?”

Decoupling comes in a variety of forms, but at its core involves saying one thing and doing another. It occurs when organizational actors espouse a commitment to one set of values or goals to garner organizational legitimacy in the face of competing interests, while approaching their day-to-day activities in ways that are indicative of a commitment to an alternative set of values or goals. The problem with decoupling is that it can lead organizations to operate in ways that are not reflective of their stated missions and to prioritize financial interests over social interests. All these outcomes may render partnerships between municipal governments and affordable housing providers less successful than the participants might hope.

This study uses data collected via semi-structured interviews with affordable housing practitioners to explore how, when, and why U.S. affordable housing providers engage in decoupling, and to what effect. It contributes to the organization theory literature by providing new information about the prevalence of decoupling in a critically important industry. Further, it offers insights as to how municipal governments can manage and minimize the detrimental effects of decoupling when partnering with organizations in the private sector.

2 Competing interests, legitimacy, and decoupling in the affordable housing industry

Federal governments have retrenched from the production and operation of affordable housing in many countries over the last half century (Dalton, 2009; Kemp, 2000; Kleit & Page, 2015). The trend is attributable in part to heightened citizen demands for efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of public goods and services, and it has triggered dramatic shifts not only in how affordable housing is brought to market, but also who participates in the process (Raynor & Coenen, 2022). In a significant number of countries, including the U.S., centralized affordable housing administrations have ceded power and autonomy to decentralized networks of agencies working at lower levels of government that must collaborate with the private sector to satisfy the housing needs of low-income populations (Graddy & Bostic, 2009). “Market-oriented provision models” have emerged as a result (Tsvenkova, 2021, p. 2) – models that often involve partnerships among municipal governments, for-profit organizations, and non-profit organizations that have a common goal of expanding the affordable housing supply (Bratt, 2012, 2018; Bratt & Lew, 2016; Leviten-Reid et al., 2019; Tsvenkova, 2019).

Decentralized affordable housing delivery systems that are highly dependent on public-private partnerships can be effective (Davidson, 2016). However, they are not without their problems. Increasing the number of stakeholders involved in the development, ownership, and management of affordable housing may correspondingly increase stakeholder demands and institutional frameworks that must be considered before decisions are made (Howell et al., 2019; Malik et al., 2022). For example, affordable housing developers in the U.S. must frequently appease tax credit allocation agencies at the state level, land use regulators at the local level, and community activists at the neighborhood level to bring projects to fruition, all while taking steps to advance their own array of organizational objectives (Bratt, 2018; Nedwick & Burnett, 2015).

Conditions such as those described make it essential for municipal governments to partner with affordable housing providers that are adept at managing competing interests (Czischke & van Bortel, 2023). This is an important skill when organizations are expected to generate enough cash flow to cover their expenses and help municipal governments move their social policy agendas forward (Read et al., 2022). Like education and other social programs experiencing privatization (Abramovitz & Zelnick, 2015; Chen & Moskop, 2020), there is an inherent tension when bringing together public goods and market values.

In the affordable housing industry, the mission of providing access to affordable housing and connecting residents to community-based resources (GAO, 2016) can often compete with traditional market logics of efficiency and cost-effectiveness (Read & Sedgwick, 2023). However, striking a balance between financial and social goals is so important in the affordable housing industries of some countries that organizations operating therein are called “hybrid organizations,” or organizations simultaneously beholden to market and social welfare logics (Raynor & Coenen, 2022; Tang et al., 2017; van Bortel & Gruis, 2019). The norms and values of market logics require affordable housing providers to extol commitments to efficiency, competition, and financial performance, whereas the norms and values of social welfare logics require them to extol commitments to community, mission, and care (Fitzgerald & Shepherd, 2018; Read & Sedgwick, 2023; Watt, 2023).

