Balancing Control and Coaching in CSO Governance. A Paradox Perspective on Board Behavior

How can the internal governance of civil society organizations be conceptualized more adequately by accounting for the dual and simultaneous requirements of controlling and coaching in board behavior? Empirically, we seem to agree that effective governance of a civil society organization is crucial to its sustained viability. Conceptually, however, we observe a lack of consensus on how to best understand CSO governance. By critically juxtaposing two major theoretical lenses to conceptualize governance, namely, agency and stewardship theory, we identify a number of challenges when dealing with board–management relations that deserve our attention. While agency theory privileges controlling behavior, stewardship theory emphasizes the coaching behavior of boards. The purpose of this article is to offer a concept of governance that is informed by a paradox perspective advancing a subtler, more adequate conceptualization of board governance that accounts for these often conflicting demands on CSO governance. Drawing on illustrations from a longitudinal interpretive case study, we exemplify our propositions empirically. The article concludes with discussing the implications of our argument for CSO governance research and practice.     

Learning to negotiate network relations: social support among working mothers living in poverty

This study promotes our understanding of the complex and dynamic role that social support networks play in the everyday life of working mothers living in poverty, by focusing on the processes of negotiation involved in the creation, maintenance and mobilization of social ties. It is based on semi-structured interviews with 12 Israeli-Jewish working mothers who participated in an economic empowerment workshop. Findings indicate that the participants received much social support from relatives, friends and community activists. However, they further reveal the hard hidden work of negotiation and the process of learning involved in obtaining support. