Late Adapters? How Social Workers Acquire Knowledge and Skills About Technology Tools

Little is understood about the scope of information and communication technology (ICT) use in practice for agency-based social work professionals, and still less is known about how such practitioners acquire and avail themselves of opportunities to learn about ICT tools. This study asked a sample of social work field supervisors (n?=?371) to describe their personal and professional ICT use, to rank the technological sophistication of their agency, to describe the barriers and facilitators to ICT use in their organizations and to operationalize environmental opportunities for acquiring new skills and knowledge. The authors examine factors that may influence technology use: asking if organizational culture is related to uptake in the professional context, and if self-reported individual resistance to innovation and change can explain voluntary adoption of ICT tools. The results offer a portrait of how agency-based social workers are using technology in personal and professional life, describe how these supervisors learn about developing technologies for practice, and highlight the gaps in technology infrastructures among agencies, pointing to directions for further exploration.     

Understanding Nonprofit Advocacy in Non-Western Settings: A Framework and Empirical Evidence from Singapore

Research on nonprofit advocacy in non-Western settings is still rather limited. In this article, we address this limitation by examining the advocacy practices of nonprofit charitable organizations in Singapore, a non-liberal democratic city-state in Southeast Asia with a history of colonial rule. We ask the following questions: What are the key environmental and organizational factors that influence the scope and intensity of advocacy activities of nonprofit organizations? In particular, what is the effect of the political context on the advocacy strategies and tactics among these organizations? To answer these questions, we present a three-factor explanatory model of nonprofit advocacy incorporating cause, capacity, and context. The research methodology entails a survey of nonprofit executives from a random sample of Singapore human and social service organizations. Our findings shed light on how the various aspects of the political context—perceived opportunities and threats from government intervention and dependence on government funding—shape nonprofit advocacy in a non-Western setting.     

How organizational characteristics affect the adaptive tactics used by human service nonprofit managers confronting financial uncertainty

The way that nonprofits respond to funding uncertainty is crucial to their ability to meet goals and position themselves for future success. This article investigates how structural, managerial, and financial characteristics affect the adaptive tactics used by human service nonprofits during times of financial stress. These tactics include adding new programs, reducing programs or staff, expanding or starting joint programs, pursuing earned income, and expanding advocacy involvement. Using longitudinal data on human service nonprofits collected on either side of the 2002–2003 economic downtown, we find that larger size provides organizations with a unique ability to choose among different adaptive tactics, as larger size was significantly predictive of adding new programs, reducing programs, expanding advocacy, and pursuing earned income. Strategic planning was positively associated with innovative tactics such as starting joint programs or pursuing earned income. Financial stress or declines in an organization's major funding source led to cutbacks, as expected, but managers who foresaw these challenges were able to respond proactively by adding programs or starting joint programs. However, managers with more training did not respond much differently than did other managers, and organizational age and use of performance management tools had no effect in guiding organizational responses to financial uncertainty.     

Advances in Research on Nonprofit Advocacy and Civic Engagement

Nonprofits are collective endeavors that supply a bewildering range of products and services, including some of value to their immediate members only. Many also advocate policy positions on issues of direct interest to themselves, their clients and beneficiaries, and/or the broader community. There is substantial variation in their advocacy strategies, the scope of policy goals they embrace, and the types of individuals they engage in such activities. Consequently, there are also differences in whether and how nonprofit advocacy activities reduce inequalities, enhance civic participation, and promote deliberative democracy. This symposium interprets and theorizes about emerging nonprofit challenges by showcasing research of nonprofit advocacy and civic engagement scholars. Collectively, the papers demonstrate the vibrancy of the field of nonprofit civic engagement and advocacy and identify important areas for future research to capture the complexity of nonprofits as actors guided by both instrumental and normative goals, serving organizational and social missions, and reducing some types of inequalities but creating new ones.     