Affordable housing providers that do not operate in a manner consistent with that of a hybrid organization run the risk of losing organizational legitimacy. Organizational legitimacy is a property (Suddaby et al., 2017) sought after by organizations to confirm that “[their] actions…are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions (Suchman, 1995, p. 574).” To put this more simply, legitimacy is a resource (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990; Deephouse & Suchman, 2008; Suddaby et al., 2017) that if not met can mean losing credibility within the system in which affordable housing companies operate. Organizational legitimacy is a multi-faceted concept, but generally involves adhering to regulatory demands of respective industries (Scott, 1995), and larger socio-political demands that call for practices and structures to adhere to normative standards (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994).

Organizations become aware of normative standards by understanding the laws that surround their industries, the mandates that come with accessing potential funding, and professional and social norms espoused by leaders and activists in their fields (York et al., 2018). Additionally, isomorphic pressures often shed light to organizations about legitimate paths they should follow (Dimaggio & Powell, 1983). For example, U.S. affordable housing providers received signals about the legitimacy of helping their residents access social services when funding became available for this purpose as part of the National Affordable Housing Act (GAO, 2016). Thus, legitimacy often involves upspoken interactions between organizations and the various stakeholders that deem the organization’s “fit” with the regulatory and normative demands of their field (Suddaby, Biketine, & Haack, 2017). Given all of these competing demands, Ashforth and Gibbs (1990, p. 191) describe organizational legitimacy as a “valued, but problematic” resource because having it affords great benefits, but obtaining it requires organizations to conduct their work in a way that is responsive to stakeholder demands and in alignment with norms, values, and rules that exist within their industry or field (Kraatz & Block, 2008; Ruef & Scott, 1998; Suchman, 1995). This is no easy task in the affordable housing industry where stakeholders’ demands are large and budgets small.

Thus, maintaining legitimacy for affordable housing involves addressing both the market and social welfare logics of the affordable housing industry (Read & Sedgwick, 2024). Coupling these contradictory logics can raise efficiency problems for organizations (Meyer & Rowan, 1976), but prioritizing the demands of the market to the detriment of social policy goals can result in organizations losing legitimacy in the eyes of state actors at the federal, state, and local levels. One way affordable housing providers may respond to competing interests in their external environments is by putting on ceremonious displays that are largely disconnected from their day-to-day activities (Suddaby et al., 2017). The practice is referred to as decoupling (Meyer & Rowan, 1976) and it has received considerable attention from organization theory scholars (Harrison et al., 2015).

Decoupling occurs when organizations espouse commitments to specific values or goals to appease their external stakeholders, only to fall short of those commitments in their daily practices (Hensel & Guérard, 2020). For example, affordable housing providers in need of community support for the projects they develop, own, and manage may adopt mission statements, codes of conduct, and formal policies indicating a strong commitment to improving the lives of low-income households, while carrying out their day-to-day work in ways that prioritize operational efficiency and profitability over resident satisfaction and empowerment because it contributes to their financial solvency (Read & Sedgwick, 2023). Some organizations engage in this type of behavior intentionally to manage competing interests (Conrath-Hargraves & Wustemann, 2019), while others decouple unintentionally as they “muddle through” the process of appeasing disparate stakeholder demands (Crilly et al., 2012). In both cases, the result is “inconsistencies in what [organizations] do and what they claim to do” (Brandtner, 2021, p. 1053) and “gap[s] between work as imaged and work as done” (de Bree & Stoppendaal, 2020, p. 601).

The research on decoupling focuses on three primary areas: what comprises decoupling, when and why some organizations decouple while others do not, and what effect decoupling has on organizational performance. Regarding the first of these strands of research, decoupling can at times be conceptualized as a “policy/practice” dilemma where organizations express a commitment to something without following through (Bromley et al., 2012; Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008). Examples of “policy/practice” decoupling include the disconnect between the stated goals and practices of the “school choice” movement and its outcomes (Chen & Moskop, 2020) and, similarly, ceremonious displays of corporate social responsibility initiatives by companies that do not materialize as envisioned (Crilly et al., 2012; Onkila, Mäkelä, & Jävenpää, 2018). Decoupling can also reflect a “means/ends” dilemma when companies create so much separation between stated commitments and operational activities that the former are rendered virtually meaningless (Bromley et al., 2012). Ashforth and Gibbs (1990), Skelcher and Smith (2015), and Read and Sedgwick (2023) find that certain practices are often segregated to specific departments or organizational subunits in ways that reduce their impact. A specific example of this is the marginalized position of DEI offices within universities compared to universities’ stated missions of diversity and inclusion (Willis, 2023). In aggregate, this body of research suggests decoupling is common and potentially problematic.

