Managing stakeholder relationships and nonprofit organization effectiveness

This research examined how nonprofit organizations manage their relationships with stakeholders and how these practices relate to perceived organization effectiveness. We conducted semistructured, open‐ended interviews with executive directors of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to discover whom they see as their stakeholders, the types of expectations they encounter from stakeholders, and the practices they use in managing stakeholder relationships. The two nonprofits that were evaluated as most effective used a consistent, thematic rationale in dealing with stakeholder issues: one organization discussed its actions in terms of its mission and core values, the other based its actions in terms of building relationships and networks. Our study suggests that organizations that ground their external relations in issues that are recognized as good nonprofit management, and do so consistently across stakeholder groups, will tend to be rated as more effective by multiple, external evaluators.     

Ethical conflict and job satisfaction of public relations practitioners

This study attempted to explore the linkage between ethical conflict and job satisfaction, causes of ethical conflicts, and consequences of job dissatisfaction of public relations practitioners. The findings show that many practitioners confirmed the existence of ethical conflict in their workplace and suggest that ethical challenges are largely triggered by top management's ethical standard. Although practitioners resolved conflicts by leaving their companies, they also recognized the hope in resolving the ethical challenges that they had faced. Participants emphasized the importance of an open communication environment, the support of internal stakeholders, and a high professional standard.     

Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook

Since social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, began allowing organizations to create profiles and become active members, organizations have started incorporating these strategies into their public relations programming. For-profit organizations have used these sites to help launch products and strengthen their existing brands; however, little is known about how nonprofit organizations are taking advantage of the social networking popularity. Through a content analysis of 275 nonprofit organization profiles on Facebook, this study examines how these new social networking sites are being used by the organizations to advance their organization's mission and programs. Solely having a profile will not in itself increase awareness or trigger an influx of participation. Instead careful planning and research will greatly benefit nonprofits as they attempt to develop social networking relationships with their stakeholders.     

杜邦分析体系在财务管理中存在的问题及改进建议

随着企业财务管理目标的变化,传统杜邦分析体系已经无法满足企业进行全面分析的需求。本文在指出传统杜邦体系存在问题的基础上提出改进建议,并以五粮液公司为例,阐述改进后的杜邦体系的运用。     

Common Agency in Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations

Most theories of nonprofit organizations and nonprofit leadership recognize the multitude of stakeholders—including board members, donors and volunteers, funders, the media, and policy makers—that organizational leaders must contend with in doing their work. For nonprofits engaged in advocacy, demands from stakeholders may be even more challenging to meet. Although stakeholder theory recognizes the effect of various groups on an organization, it does not explain how leaders manage the preferences of their often‐competing stakeholders while they make choices for the organization. This study develops a common agency framework, evaluating the roles of three groups crucial to nonprofit advocacy organizations: the organization's board of directors, elected officials, and donors/members. The common agency framework is then illustrated with interviews with leaders of nonprofit advocacy organizations in California. Findings suggest that the leaders of these groups have a significant amount of discretion in guiding their organizations’ activities and operations.     

Going head to head: Content analysis of high profile conflicts as played out in the press

Content analyses of news coverage for high profile conflicts (the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American Airlines, Massachusetts Military Reservation, United Parcel Service) provide a natural history of the use of the contingency theory in public relations. The content analysis tracked the changing stances of organizations moving on the continuum from pure advocacy to pure accommodation, in response to a number of contingent factors that can just as readily move an organization toward accommodation as toward advocacy. Integrating conflict and conflict resolution models from the conflict literature with the contingency theory in public relations, results confirm that strategies as well as stances of an organization and its public change over time. This change over time has been influenced predominantly by two contingent factors: internal threats and external threats. Both parties in each conflict demonstrated overall advocacy and employed a contending strategy predominantly during the conflict management process.     

Collaboration and conflict between agencies and clients

Public relations agencies are an important part of the public relations industry, but their relations with client organizations are rarely studied. There is more literature and studies in agency-client relations in advertising than in public relations. This paper reviews literature and reports results of an empirical study into perceptions of public relations agencies and their clients on the reasons for their cooperation and sources of conflict between them. Results show that agencies misperceive reasons for which they are hired and the sources of conflict in the relationship. The paper offers several suggestions about how to tackle the problem: notwithstanding rebranding into consultancies and firms, public relations agencies-client relations should be studied as a particular example of a broader family of agency-client relations. Also agencies should study and strategically manage relations with their clients, while being realistic about client organization’s needs – sometimes they just need additional arms and legs.     

Health Care and Disability NGOs in Croatia: State Relations,Privatization, and Professionalism in an Emerging Field

Although nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in post-socialist countries have been under a microscope since their inception, their relations with the state are only beginning to come into focus and to be the subject of comparative and theoretical assessment. What these relationships mean to different stakeholders, whether they take trajectories similar to those in the West, and how they will be shaped by socialist legacies, are important questions to address before such relations are naturalized as “the way things are.” This paper examines NGO/state relations in the development of health care and disability services in Croatia, a nation newly admitted to membership in the European Union. The paper explores policy and institutional legacies, health care privatization, and relations with health professionals as forces affecting the financing, structure, and experience of relationships between NGOs and the post-socialist state.     

Non-profit organizations bridging the communication divide in a complex South Africa

Purpose

South Africa's post-apartheid governments have made remarkable progress in consolidating the nation's peaceful transition to democracy, but many South Africans still view themselves and each other according to stigmatizing categories. As the country's remarkable and peaceful transition to democracy unfolds, millions, both urban and rural, are still confronted with having to survive unemployment, homelessness, lack of basic services, HIV/Aids, food insecurity and unacceptable levels of crime and violence. Confronted by the complexity of our development challenges, one of our biggest failures is a lack of communication, trust, common purpose, collaborative leadership and sustainable relationships between the various sectors and stakeholders in development. Transforming South Africa's society to remove the legacy of marginalization will be a long-term process requiring the sustained commitment of the leaders and people of the nation's diverse groups. So the question remains: how can non-profit organizations (NPOs) establish themselves as development providers within the uncertain political arena, of which South Africa is characteristic, in order to represent all the masses who cannot speak for themselves and more than often find themselves in a marginalized and stigmatized position?

Principle results

Some Non-profit organizations recognize that their relationships with stakeholders is of great importance for their survival, various forms of communication take place without the necessary planning and without clear objectives for the development of these relationships. NPOs need a positive image and reputation due to financial implications where they do not have sufficient funds to support or market themselves effectively. In this climate of polarization NPOs play a pivotal role in providing a voice to the poor, mobilizing a motion of change and creating a platform for relationships, credibility and trust. Within the theoretical framework of relationship management theory, the interests of all stakeholders are balanced through the management of the stakeholder relationships.

Major conclusions

Non-profit organizations need to ensure that they protect their stakeholders (especially those who are in desperate need of the services rendered by these organizations), deliver better services and although not operating for the purpose of making a profit, manage themselves so that they do generate profit which will enable them to support themselves especially when funding is something that is becoming a rare phenomenon. Although NPOs find themselves in difficult financial times they need to renovate and almost reinvent themselves, in order to be fully capable to address many social problems in SA and to indicate to those who support them (especially financially) that they are to be trusted, committed to make a difference, that they deliver on their promises and to ensure open communication channels with all their stakeholders. NPOs need to manage their reputations which are built on their corporate identities because it is the organization's reputation that often creates a lifeline in uncertain times. If the NPOs succeed in managing their identities effectively, it may serve as the foundation for developing and maintaining relationships with their respective stakeholders which in turn could change the face of South Africa's society. These organizations might go about creating a platform for dialog in an attempt to build sustainable productive relationships that can go about uplifting and empowering those who would otherwise not have such an opportunity.     

Putting stakeholders’ engagement in the equation: Proposing the integrated network engagement model

Research on engagement and relationships in the public relations literature tends to focus on individual stakeholders’ psychological states or traits. Researchers have not fully considered how stakeholders’ social environments impact their engagement with organizations. To advance theorizing on engagement and relationships, this study considers stakeholders’ social environments by examining the social ties they activate when engaging with an organization. Thus, we propose and examine the Integrated Network Model of Engagement to understand the stakeholder side of engagement. Through an egocentric network survey, we identify multiple sources of influence on indicators and outcomes of engagement, and assess the relationship between engagement indicators and outcomes. Results suggest that stakeholders’ network structures positively associated with indicators of relational engagement and outcomes of engagement, specifically OPR. On the other hand, the composition of stakeholders’ networks consistently had mixed associations with engagement indicators and outcomes. We argue it is critical for public relations scholars to account for these complexities and for practitioners to understand stakeholders’ social environments when attempting to engage them.     

Women's Organizations and Civil Society in China Making a Difference

This article explores the changing terrain of women's organizations in the reform period in China. It identifies the internal and external factors which have triggered both changes within the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), the officially designated mass organization representing women's interests, as well as the emergence of new, more autonomous women's organizations. It looks closely at the influence of these organizations on government policy. While the ACWF is particularly well positioned, as a Party organization, to influence policy, the ability of new women's organizations to bring about policy change is more limited. Through the study of women's organizations the article draws broader conclusions about the changing nature of civil society in China. Though women's organizations do not have political change as their prime organizational motive, they are nevertheless symbolically important. As occupiers of non- governmental organizational space and as components of a critical public sphere, they have implicit political agency, and as such, are as much makers of herstory as its product.     

Nonprofit versus corporate governance: An economic approach

This article proposes a new theoretical concept of nonprofit governance using transaction cost economics and the economic theory of contracts. After a short review of economic approaches to corporate governance, I clarify the specific nature of the governance problem in nonprofit organizations. Based on this analysis, I derive criteria for selecting an organization's relevant stakeholders. If stakeholders provide valuable specific resources without the protection of a comprehensive contract that details exactly how the organization is to use these resources, then such stakeholders seek decision and control rights in order to direct the use of the resources they have provided. I argue that the core problem of governance is how to enhance valuable specific contributions of the relevant stakeholders while keeping the costs of bargaining between stakeholders and the costs of collective decision making low. The theory developed is then applied in a discussion of practically relevant governance mechanisms, and the concept of governance is used to contribute to the discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the nonprofit character of organizations from a governance perspective.     

Player transgressions and the management of the sport sponsor relationship

Player transgressions in sport relate to on- or off-field incidents that are out of the ordinary and may bring negative repercussions for stakeholders as a result of their association with the team, athlete or sport. Based on a series of depth interviews conducted with executives representing major Australian team-based sporting organizations, this paper outlines the effects that these incidents can have on relationships with sponsors from a sport organization perspective. The findings serve to develop a conceptual model that illustrates that the impact of transgressions is determined by a number of factors, which are discussed. The paper further presents a number of implications for the sport organization's public relations strategy, given that the role of public relations has evolved from primarily a communications focus to a more strategic management of relationships with various publics and stakeholders.     

Field Dynamics and Public Relations Theory: Toward the Management of Multiple Publics

This article expands on the theoretical idea that public relations should be a two-way symmetrical process in which organizations use principles of communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution to manage relationships with strategic publics. We point out that the symmetrical model is two-way and does not explain the situation in which an organization must communicate with multiple publics about a problem. In the typical public relations case, the organization carries on a public debate with at least one relevant public in front of numerous other publics. This article adapts the method of field dynamics for assessing the relative positions of publics and organizations. The method makes it possible to compare organizations and publics on the dimensions of dominance—submissiveness, friendly-unfriendly, and group versus self-orientation. We compare our method with the situational theory of publics, co-orientation, and cultural analysis—all of which have been used in public relations theory and research. We then apply field dynamics to a dispute with Native Americans in Wisconsin and suggest intervention strategies for dealing with the dispute.     

Perception is truth: How U.S. newspapers framed the “Go Green” conflict between BP and Greenpeace

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamics of a 10-year conflict between BP and Greenpeace in the framework of the environmental crisis. A qualitative framing analysis of newspaper content was employed to explain how the two organizations were framed in U.S. news reports. A discussion of six dominant frames and attributes that emerged from the sample under study is included, and an assessment of assigned accountability is provided.     

