The Governance of International Nongovernmental Organizations: How Funding and Volunteer Involvement Affect Board Nomination Modes and Stakeholder Representation in International Nongovernmental Organizations

The governance of civil society organizations (CSOs) is a crucial determinant of organizational legitimacy, accountability, and performance. International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are a subtype of CSOs and have received a lot of attention as actors in global governance. Research suggests that INGOs can follow a membership model, where the board is elected by the membership, or a board-managed model, where the board is appointed to represent major stakeholders. Following resource dependency theory, we argue that the choice between these two models depends on the INGOs different sources of funding and the degree of volunteer involvement: As donors and volunteers provide important resources, they are in turn granted the right to nominate board members or to sit on the board. In our quantitative study we show that individual members, regional member organizations, and governmental donors hold a stronger position in the governance of INGOs than philanthropists, foundations and volunteers. Our results inform research on CSO governance by highlighting the relevance of board nomination modes and by showing how CSOs can incorporate stakeholders into their governance mechanisms.     

Westerns,Weddings and Web‐Weavers: Reading Gender as Genre in Organizational Theory

This article focuses on the process of reading and its role in the construction of knowledge. Reading is an activity which is personal yet never singular: we bring to our reading of one text a range of knowledges, experiences and strategies derived from other texts. This ‘intertextuality’ means that ‘meaning‐making’ is a complex negotiation process between reader and text, whereby linkages are made between divergent genres. This is explored through the author's own personal experiences of reading gender/organizational theory. These readings demonstrate the way in which ‘narratives’ of other genres, such as film and fiction, spill over, infect and manipulate the construction of narratives within organizational texts. Further, the ready intertextual connections which are made help to expose some of the embedded assumptions about gender. Whilst these are, in the main, quite traditional, the consideration of the processes involved in reading helps to challenge these as ‘truths’ as well as signpost possibilities for new forms of writing gender/organizational theory.     

Of Monsters and Men: Horror Film in Belarus,Ukraine, and Russia

Abstract

This article looks at recent horror films from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia through the notion of “cultural translation.” It argues that these films both mimic Hollywood horror tropes and subvert genre formula via engagement of local history and memory. Horror films, therefore, represent both the cinematic and cultural concerns of their times, reflecting the changing globalized realities of cinema as a medium, and the social and political dilemmas their viewers face beyond the movie theatre. The results are hybrid texts that engage the viewer in the polyphony of intertextual, global, and local connections.     

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.     

Institutional isomorphism and nonprofit managerialism: For better or worse?

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increasingly adopted business‐like practices as a response to institutional pressures. Some researchers argue that this development leads to mission drift, whereas others find a positive effect on organizational performance. However, the institutional pressures responsible for shaping the nonprofit sector have remained hard to distinguish from each other. This study explores the consequences of mimetic, normative, and coercive pressures, and looks at how they affect managerialism, organizational performance, and mission drift. We link these concepts through a structural equation model based on survey data and find that one aspect of managerialism, strategic behavior, is a key construct in influencing the response to isomorphic pressures and can positively affect organizational performance while holding off‐mission drift. Normative isomorphism even has a direct positive effect on organizational performance. Mission drift can take place when organizations are under coercive pressure without having strategies or internal processes in place. These findings imply that organizations should invest in their strategy and the professional development of their staff to increase organizational performance and avoid mission drift.     

Beyond organizational ties: foundations of persistent commitment in environmental activism

ABSTRACT

Movement scholars commonly treat persistent commitment as an aspect of activism that is set in motion when recruits join a group or organization. To investigate the phenomenon of sustained activist commitment that exists separately from or in addition to organizational membership, I examine activist commitment to environmental causes. I base this analysis on thirty open-ended interviews, averaging eighty minutes, with activists whose persistent commitments to environmental causes range from ten to fifty years. I (a) identify patterns that long-term environmental activists express in their personal biographies and activist trajectories, (b) generate insights about commitment mechanisms that exist independently of organizational membership, (c) discuss how existing conceptions of activist commitment might be extended. I recommend that scholars look beyond organizational ties to pinpoint specific mechanisms that produce and sustain activist commitment to causes. I find that committed environmental activists link their activism to strong connections with nature, biographical influences, individual tactics, and personal missions rather than to organizations.     