Both external and internal factors affect whether organizations turn to decoupling as a coping mechanism. Competing pressures in an organization’s external environment, like being expected to achieve financial and social simultaneously, can exacerbate decoupling behaviors, with internal organizational context influencing how such behaviors manifest (Austin, 2016; Yu, 2015). The most egregious forms of decoupling emerge when conditions render the relative importance of goals ambiguous (Meyer & Rowan, 1976; Crilly et al., 2012; Purdy & Gray, 2009), and when those conditions create ambiguity as to how organizational actors should interpret goals. Decoupling behaviors may become even more pronounced when organizational actors interpret select goals as lacking validity or propriety, meaning that they do not perceive them to be aligned with their professional responsibilities, or the goals lack internal legitimacy (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008; Jacqueminet & Durand, 2020).

Irrespective of whether organizational actors decouple intentionally or unintentionally, the result may be the same – loss of organizational legitimacy over time (MacLean & Behnam, 2010). This is an undesirable outcome on multiple fronts. Organizations whose legitimacy has been drawn into question due to decoupling may have great difficulty executing mission-critical functions (García-Sánchez et al., 2021), strengthening communities in which they do business (Willner, 2019; Yu, 2015), garnering the support of external stakeholders (Grimes et al., 2019), and meeting the expectations of their partners (Agrawal & Hockerts, 2019). Organizations should therefore be leery of decoupling and the problems that may come along with it.

Interestingly, decoupling has seldomly been used as a theoretical lens through which to study the behavior of U.S. affordable housing providers (Read & Sedgwick, 2023). This is rather surprising given that (1) for-profit and nonprofit organizations have long played a role in the development, ownership, and management of subsidized rental housing and (2) the success of these organizations is often contingent on their ability to garner support from a wide range of parties, all of whom may have different interests (Bratt, 2020; Howell & Wilson, 2019). These conditions beg the question of whether U.S. affordable housing providers engage in decoupling to manage the complexities of their external environments, and if so, how they go about it in their day-to-day activities.

3 Materials and methods

Decoupling in the U.S. affordable housing industry is explored in this study using data collected via 38 semi-structured interviews approximately one hour in duration. Interviewees included directors of affordable housing development, asset management, property management, and resident services coordination for ten organizations that develop, own, and manage subsidized rental housing. Five of these organizations are for-profits and five non-profits.

The organizations were selected in consultation with the National Affordable Housing Management Association and the Consortium for Housing and Asset Management to ensure a geographically dispersed sample of industry leaders responsible for affordable housing portfolios ranging from approximately 2,000 units to approximately 50,000 units in size. Individuals in the occupational roles described were also selected in consultation with the trade organizations to capture the perspectives of those who develop affordable housing, oversee its financial performance, manage its onsite operations, and ensure the wellbeing of its residents.

Interviews were conducted over the phone using a list of open-ended prompt questions. The questions encouraged interviewees to describe how their organizations prioritize and pursue their strategic goals, as well as explain the part they and their colleagues play in the process. Obstacles perceived to prevent affordable housing providers from striking an appropriate balance between financial and social interests were then identified in the interview data manually and with the assistance of text analysis software. The final step in the research involved interpreting the obstacles in the context of the extant decoupling literature to craft a narrative.

