Beyond the Crossroads: Policy Issues for the Philippine Nonprofit Sector

The Philippine nonprofit sector, including nongovernmental organizations, have enjoyed an enabling and facilitative state environment since the People Power Revolution of 1986. It currently faces a legitimacy challenge in terms of its ability to represent the people, to be accountable to them, and to show its autonomy and difference from the state. It also confronts the challenge of how it can deliver services more effectively as it expands and professionalizes. Raising resources through government, philanthropy, and income generation also continue to be major challenges.     

Gender,Occupation, and Promotion to Management in the Nonprofit Sector

Although one can assume the work values within nonprofit organizations promote gender equality in promotion decisions, there is preliminary evidence that in the nonprofit sector women are underrepresented in higher management positions. Whereas the mechanisms resulting in underrepresentation of women in management have been studied extensively in for‐profit organizations, little is known about these mechanisms in nonprofit organizations. Is gender in nonprofit organizations—even given the underlying values of these organizations—an impediment to attaining a management position? This article presents a case study of employment patterns within the Dutch section of the humanitarian INGO Médecins Sans Frontières and focuses particularly on the effects of gender and occupation on transitions to management. The case study organization represents a “critical case” because the nature of this organization's work environment can be expected to result in a relatively high percentage of women in management. Employee records (N = 2,247) were analyzed using event history models. We found that women made the transition to management less rapidly than men, even when controlling for factors like age, previous work experience, and nationality. However, gender differences were completely explained by occupation. Those employees in female‐dominated occupations (in this case, medical personnel such as nurses) had a lower promotion‐to‐management rate than those in male‐dominated occupations (in this case, nonmedical personnel such as financial officers), irrespective of their gender. This case study highlights the importance to nonprofit management research of studying the effects of occupational sex segregation on promotion.     

The Nonprofit Sector and the Informal Sector: A Theoretical Perspective

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - How do and why might different nations demarcate socioeconomic activity into distinct societal sectors? In this review and...     

Defining the Nonprofit Sector: Some Lessons from History

This article seeks to establish whether the structural-operational definition of the sector, used by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (JHCNSP), is universal in its applicability. Historical case studies of primary health care and social housing provision in nineteenth-century England demonstrate that the definition cannot accommodate the institutional diversity of earlier periods and does not produce meaningful sectoral distinctions. The structural-operational definition rules out of the sector a significant proportion of nonstatutory, nonprofit maximizing providers. In particular, it excludes the mutual aid organizations, which are widely recognized as important for the development of civil society and which have historically been considered to be key components of the sector. These case studies suggest that the structural-operational definition limits the capacity of the JHCNSP to fulfil its aim of establishing the factors that promote or retard the sector's development owing to potential measurement errors and the pattern of development that the project implicitly assumes for the nonprofit sector.     

Evaluation and Evaluative Rigor in the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofit organizations are under more pressure than ever to provide “rigorous” evidence of program impact. However, as expectations for rigorous evidence rise, many nonprofits struggle with challenges that inhibit evaluation. Recognizing these trends and tensions, this study identifies catalysts and obstacles to evaluation activity and the correlates of evaluative rigor among US nonprofits based on a national survey of registered public charities (n = 311). Results reveal that the most important catalysts to evaluation include the desire to improve program effectiveness and legitimacy, while the most important obstacles include insufficient time and money. Moreover, regression analysis finds that evaluation appears to be most rigorous when (1) evaluation is a priority, (2) a supportive organizational culture exists, (3) management requires evaluation, (4) evaluation is not primarily motivated by personal interest, and (5) evaluation is likely to reveal success. Overall, intrinsically motivated evaluation appears to be more rigorous than externally mandated evaluation, suggesting that stakeholders should work to help capacitate receptive nonprofits to improve evaluative rigor instead of imposing external requirements.     

Conceptualizing the Third Sector in Ireland,North and South

While there is a long established and deeply embedded tradition of voluntary action and nonprofit organizing in Ireland, there has been very limited debate on a philosophy of voluntary action or on the place of the third sector in a modern democratic state. It is against this background that practitioners and academics are beginning to articulate their individual understandings of the role of the third sector in Irish society. This paper presents a framework developed from three questions to consider the place of the third sector in a modern democratic state. The questions are: What are the roles of the third sector in a society? What relationships exist between the third and other sectors? How are third sector organizations resourced within that societal context? Answering these questions contributes to a conceptualization of the third sector in Ireland, North and South.

