S ociological research on public social provision generally is built upon studies of income transfers from governments to individuals. This research has provided valuable information about how income transfer policies are established, why particular categories of people are made eligible, how levels of cash benefits are set, and why eligibility and generosity change over time. Cross-national research has tested theories about why different nations make different policy choices in these areas and what the outcomes are for their citizens (Amenta 1993; Bradley et al.

Our article takes issue with the treatment of organizations in much urban sociology. We argue that both Marxian political economists and Chicagoan ethnographers and quantitative analysts treat organizations as derivative rather than productive of urban social relations. This problem is not epistemological or methodological. Instead, it is rooted in the objects of analysis that urban sociologists choose. Drawing on key elements of structuration theory, we attempt to lay the groundwork for improving the treatment of organizations in urban sociology by flagging some of the key insights in the sociology of organizations. We do not view this intellectual borrowing as a one-way street, and we emphasize that urbanists have a contribution to make to sociological thinking about organizations. Correcting these problems is essential if we are to understand the link between contemporary institutional transformations and urban neighborhoods.

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A growing body of research has emerged on "mixed-form" markets-markets for goods and services in which for-profit, nonprofit, and government providers coexist. This article seeks to understand the dynamics between nonprofit and for-profit organizations operating within the same market. The authors propose a five-step theoretical framework that includes both nonprofit and for-profit actors to capture what is fundamentally a temporal process: market identification; market growth; increasing cost for goods/services; increasing price for goods/services; and cross-sector competition. The authors use data from extended qualitative investigations in distinct service markets to analyze the unique contributions and capacities of each organizational form, and the transformation of market structure over time. The authors conclude that the dynamic interplay between nonprofit and for-profit forms within markets produces three possible outcomes: stratified, displaced, and defended markets.A growing body of research has emerged on "mixed-form" markets-markets for goods and services in which for-profit, nonprofit, and government providers coexist. This literature begins from the observation that many service markets-health care, education, culture, research, social services-contain providers of all three forms (e.g., Steinberg, 1987, p. 120). This empirical fact has both helped drive the development of theories explaining the existence of nonprofit organizations and generated numerous empirical studies Note: The authors would like to thank the NVSQ editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. A previous version of this article was presented at the