It should be noted that no a priori assumptions were made by the research team as to how decoupling manifests itself in the U.S. affordable housing industry. Rather, themes in the data were allowed to emerge organically. Things identified by interviewees as “challenges,” “difficulties,” “obstacles,” “impediments,” and other related search terms were grouped together for the purposes of analysis and decoupling was put forth as one plausible explanation. The research was informed by the prevalence of competing logics in the affordable housing industry, but open to additional theoretical lenses to make sense of the findings (Bailey, 2018). The approach was deemed appropriate due to the exploratory nature of the study and the need to better understand decoupling in the affordable housing industry before formally developing and testing theory-driven hypotheses.

4 Results

Five obstacles were identified in the data that can impede efforts to successfully balance financial and social goals in the U.S. affordable housing industry: They include: (1) weak linkages between social goals and operational practices, (2) differing conceptualizations of social mission across occupational roles, (3) inadequate channels of communication that limit cooperation, (4) incentive structures that fail to encourage desired behaviors, and (5) opportunism that takes affordable housing providers outside their areas of expertise. All interviewees in the sample alluded to at least one of these issues in some way, indicating each is worthy of consideration.

Of the obstacles noted, weak linkages between social goals and business practices were most frequently discussed by the interviewees. A substantial majority of the affordable housing developers, asset managers, property managers, and resident service coordinators in the sample were confident in their organizations’ ability to balance financial and social interests. However, many also stated that the imperative to operate in a financially prudent manner encouraged their organizations to have more formalized processes in place to promote revenue growth, expense control, asset preservation, and risk management than resident empowerment, community wellbeing, and neighborhood stability. That is not to say interviewees dismissed the importance of the latter objectives, only that they were often pursued in informal ways. As one asset manager said: “Our [social] mission has a real impact on the way we approach our work, but it is hard to put into words. It is hard to explain how it influences the decisions our people make, but I am certain it does.” Some interviewees viewed weak linkages between social goals and operational practices as being more problematic than others, but there was agreement that social goals can quickly become secondary to financial goals in the absence of mitigating factors.

Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts also left little doubt that individuals working in the U.S. affordable housing industry conceptualize the social goals of their organizations and the best means of achieving them through the lens of their occupational roles – and that perceptual cleavages often stand in the way of cooperation. Across companies big and small, and across for-profits and nonprofits, there was a tendency for developers to focus on the social benefits derived from maximizing the number of affordable housing units produced, while asset managers tended to focus on the importance of keeping affordable housing portfolios well maintained and cash flowing so they remain accessible to low-income populations for extended periods of time. Property managers and resident service coordinators alternatively highlighted the social benefits derived from treating residents with respect, responding to their needs, and surrounding them with resources within the confines of financial constraints and regulatory requirements. Interviewees collectively stated that these competing conceptualizations of social mission can be productive or unproductive depending in part on whether an affordable housing provider leverages conflict to identify “new ideas,” “creative solutions to challenging problems,” and “transformative ways of doing business consistent with a company’s culture.”

Interviewees did not discount the effort it takes to promote intraorganizational cooperation. Nearly half stated in some form or fashion that it requires strong channels of communication between people and departments. However, there was noticeable disagreement among interviewees working in different occupational roles as to whether such channels of communication exist within their organizations. Comments put forth by property managers and resident service coordinators in particular draw into question whether companies routinely leverage the knowledge these employees possess. “Our department has information to share,” said one resident service coordinator, “and I’d like to have more opportunities to share it with those who set the direction of our company.” Others property managers and resident service coordinators expressed similar sentiments, indicating that well-developed and reciprocal channels of communication may be more the exception than the norm in the affordable housing industry. The fact that property managers and resident service coordinators in the sample raised concerns about inadequate channels of communication far more frequently than developers and asset managers may speak to power imbalances across occupational roles favoring the interests of those who generate and manage revenue from affordable housing over the interests of those who engage with the people who live in that housing. Interviewees hinted at such power imbalances by discussing the deference organizational leaders show to developers and asset managers who are perceived as the ones “producing the resources” and “making the enterprise ‘go’ financially.”