Advocacy with Gloves on: The “Manners” of Strategy Used by Some Third Sector Organizations Undertaking Advocacy in NSW and Queensland

This article examines the strategies used by some third sector organizations in Australia to advocate. The purpose of this article is to identify the kinds of activities that organizations in New South Wales and Queensland use to promote advocacy, the kinds of language that is used to describe these activities, and the reasons given for the particular strategies adopted. The extent to which the organizations adopt “softer” (that is more institutional forms of advocacy) rather than more openly challenging forms of activism is examined, particularly in light of a neo-liberal political and economic environment. In this analysis emergent strategies are identified that are not easily categorized as either “institutional” or “radical” advocacy. The article presents an exploratory analysis of some of the implications of the strategies adopted, in terms of their democratic effects and potential to strengthen the capacity of third sector organizations. The article is informed by the findings of a qualitative research project involving interviews with 24 organizations in the community services and environmental fields.     

Communicating Engagement in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Meta-Level Construal of Engagement

Organizations are increasingly seeking stakeholder support through engagement to demonstrate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials. These credentials are, in turn, used to support claims of legitimacy for organizational operations. This article uses a process model of antecedents, implementation, and consequences to study the connection between engagement and CSR. CSR reports show organizations perceive engagement in CSR as both communication and activities between organizations and their stakeholders; and as a second, meta-level of communication about that engagement with stakeholders beyond those directly involved, thereby broadening the scope of organizational claims to legitimacy. Understanding what engagement is and how and why it is carried out in CSR provides a framework for understanding engagement in public relations.     

Nonprofit Product Placement: Human Rights Advocacy in Film and Television

As non-governmental organizations attempt to gain influence, membership, and funds in an increasingly crowded field, they are turning to popular culture as a way to spread both their brand and their message. This article examines Amnesty International USA’s use of what has traditionally been a corporate advertising technique: product placement in popular film and television. It argues that NGOs engage in product placement as a form of strategic communication with three interrelated goals: brand management, issue advocacy, and social norms marketing. This overlap creates theoretical outcomes and ethical considerations which, while not unique to second-order forms of communication, have not yet been explored with relation to human rights advocacy. This article first defines and gives examples of such product placement and concludes with a discussion of ethics considerations for advocacy organizations contemplating using this strategy.     

An Organizational Model of Higher Education Institutions and Faculty Teaching Goals*

The theory of organizations as “open systems” is used to develop hypotheses on the relationship between academic institutions and faculty teaching goals. The effects of three measures of academic organizations–type of control, institutional functions, and institutional affluence–on faculty support for four types of teaching goals are tested with data from a nationally representative sample of 301 academic institutions. Through the use of a path analytic model, it was found that these organizational characteristics directly affect the types of teaching goals faculty members endorse and the level of support for teaching goals in general.     

Organization and Management in the Third Sector: Toward a Cross‐Cultural Research Agenda

Third sector organizations in the industrialized and the developing world—and particularly the subset of third sector organizations known as development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—are becoming more culturally diverse in internal staff composition, management styles, and working environments. Although cultural issues have been largely absent from the nonprofit and the NGO research literatures, the organizational implications of societal culture and organizational culture are widely debated within other research fields. This article proposes a closer engagement between third sector management research and the wider study of cross‐cultural organizational issues within anthropology, development studies, and management theory. It argues that such an exchange is necessary if third sector organizational research agendas are to include changing organizational landscapes effectively, and the article concludes with some ideas for future research.     