     

Factors Attracting Individuals to Nonprofit Management over Public and Private Sector Management

Little research has sought to identify the distinct advantages that nonprofits offer employees, particularly managers. Drawing upon Weisbrod's theory of managerial sorting (1988), we test a series of hypotheses about the differences among nonprofit, public, and for‐profit organizations that may explain the preference of managers to work in one sector over the other. We use pooled cross‐sectional data from the General Social Survey to test managerial sorting. We find many similarities in the perceptions of managers in the nonprofit and public sectors as compared to the for‐profit sector. However, when we examine the sorting of managers into nonprofit versus public sector jobs, we find differences in work environment. Compared to those working in the public sector, managers in nonprofits report greater freedom in deciding how to carry out their job functions, more control over their work schedules, and greater opportunities for pay increases. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the practice of nonprofit management.     

South Africa: Anti-Apartheid NGOs in Transition

Under apartheid, there were an ever-increasing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned about challenging the South African state and furthering a nonracial democratic society. In the 1990s, with the transition to an African National Congress-led democratic government, these organizations underwent profound changes. This article describes the key dynamics of this process, outlines the challenges currently confronting the new NGO sector, and concludes that the prospects for progressive NGO work in dealing with the poor and marginalized are constrained by the prevailing neoliberal economic climate.     

Rural Women Knowing All: Globalization and Rural Women's Organizing in China

Rural women in China are located on the periphery of that country's processes of globalization and modernization. They also, in the 1990s, acquired a voice of their own through the magazine Rural Women Knowing All. This magazine, founded through the intersection of Chinese and transnational feminisms, provided rural women with connections, knowledge and a venue for their own aspirations. Through examining the dichotomies presented by urbanization, the ‘global economy’, ‘culture’ and education, and activism and organizing, this article discusses the ways that Rural Women Knowing All transformed the meanings of globalization for contemporary Chinese rural women, and in the process granted them agency to shape rural identities and existences in alternative ways.     

The Role of the Nonprofit Sector in a Self-Governing Society: A View from the United States

This article explores the role of private, nonprofit organizations in a self-governing society. A framework identifying the diverse theories that explain the various types of nonprofit organizations observed in contemporary American society is sketched. This provides a fuller understanding of the varied and complex ways that nonprofit organizations contribute to the institutions of governance.     

Characteristics of Innovative Nonprofit Organizations in Argentina

The purpose of this study was to discover the characteristics of innovative organizations as perceived by employees of Argentine nonprofit organizations. The free listing technique, adapted from the field of cognitive anthropology, was used to achieve this task. Fifteen representatives of a variety of Argentinean nonprofit organizations participated in the study. Among the highest rated characteristics were: searching for new ways, solutions, and unconventional forms of work; adapting to new times; suggesting new forms for solving problems; and reflecting over organizational activities and actions. Rated as least characteristic were: encouraging role changes within teams; focusing on organizational mission; not being afraid of failure; and generosity (sharing information with other organizations).     

The Role of the Nonprofit Sector Amid Political Change: Contrasting Approaches to Slovakian Civil Society

This paper focuses on the role, functions, and activities of the nonprofit sector in Slovakia from 1993 to 1998 during a critical time in the country's development, using Salamon's classification of the sector's relationships with government as opposition, partner, or agent. Relying on personal interviews with participants and observers, the paper examines two key political events to illustrate these issues—the debate about the proposed Law on Foundations, and the 1998 Parliamentary elections.     

Nonprofit Board Balance and Perceived Performance

Based on prior literature, this article offers a reconciliation of the core roles of nonprofit boards and aligns these role‐sets with organizational theories. A survey instrument was developed and validated to measure each of four role‐sets (monitoring, supporting, partnering, and representing) to assess whether emphasis on specific roles affects board members’ perception of performance. Our study of nonprofit boards in a midsized midwestern city found that balance across the role‐sets was associated with effective organizational performance. Furthermore, when board members describe any of the four role‐sets as deficient, they perceive the organization as less effective. The results of the study provide practitioners with a validated survey tool that provides nonprofit boards with a method to identify which roles their board emphasizes.     

The Nonprofit Sector at a Crossroads: The Case of America

Despite some encouraging trends, America's nonprofit sector stands at a crossroads because of an interrelated series of challenges. Government budget cuts beginning in the early 1980s have eliminated a significant source of nonprofit revenues and created a serious fiscal squeeze for many organizations. Although the sector as a whole managed to replace this lost revenue, it has done so largely through fees and charges that have attracted for-profit businesses into traditional fields of nonprofit action, creating a serious economic challenge to the sector. Simultaneously, important questions have been raised about the effectiveness and accountability of nonprofit organizations, and about what some see as the overprofessionalization and bureaucratization of the sector. All of this has undermined public confidence in the sector and prompted questions about the basic legitimacy of the special tax and legal benefits it enjoys. To cope with these challenges, American nonprofits could usefully undergo a process of renewal that revives the sector's basic values, reconnects it to its citizen base, and creates a better public understanding of its functions and role.     