How climate change organizations utilize websites for public relations

This study is designed to examine climate change organizations (CCO)’s online public relations. It analyzes CCOs’ communicative efforts to build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders including media, donors, volunteers, and communities by using their websites and social networks. To accomplish this, a content analysis of 60 CCO websites was conducted. The result indicates that CCOs utilize websites primarily for media relations and fund raising purposes. The function of building and maintaining relationships with communities, current donors/volunteers was not actively utilized on CCOs’ websites. The interactivity of communication with stakeholders was somewhat limited in CCO's online communication activities.     

Art as Propaganda: Bringing Du Bois into the Sociology of Art

We examine WEB Du Bois's writings about the arts in the NAACP journal The Crisis from 1910–1934 in order to construct a Du Boisian social theory of the arts. The key elements of this theoretical framework are: artists, money, freedom, organization, truth, beauty, and propaganda. The most surprising element is propaganda, which for Du Bois meant that art needs to address racial politics. There is a strong sense in Du Bois's writings that art can and should have socially transformative effects. Comparing Du Bois's work to current theories from the sociology of art, we find that Du Bois emphasizes the role of art in social change, while current work treats art primarily as a tool for social reproduction. We argue for expanding the theoretical toolbox of the sociology of the arts through greater consideration of Du Bois's propaganda concept.     

Analyzing Politics and Change in Women's Organizations

Research on women's political action too often passes over women's organizations that do not officially adopt a feminist ideology and do not explicitly set out to change gender power relations. Based on implicit notions that such women's organizations are nonpolitical (or less interesting), the research often supports a false dichotomy between feminist and nonfeminist organizations rather than illuminates women's common political ground. This study addresses women's collective action, politics and change by focusing on the case of Nicaraguan Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs - women who lost a son or daughter in the revolution or Contra War. Although some members in Matagalpa critiqued male domination, the organization itself did not set out to challenge the gendered division of labor; indeed, their collective demands relied upon and in many ways reinforced traditional gender identities. I argue that such movements are important to feminist political analysis. As I demonstrate in this article, an organization's lack of an official feminist ideology does not mean that individual members do not express interests, identities and ideals that challenge the gendered status quo. Such research, however, requires a nuanced approach, recognizing women as both accommodating and resisting gendered social structures. Thus, this study challenges the dominant feminist-feminine dichotomy by demonstrating that women's collective action is not only per se political (and politically important) but may also challenge as well as reinforce gendered power structures.     

Public Relations and Engagement: Theoretical Imperatives of a Multidimensional Concept

Engagement has emerged as important concept in public relations, as stakeholders challenge the discourse of organizational primacy and organizations prioritize the need for authentic stakeholder involvement. As a multidimensional concept, engagement offers a foundation for building organizational relationships, and provides a means to facilitate community–organization interaction. This special issue on engagement and public relations presents a body of work that both explicates and expands the theoretical foundations of engagement, and contributes to scholarly understanding of its contexts, processes, and outcomes.     

Explicating communicative organization-stakeholder relationships in the digital age: A systematic review and research agenda

The digital age is a game-changer for the communication between organizations and stakeholders. Relationships are pivotal to public relations. However, their conceptualizations, measures, and normative assumptions have neither been analyzed systematically and across disciplines, nor have they been studied in light of the changing digital communication landscape. This article re-examines the relationship paradigm in public relations and marketing in an online environment. By means of a systematic review, it seeks to explicate communicative relationships between organizations and their diverse stakeholders, to review how they are operationalized and measured, and to illuminate their normative evaluations. This conceptual specification is guided by systematic sampling and content analysis of all primary research on organization-stakeholder relationships in the broader social sciences. Results of a comprehensive analysis of 74 articles suggest that studies overemphasize the business contexts, follow an instrumental orientation based on transactions rather than communication, and lack analyses of digital data. To explicate a PR understanding of digital communicative organization-stakeholder relationships, a definition is provided and a research agenda is offered on theory, measures, and blind spots.