Latino Faces,Corporate Ties: Latino Advocacy Organizations and Their Board Membership

Although they have increased exponentially since the 1960s, social scientists know little about ethnic advocacy organizations. These nonprofits are important bridges between underresourced communities and mainstream funding organizations and their directors are established ethnic leaders. Sociologists study interlocking directorates—or shared board membership—to understand how organizations fit together within broader social networks. Network concepts, particularly the theory of institutional isomorphism, suggest that organizations are likely to be similar to the extent they are connected and operate within a common organizational field. We apply this logic to Latino advocacy organizations to examine the underlying source of cohesion across this ethnic field. We ask whether the organizations are tied by interlocking directorates of ethnic elites who sit on their boards of directors or if board members' common affiliation with other elite institutions creates the structural conditions that facilitate potential ideological or behavioral similarity. A social network analysis of five prominent Latino advocacy organizations reveals support for both hypotheses: Latino board members are both embedded in ethnic‐based networks and entrenched within elite organizational webs. This suggests that ethnic elites who sit on the boards of Latino advocacy organizations are also corporate elites, selected for the social capital they bring to these nonprofits.     

Organizations and the structure of culture

Recent work emphasizes how organizations and organizing are suffused by culture. Ignored, however, is the question of how organizations and organizing shape cultural understandings. In this paper, we draw attention to how organizations impact the creation, maintenance, and matching of cultural associations: The “structure of culture.” Cultural associations are distributed understandings of “what goes with what,” diffused via their co-adoption by individual and corporate actors. We argue that the process of associative diffusion is heavily influenced by organizational forms, routines, and operations. While organizations shape culture production, they likewise shape resulting associations between cultural items, actively modifying the structure of culture. We conclude that the role of organizations in shaping the structure and dynamics of culture should be a central topic of study moving forward.     

Structure and accountability a study of national nonprofit associations

In the 1990s, the integrity and performance of nonprofit organizations in the United States have come increasingly under attack, and there are new calls to hold nonprofit organizations more accountable for their behavior and performance. This article reports on a study of the organizational structures of national nonprofit associations and asks how these umbrella organizations can help to self-regulate the sector through appropriate checks and balances between the national organization and local affiliates. The authors identify a number of differences in how associations with alternative structures hold local affiliates and national organizations responsible for their performances, and they conclude that structure is an avenue of self-regulation for nonprofit organizations deserving further attention.     

Cause identity: A measurement of disability organizations’ communicated values

This article introduces the concept of “cause identity” as an important consideration in public relations practice as well as research. Ten different disability organizations were used to examine how – as measured through communicated values – organizational identity is expressed. Results of a quantitative content analysis of marketing and public relations materials used by the organizations indicated very few distinctions in their organizational identities. Rather, a strong collective identity was shared among all ten organizations.     

Deconstructing divisions: Cultural schismogeneses as sources of creativity in organizations

Drawing on Gregory Bateson's theory of cultural schismogenesis, the authors analyse such processes within two organizations: the Birdwatching and Bird Study Association of Slovenia and VU University Amsterdam. Both cases illustrate internal cultural divisions typical for non-profit organizations whose goals go beyond optimizing financial profits and can thus be interpreted in various, sometimes conflicting, ways. The article demonstrates how organizational members, through continuous processes of creative deconstruction, transform organizations by simultaneously creating both schisms and coalitions. This shows that, although cultural divisions may at first glance seem destructive, they are at the same time sources of creativity that permit organizational renewal and growth.     

Extending the Bounds of Interpretive Inquiry: Toward a Performance Approach to Organizational Studies

In recent years, interpretive organizational communication scholars have utilized a variety of methodologies in their attempts to study the process of communication occurring within organizations. Underlying each of these assorted methods, however, is the desire to interrogate the meaning and symbols of organizational life. Regardless of their methodological preference, interpretive organizational scholars of all casts seek to understand the symbolic structures that constitute and reflect meanings of the human activity within their individual objects of study. A survey of interpretive organizational literature reveals that, although many contemporary organizational theorists have advocated the study of organizations as sites of cultural enactments, few organizational communication scholars to date have advanced the use of performance through enactment as a methodology for examining organizational activity. This essay seeks to do just that. It asserts that performance, when used in combination with other interpretive methods, is a useful research methodology, which enables researchers and organizational members alike both to know and to show the symbolic structures constituted by and reflected in their actions and practices.     

Organizational Values and Their Relation to Organizational Performance Outcomes

The communication of organizational values and their relation to employee outcomes is evaluated between two departments within a Health Care Organization. Organizational values that are congruent with employees' values have been shown to increase employee satisfaction, commitment, and performance outcomes. This article discusses how values are defined and different ways that values can be communicated to acquire improved organizational outcomes. Past research on values within organizations is reviewed.

Questions from the Organizational Culture Survey and the Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire are combined to measure employee satisfaction, morale, and perceived involvement in decision making. The organization provided data on employee absenteeism, turnover, and performance ratings. An analysis of the results indicates employees in departments that have clearly defined and communicated organizational values perceive they are more involved in the organization and more participatory in decision making. Implications of the results for organizations are detailed.     

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.     