Civic Engagement and Latina Immigrant Mothers' Remote Learning Involvement During COVID-191

Immigrant incorporation scholars have established that racialized immigrant parents encounter several barriers in their children's schooling: namely, language and cultural differences, discrimination, unfamiliarity with the U.S. schooling system, and unhelpful school agents. However, less is known about the mechanisms that lessen these challenges. Drawing on insights from immigrant incorporation and civic engagement literature, this study examines how advocacy organizations can mediate the barriers racialized immigrant parents face in their children's schooling. A case study of 20 Latina immigrant mothers is used to demonstrate how civically engaged parents drew on their participation with a local advocacy organization—Parent's Choice—to overcome the barriers that emerged during the transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Findings suggest that immigrant mothers leveraged their connection to Parent's Choice to learn how to use technology, get district-related updates, secure devices necessary for at-home learning, create complaints or demands for services at their children's school, fill out paperwork, and access community-based referrals. Parent's Choice provided support and empowered Latina immigrant parents by minimizing the overwhelming barriers they faced during online learning. These findings complicate our understanding of immigrant civic engagement patterns and provide implications of how civic engagement can facilitate the incorporation of marginalized parents in educational institutions.     

Children's protective services and law enforcement: fostering partnerships in investigations of child abuse

Although collaboration in child abuse investigations has been emphasized since 1974, barriers, including role conflicts and organizational differences, have often been reported. This study describes the process of collaboration based on the perceptions of investigators working with a Child Advocacy Center. Telephone interviews were conducted with 290 child protective service workers and law enforcement officers from 28 child advocacy centers in 20 different states. Respondents identified barriers to the process of collaboration such as conflicts over case control and facilitators including co-housing and cross-training. Conditions that should contribute to successful collaboration are discussed.     

Culture and internal communication in Chile: Linking ethical organizational culture,transparent communication,and employee advocacy

The current study examines how an ethical organizational culture relates with employee advocacy behaviors through the mediating role of transparent communication and perceived relationship investment. Through a quantitative survey with 350 employees who work for a variety of organizations, the study’s results indicated that an ethical organizational culture plays a critical role in nurturing transparent communication and perceived relationship investment, which in turn, cultivate employee advocacy behaviors. Additionally, the impact of transparent communication on employee advocacy is partially mediated by perceived relationship investment. Relevant theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Is Corporate Engagement an Advocacy Strategy for NGOs?: The Community Aid Abroad Experience

This article focuses on the question of whether corporate engagement can be used as an advocacy strategy for international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The article will explore some of the characteristics of corporate engagement by studying the corporate engagement experience of the Australian NGO Community Aid Abroad (CAA) in its program, the Mining Campaign. The risks that emerged for CAA from policy decisions and processes within the development of the campaign are of central concern.     

The Relationship between Provision of Membership Benefits and Fulfillment of Representational Roles in Nonprofit Advocacy Membership Organizations

This article explores the ways nonprofit advocacy membership organizations can manage their resource dependence on members and fulfill the organizations' representational roles, focusing on the provision of membership benefits. Membership organizations rely on financial or other resources from members and thus are constrained by them. For a nonprofit that aims to primarily speak for members, constraints by members may help to focus organizational attention on members' interests. Contrarily, for a nonprofit that aims to mainly represent broader constituents, members' constraints may hamper an organization's ability to advocate for broader constituents because members do not necessarily share the same policy goals with broader constituents. The provision of membership benefits can be a useful strategy for organizations to fulfill their representational roles and to satisfy and engage members, because people often join an organization to enjoy certain membership benefits. For an empirical analysis, this study collected a large‐scale data set through web and mail surveys of nonprofit advocacy organizations across the United States. The mixed‐mode surveys achieved a 57.5 percent response rate (729 responses). The survey and regression analysis results show that member‐serving nonprofits providing members with opportunities to participate in advocacy work are more likely to represent members' interests directly. Although broader constituency‐serving nonprofits tend to prioritize members' opinions, these organizations are more likely to adhere to the mandates of broader constituents when providing selective material membership benefits. However, when providing purposive membership benefits, these nonprofits are more likely to represent members' opinions.     