Despite espousing organizational desire to make social goals a priority, representatives of only three of the ten affordable housing providers in the sample referenced incentives in place to explicitly recognize achievement in this area. Additional compensation did not accompany the recognition in any of these cases unless it came as part of a broader performance evaluation. One asset manager offered a plausible explanation for this phenomenon: “If the people on your team are building affordable housing, keeping it up, and serving the residents they are supposed to serve, there is a pretty good chance they are having a positive social impact. All the proof you need is the individuals and families who have housing who would not have it otherwise.” The statement seemingly illustrates a presumption that progress toward financial goals is synonymous with progress toward social goals, and that rewarding one indirectly rewards the other. Several interviewees rejected this presumption and argued that affordable housing providers should do a better job encouraging the behaviors they say they value. A property manager emphasized the point by stating: “Affordable housing companies need to do a better job acknowledging the great work of their employees. They have tough, tough clients and they don’t get paid what they should. Shining a light on all their little accomplishments can help keep them motivated.” The interviewee went on to contend that far too few affordable housing providers do this well.

Finally, numerous interviewees discussed the threat of ill-advised opportunism. Some of the examples put forth included investing in new markets, developing new housing types, utilizing new sources of financing, and forming new partnerships before doing sufficient due diligence. “The biggest mistakes we’ve made as a company have come from forgetting who we are and what we are good at,” said one developer, “It puts you in a vulnerable position and encourages you to do things you normally wouldn’t.” The developer did not discourage affordable housing providers from taking risks in the name of innovation and growth – only from taking risks in the absence of a compelling business case to stray outside areas of expertise. Interviewees working in asset management, property management, and resident service coordination similarly advised mission-oriented affordable housing providers to expose non-core business activities to intense scrutiny because social goals are often the first thing to be sacrificed when such activities do not go to plan. As one resident service coordinator opined: “Onsite programming and supportive services are always in threat when the numbers get tight.”

While none of the affordable housing practitioners participating in this study contended that their organizations have great difficulty balancing financial and social interests, several acknowledged room for improvement. Interviewees lamented “missed opportunities for collaboration, “poorly coordinated activities,” “counterproductive interactions,” and “shortsighted management decisions,” all stemming from intraorganizational issues. This warrants consideration of why such problems exist and what can be done to address them.

5 Discussion

Organization theory suggests all five of the obstacles presented in the preceding section of this paper are manifestations of, or contributing factors to, decoupling in the affordable housing industry. Weak linkages between social goals and operational practices, for example, are illustrative of what Bromley et al. (2012) refer to as “symbolic implementation.” It occurs when organizational actors give lip service to programs, policies, or initiatives without connecting them to specific organizational activities. The principal problem with symbolic implementation is that it allows organizational actors to behave in internally inconsistent ways that are not governed by a “coherent logic or systemic framework” (Basu & Palazzo, 2008, p. 129). In the affordable housing industry, such behavior may impede organizations’ progress toward social goals more so than financial goals because as Thornton et al. (2012) observe, “one way individuals and organizations deal with the pressures of conflicting logics of different institutional orders is to loosely couple or decouple who they are from how they act (p. 57).” This coping mechanism is on full display when affordable housing practitioners espouse a commitment to social goals without being able to clearly articulate how those goals are achieved.

Means/ends decoupling across occupational roles is also evident in the interview data. This may be the case because individuals employed in different capacities respond to different professional norms and expectations (Bévort & Suddaby, 2016), with some prioritizing and pursuing select goals much more rigorously than others as a result (van Wieringen, Croenewegen, & Broese van Groenou, 2017). At the very least, different professional norms and expectations may encourage organizational actors to conceptualize and assign meaning to financial and social goals in unique ways that affect how they approach their work (Kifokeris & Löwstedt, 2021). This type of decoupling is not inherently problematic, but it can be when organizational actors perceive enterprise-wide goals to be minimally aligned with their occupational roles – and make minimal efforts to advance those goals as a result (Jacqueminet & Durand, 2020). The threat of such outcomes is real in the affordable housing industry when developers, asset managers, property managers, and resident service coordinators conceptualize the social missions of their organizations differently and having differing perspectives on the parts they play in those missions.