Beyond the undertheorized role of organizational power as political power in theories of the state

Critics express concerns over the theoretical pluralism in theories of the state and state power. This paper explores how organizational theories can provide more focus to theories of the state and state power thereby increasing their explanatory power. After summarizing concerns raised by political sociologists over pluralism in theories of the state and state power, the analysis focuses on existing theories of the state that employ concepts from organizational theory to understand the organizational state and its relationship to society. Particular attention is given to the state as a resource extraction and distribution mechanism, the resource dependent relationships among organizational entities inside and outside the state, and the power relations between states and organizations in their environment. This focus brings greater attention to the how groups, corporations, industries, and class fractions exercise power through organizations to influence the policy formation process.     

Organizational sensegiving: Indicators and nonprofit signaling

Resource acquisition depends upon the agreement between an organization's sense of identity and the perceptions of organizational identity held by resource providers. To smooth the flow of resources and buffer against potential issues, organizations seek to manage external perceptions and, to the extent possible, control their organizational identity. Using exploratory factor analysis, we examine the data from 300 GuideStar profiles to develop a sense of how nonprofit organizations “give sense” to resource providers and attempt to manage their organizational identity. We find evidence of three sensegiving strategies. We then use a seemingly unrelated regression model to examine the relationship between these strategies and revenue outcomes, finding evidence that (a) nonprofit organizations demonstrate intentional sensegiving, and (b) different sensegiving approaches are related to different income streams.     

On the same page: The value of paid and volunteer leaders sharing mental models in churches

We examine the idea that mental models shared among paid and volunteer leaders are associated with improved financial performance in nonprofit organizations. Our empirical analysis of thirty‐seven churches yields evidence that organizations are more effective if paid and volunteer leaders have a shared task mental model—that is, if they report similar conceptualizations of organizational goals and decision‐making processes. These findings suggest that the extent of leaders' agreement on organizational goals and the processes of how decisions are made matter for organizational performance. We argue that it is as important to ensure that everyone is on the same page with regard to goals and how decisions are made as it is to have the “right” goals or right decision processes in place. Implications for practice and future research on shared mental models are discussed.     

Fathers' Stories of Resistance and Hegemony in Organizational Cultures

This article focuses on the practices of resistance and hegemony that oppose change in gender cultures in organizations. It suggests that analysis of the narratives produced by organizational actors is a fruitful method with which to deal with issues of this kind. In particular, the analysis concentrates on how resistance and hegemony practices may affect the implementation of changes promoted at a normative level — as in the case of the Italian law that has extended the right to take parental leave for childcare to men as well, in opposition to the dominant cultural models of gender. The analysis of the experiences reported by men belonging to different organizations, and having in common the use of parental leave to spend time with their children, allows us to reflect upon the fact that the symbolic orders of gender in organizations cannot be challenged at a normative level if the change does not affect the organizational culture, becoming embedded in everyday organizational practices.     

Hybridizing the canon: Russian-American writers in dialogue with Russian literature

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Russian-American writers – that is, Russian-speaking Jews who immigrated to North America from the late 1970s to the early 1990s – have garnered both a wide readership and critical acclaim. Although they live in the United States and write in English, their works manifest a marked focus on Russian-related themes, including the frequent employment of Russian literature. Three Russian-American texts engage in sustained intertextual play: Irina Reyn’s What Happened to Anna K. with Lev Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina; Lara Vapnyar’s Memoirs of a Muse with the diary of Fedor Dostoevskii’s mistress, Polina Suslova; and Anya Ulinich’s Petropolis with Osip Mandel’shtam’s poem “Na strashnoi vysote bluzhdaiushchii ogon'” (“At a terrifying height a wandering fire”). This article has two interrelated aims. The first is to demonstrate that, similar to postcolonial and other diasporic writers, Russian-American writers’ intertextual use is inextricably linked with a negotiation of cultural identities. The second is to offer a close analysis of the ways in which Reyn’s What Happened to Anna K., Vapnyar’s Memoirs of a Muse, and Ulinich’s Petropolis recast Russian texts as Russian-American elaborations of cultural hybridity and immigrant sensibility.     

Transformational leadership,organizational culture,and innovativeness in nonprofit organizations

This is an exploratory study of leadership, organizational culture, and organizational innovativeness in a sample of nonprofit human service organizations: Associations of Retarded Citizens. Although leadership has been held out as one of the most important predictors of innovation, this study found it was not correlated with organizational innovativeness. Examination of the relationships between leadership and cultural variables provided some alternative explanations for this finding. Positive relationships among transformational leadership, organizational values, and cultural consensus (degree of agreement among employees on those values) indicate that leadership practices employed in this sample created strong cultural consensus around values that may inhibit innovation. These findings suggest that examining the link between leadership and organizational culture is important for understanding how leadership and innovation are related. This article sets out practical implications, based on the results of the study, that may help nonprofit managers create workplaces supportive of innovation.