Political Influence and the Performance of Nonprofit Spanish Banks

This article presents empirical evidence about factors that influence the solvency of Spanish savings banks. It also studies whether the presence of politicians in their governance has led to lower solvency ratios and, consequently, to the current economic situation in the Spanish banking sector. We use multivariate regressions, taking the solvency ratio as the dependent variable; and efficiency, the coverage ratio, political influence, CEOs’ political influence, size, growth, and age as independent variables. Our results confirm that banking entities controlled by politicians resulted in poor performance, and political influence on the boards of savings banks led them to insolvency. The findings show that the non‐ownership structure of savings banks, the lack of best practice corporate governance mechanisms, and political presence have weakened them.     

Kazakhstan's Nonprofit Sector at a Crossroad on the Great Silk Road

The Republic of Kazakhstan is developing a nonprofit sector, albeit slowly. It still suffers from the experience of 70 years of Communism but is now moving forward with development. This survey reviews the history, evolution, scope, and currency with a focus on the legal underpinnings of the nonprofit sector in Kazakhstan. In addition to discussing the traditions and cultures affecting development, the survey mainly concentrates on the legal and legislative obstacles that discourage rather than encourage more rapid development of the third sector in this Central Asian state.     

The Discreet Charm of the Nonprofit Form: Service Professionals and Nonprofit Organizations (Poland 1989-1993)

This paper examines the role of social proximity (nonprofit) organizations in the process of professional innovation that involved a transfer of human service technologies from Western Europe and the United States to Poland during the 1989 political–economic reform. To explain that role, the paper introduces a theoretical model that posits the existence of elective affinity between the social proximity form and occupational interests of service providers. As the existing system of professions is no longer sufficient to legitimate expert services and curb competition among different types of providers, the social proximity form bestows social legitimacy on novel or controversial types of services, and is thus instrumental in marketing those services. The proposed model is supported by quantitative data and in-depth interviews. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Stability and Change in Nonprofit Organizations: The Volunteer Contribution

This paper reports on a study of the microprocesses of stability and change in a nonprofit welfare organization in Australia. We position volunteering and voluntarism as core constitutive phenomena in and of nonprofit organizations and the nonprofit sector more generally, and examine volunteer agency in action. Developing a model drawn from neoinstitutional theory and adopting an ethnographic approach, the paper illustrates theoretically and empirically how volunteers create and revise institutional orders operative within organizations in ways hitherto poorly articulated and understood.     

Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the Nonprofit Sector Cross-Nationally

Recent research has usefully documented the contribution that nonprofit organizations make to social capital and to the economic and political development it seems to foster. Because of a gross lack of basic comparative data, however, the question of what it is that allows such organizations to develop remains far from settled. This article seeks to remedy this by testing five existing theories of the nonprofit sector against data assembled on eight countries as part of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. The five theories are: (a) government failure/market failure theory; (b) supply-side theory; (c) trust theories; (d) welfare state theory; and (e) interdependence theory. The article finds none of these theories adequate to explain the variations among countries in either the size, the composition, or the financing of the nonprofit sector. On this basis it suggests a new theoretical approach to explaining patterns of nonprofit development among countries—the social origins approach—which focuses on broader social, political, and economic relationships. Using this theory, the article identifies four routes of third-sector development (the liberal, the social democratic, the corporatist, and the statist), each associated with a particular constellation of class relationships and pattern of state-society relations. The article then tests this theory against the eight-country data and finds that it helps make sense of anomalies left unexplained by the prevailing theories.     

Nonprofit entrepreneurial orientation: A systematic literature review and conceptual framework

The purpose of this study is to propose a set of factors that characterize the manifestation of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in nonprofit organizations (NPOs), and we performed a systematic review of the literature. Initially, 17 studies were identified in different databases, and after a full reading of the documents that met the objective of this study, we selected and qualitatively analyzed 14 theoretical and empirical studies about EO in the nonprofit context. The studies analyzed allowed us to understand the characteristics of organizational entrepreneurship in NPOs, through the dimensions of innovativeness, proactivity, risk‐taking, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness, in addition to the reciprocity dimension, which emerged from the literature. By adding reciprocity as the sixth dimension of the EO construct, it was possible to group a set factors related to each dimension which, after being refined, supported the proposition of a conceptual framework for an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial behavior in different contexts of NPOs. This study contributes to the systematization of factors that configure the manifestation of EO in the nonprofit sector, by proposing a conceptual framework entailing six dimensions of EO and propositions for future studies.