Inadequate and informal channels of communication among affordable housing practitioners, coupled with power imbalances across occupational roles, appear to exacerbate the detrimental effects of decoupling by preventing consensus building around organizational goals. The finding aligns with the research of Onkila, Mäkelä, and Javenpää (2018), Currie and Spyridonids (2015), and Kifokeris and Löwstedt (2021), among others, who warn that communication deficiencies can lead organizational actors to pursue organizational objectives in decoupled or incongruent ways that are unlikely to achieve desired outcomes. Much can be learned from this body of work because it conveys the idea that organizations must not only empower their employees to communicate openly, but also that bottom-up communication can help develop a shared sense of purpose among individuals who might otherwise operate in disciplinary silos (Kifokeris & Löwstedt, 2021). The stronger the shared sense of purpose, the more likely affordable housing developers, asset managers, property managers, and resident service coordinators are to align their professional goals and coordinate their professional activities. However, there is little reason to believe financial and social interests will be balanced equally through pluralistic interactions between these groups of professionals if intraorganizational power dynamics consistently and profoundly favor some groups over others (Read et al., 2022). Affordable housing providers must therefore consider who has power within their ranks, who does not, and how disparities in the allocation of power are likely to influence organizational outcomes.

Regarding incentive structures, the fact that many affordable housing companies put forth social goals as mission critical yet fail to reward employees for achieving them is evidence of decoupling in and off itself. It is arguably another manifestation of symbolic implementation (Bromley et al., 2012) leading to a disconnect between organizational objectives and activities. The question that naturally follows is whether putting incentives in place is likely to influence affordable housing practitioners’ behavior, and if so, how those incentives should be structured. Aguilera et al. (2021) offer some evidence that financial incentives can encourage employees to meaningfully adopt social practice, and that those incentives are particularly useful when such practices increase employees’ workloads. Other scholars find that nonfinancial support in the form of social networks, transparent reporting, and strong oversight is also an effective means of moving social goals forward (Boxenbaum & Jonsson, 2008; García-Sánchez et al., 2022). Affordable housing providers must decide for themselves which of these approaches is most likely to recouple social goals with organizational activities through appropriate incentivization.

Opportunism that takes affordable housing providers outside their areas of expertise is the last of the five obstacles observed in the data that can be interpreted in the context of the organization theory literature. When organizations veer from their primary goals, mission drift has occurred. Decoupling is in many ways an observable outcome of mission drift, for when organizations fail to pursue stated social goals, or segregate social goals to select parts of an organization, they run the risk of disconnecting social mission from operations (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990; Chen & Moskop, 2020; Grimes et al., 2019; Whelan et al., 2019). U.S. affordable housing providers are by no means the only ones to suffer from mission drift in favor of creative, performance-driven, and potentially lucrative practices, but they may be particularly susceptible to the problem due to resource constraints. The need for development fee revenue may encourage organizations to take on projects that are inconsistent with what they purport to value (Bratt & Lew, 2016; Grimes et al., 2019). Rather than discouraging this type of mission drift, public and private sector stakeholders may encourage it by demonstrating a willingness to support the development of affordable housing with tedious social benefits so long as it serves as a conspicuous sign of investment in the communities they represent (Read & Sanderford, 2017). These factors make mission drift a very real concern for affordable housing providers that must be addressed if they hope to maintain their legitimacy as socially oriented enterprises (MacLean & Behnam, 2010; Willner, 2019; Yu, 2015).

6 Conclusions

Results of this study suggest balancing financial and social interests is a formidable challenge in the U.S. affordable housing industry. Competing stakeholder demands encourage affordable housing providers to rely on coping mechanisms to manage the complexities of their external environments, often for the sake of obtaining and maintaining organizational legitimacy. Decoupling appears to be one such coping mechanism – one that can prevent organizations from achieving their social goals, as well as the social goals of municipal governments with which they partner. Planners, policymakers, and other public officials that wish to expand the supply of affordable housing in their jurisdictions, while simultaneously strengthening neighborhoods and empowering low-income populations, must therefore be leery of decoupling in all its forms and take steps to avoid it whenever possible.

