The Korea Local Administration Review

The lasting economic crisis has led to both the rapid increase in welfare need and the decrease in welfare resources. Such dilemma brings two schools of thoughts, Managerialism and Deliberative Democracy, agreeing that the collaboration among various actors is the key strategy of overcoming the recent economic challenges to the whole welfare system.
Based on this idea, this study focuses on the role of the Community Welfare Organizations (CWOs) in social welfare delivery system in urban areas. First, it attempts to evaluate its effectiveness in the system, particularly with cases of CWOs in ‘Nowon-gu’ and ‘Songpa-gu’, two local district governments of Seoul. The case study of Nowon-gu and Songpa-gu tells how CWOs coordinate diverse welfare programs and encourage participatory governance in both decision-making and implementation phases of policy process.
Relatedly, this study further finds the factors that influence the level of collaboration activities of social service delivery organizations. Not only the structural attributes of organizations (organizations’ trustworthiness and managers’ experiences) but also the relational attributes of these organizations are significantly influential factors. 
According to the research, the social welfare delivery system is in fact a closely knitted network system, so the relationship with public sector organizations should not be taken lightly. Also, the voluntariness of participants in welfare network is shown the most significant factor to explain the degree of collaborative activities of these organizations in the result.