Social capital and nonprofit leaders

The concept of social capital seems to be a very compatible, useful, and important one for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits must sustain and enhance the original social capital with which they were formed and broaden it into a variety of key areas. Nonprofits and their leaders must foster social capital in order to recruit and develop board members, raise philanthropic support, develop strategic partnerships, engage in advocacy, enhance community relations, and create a shared strategic vision and mission within the organization and its employees. Nonprofit executives have a pivotal role in carrying out these functions, but they do so through relationships and networks with others. These activities are time‐consuming and demanding, and they require planning. This article provides a focused literature analysis on the concept of social capital as it applies to nonprofit management and leadership. The author views the literature with respect to definitions of social capital and the way nonprofits generate and mobilize social capital in order to achieve organizational goals. The author also cites methods for measuring social capital.     

Social media advocacy and gun violence: Applying the engagement model to nonprofit organizations’ communication efforts

Applying the model of engagement, this study tests the effectiveness of social media advocacy strategies, framing, and mobilizing information related to nonprofit organizations’ communication about the issue of gun violence. An online experiment revealed successful social media advocacy strategies within the engagement model. Two key components of social media advocacy were identified: (1) public relations practitioners’ roles in shaping messages and mobilizing publics; (2) the important role of marginalized groups and individuals in issue amplification.     

Gender and Ethnic Differences in Career Goal Attainment

The purpose of this study was to examine barriers to and facilitators of career goals among college students in the framework of the Social Cognitive Career Theory (R. W. Lent, S. D. Brown, & G. Hackétt, 1994). Questionnaires were completed by 2,743 college freshmen. Chi‐square tests and MANOVA were used to analyze the data. The authors found gender and ethnic differences in perceptions of barriers to career goals. Differences were found by ethnicity, but not by gender, in perceptions of facilitators of career goals. The authors examined factors influencing career choice goals and specific barriers and facilitators. They discuss implications for career counselors.     

Board performance and organizational effectiveness in nonprofit social services organizations

This article examines the tasks and responsibilities of nonprofit boards of directors and explores the relationship between board performance and organizational effectiveness. Thirty-three activities in nine areas of board responsibility were examined through questionnaires and interviews with board members and chief executive officers of sixteen nonprofit organizations serving developmentally disabled adults. Rankings of organizational effectiveness were determined using external evaluators and accreditation surveys. A significant relationship between board performance and organizational effectiveness was found, and the board activities most strongly correlated with organizational effectiveness are reported, including policy formation, strategic planning, program monitoring, financial planning and control, resource development, board development, and dispute resolution.     

The impact of organizational culture and leadership performance on PR professionals’ job satisfaction: Testing the joint mediating effects of engagement and trust

The study examines the impact of critical organizational factors (organizational culture and excellent leader performance) on public relations professionals’ overall job satisfaction by focusing on testing the joint mediating effects work engagement and trust could generate. A national online survey of 838 public relations professionals working in a variety of organizations was used as the empirical data to test the relationships in a proposed conceptual model. Results confirmed the strong impact organizational culture and leader performance could have on public relations professionals’ work engagement, trust, and job satisfaction. More importantly, results revealed the significant joint mediating effects of engagement and trust on professionals’ job satisfaction, when supportive organizational culture and excellent leader performance were achieved. The study concludes with research and practical implications.     

Perceptions about Compliant Flooring from Senior Managers in Long-Term Care

This study explored barriers and facilitators to adoption of compliant flooring as a fall injury prevention strategy within long-term care from the perspective of 18 long-term care senior managers. In-depth interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the Framework Method. The most important organizational facilitators to adoption were potential for injury prevention and long-term care staff's openness to change. The most important organizational barriers to adoption were negative effects to long-term care staff and financial considerations (i.e., cost and lack of funding). The most important general organizational considerations were uncertainties about clinical effectiveness, effects on long-term care staff, and flooring performance. Overall, compliant flooring was viewed positively for long-term care. The findings also suggest an opportunity for knowledge translation to inform long-term care senior managers about the existing evidence on compliant flooring.