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.     

Längsschnittdaten und Mehrebenenanalyse

In the present article a few basic multilevel models for longitudinal data are introduced and applied to the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey 10 (HILDA) for demonstrational purposes. The covered models are adaptions of the random-intercept-only model, the random-intercept models and the random- intercept random-slope model with and without level-1 and level-2 predictors to longitudinal data. The modeling of contextual effects is covered. One particularity in longitudinal data is the fact that persons (level-2) may be regarded as the context of the time-varying observations on level-1. To incorporate the macro-level of sociology, it is necessary to expand the model to a third level. A model with three levels is introduced and in addition a simple growth curve model and a multivariate multilevel model are presented.     

Distribution-neutral provision of public goods

The paper describes a normative approach to budget incidence, given the provision of a public good. The objective is to balance the budget by an income tax such that the budget is distribution-neutral. This property requires that every consumer’s net welfare gain, i.e. the benefit from consuming the public good and the tax burden in financing it, does not change the inequality inherent in the income distribution. The properties of the distribution-neutral tax are investigated and completely determined. The marginal willingness to pay for the public good is decisive for the degree of progression of the tax schedule. My co-author Georg Tillmann passed away in March 2006, much too soon. He was my friend, more than a colleague. I dedicate this paper to his memory.     

Framing competitiveness: the advocacy of migration as an essential human resources strategy in Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how competitiveness has been framed rhetorically and politically by interested actors in France, Germany, and the UK. Skilled rhetorical advocacy clothes particular political demands in the language of competitiveness and purported exigencies of the global economy, thus advancing political goals more easily that might otherwise encounter significant political opposition. In theoretical terms, the paper analyses the ideational framing of policy discourses. Empirically, the emphasis rests on exploring how governments, organised business, and business think tanks have attempted to advance demands for liberalised labour migration schemes in Europe by linking them rhetorically to the prerogative of economic competitiveness. Despite an adverse political climate, sceptical public opinion, and persistent unemployment, it has thus been politically possible to liberalise the regulation of labour migration considerably.     

Managing Organizational Social Capital through Value Configurations

Nonprofits are said to serve as places for the reproduction of social capital. However, little is known about how to manage social capital in a nonprofit. This article presents a theory‐based perspective on how to plan, execute, and measure social capital production in a nonprofit organization. By using the concept of value configurations as a method to analyze and describe the creation of organizational social capital, bonding and bridging social capital can be managed in alternative ways. In a value shop framework, the participants are more homogeneous, and growth is heavily based on referrals and reputation as well as the quality of the members. Organizations managed as value shops will foster bonding social capital. In contrast, a value network framework incorporates more likely heterogeneous, multilevel participants that add legitimacy to the network. Organizations in this framework will strengthen the evolution of bridging social capital.     

Nonprofit Comparative Research: Recent Agendas and Future Trends

Comparative research on nonprofit organizations (NPOs) has been a prominent approach for advancing our understanding of these organizations. This article identifies the primary drivers that shape the NPO comparative research agenda and explores new research trends. Based on a systematic literature review, nine definitional aspects and ten impulses are identified as drivers of NPO research. This article conducts a correspondence analysis to study the relationships between the definitional aspects and impulses that are discussed in 111 articles that were published in philanthropic and third-sector journals in the period January 2001–January 2015. Based on our results, we suggest three new clusters for future comparative research: investment and growth, participation and social impact, and social cohesion and civil society.     

Synchrone Inszenierungen in der Organisationsberatung

Synchroneous stagings in organizational consulting Consulting is mostly based on linear processes occurring in organizations, or operates with a linearly functioning choice of methods. It is however known from chaos research that complex systems are acting spontaneously and irregularly, while they are nevertheless mostly in a position to keep in balance both order and disorder. With this in mind, the paper is dealing with some aspects of reality assessment, presenting methods and method components of synchroneous stagings which are fitted into historical connections. Described in detail is the method of the deambulating plenum as a practical example of acting in consulting processes.