To minimize the detrimental effects of decoupling, municipal governments must first recognize that affordable housing providers may not be aware that they are doing it. These organizations simply may not realize they have policies, procedures, and practices in place that more strongly favor the pursuit of financial goals than social goals. Comments made by the interviewees participating in this study support the proposition because each expressed a seemingly sincere belief that their organizations were firmly committed to their social missions. Thus, it may fall to municipal governments to bring awareness of decoupling to those with whom they collaborate.

One way municipal governments can draw attention to decoupling is by assessing the threat it poses when evaluating prospective affordable housing partners. For example, before offering affordable housing providers financial, political, or regulatory support, municipal governments can ask questions about how they approach their work to determine whether strong linkages exist between operational activities and social goals. Further, municipal governments can determine if affordable housing providers encourage collaboration among their employees or incentivize them to act in socially conscious ways. Answering these questions is likely to shed light on decoupling so it can be addressed before the formation of public-private partnerships (Read et al., 2024).

Concerns about decoupling should also encourage municipal governments to think carefully about how they partner with private sector affordable housing providers. It stands to reason that some partnership arrangements may contribute to decoupling behaviors more than others by creating uncertainty regarding the financial and social goals private sector organizations are expected to prioritize (George, Fewer, & Puranan, 2024). There is also the possibility that some partnership arrangements may be better suited for for-profit organizations than non-profit organizations, or vice versa, depending upon the institutional pressures each type of organization faces (Bratt, 2008). By considering these factors, municipal governments can put their partners in a better position to succeed.

As for future research on decoupling in the affordable housing industry, several opportunities exist. One interesting line of inquiry relates to the operations of U.S. nonprofit organizations that control smaller and more geographically concentrated portfolios of affordable housing than those represented in this study. The affordable housing literature suggests such organizations could be more susceptible to decoupling behaviors because they must do everything possible to garner resources in challenging times – or less susceptible to decoupling behaviors because they are accountable to stakeholders with similar interests who can closely monitor how they approach their work (Ellen & Voicu, 2006; Fields, 2015; Thomas & Etienne, 2017; Wong, 2018; Yerena, 2023). Both hypotheses are plausible and worthy of investigation to help municipal policymakers in the U.S. better understand the potential pros and cons of collaborating with affordable housing providers that have different organizational characteristics.

Opportunities also exist to consider the extent to which affordable housing providers outside the U.S. engage in decoupling. As a result of neoliberal shifts in public policy around the globe, many countries now rely on partnerships between the public, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors to meet the housing needs of low-income populations (Byrne & Norris, 2022; Czischke & van Bortel, 2023; Turk, 2023). All these partnerships have the potential to put affordable housing providers in a position where they must simultaneously adhere to market and social logics, and correspondingly take steps to ensure the demands of capital investors are not perceived to overshadow the needs of the poor (Lilius & Hirvonen, 2023; Watt, 2023). However, how affordable housing providers cope with these competing interest may vary across countries because cultures, values, institutions, and business climates vary (Mangold & Mjörnell, 2023; Raynor & Coenen, 2022). This suggests there is a need to study decoupling in the affordable housing industries of different countries before drawing broad conclusions about its ramifications.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the evidence of decoupling presented in this study should serve as a call for additional research evaluating the merits of privatizing the provision of affordable housing in ways that have become commonplace throughout the world. The literature on this topic is already rather expansive, yet much remains to be learned about what is gained and what is lost by moving away from direct public delivery of affordable housing toward hybrid delivery models (Vale & Freemark, 2019; Wijburg & Waldron, 2020). Decoupling appears to be a notable risk associated with privatization, which needs to be studied in situations where the three disparate tasks of developing, owning, and managing affordable housing are allocated to public and private sector organizations in ways that may increase or decrease the goal ambiguity organizational actors face.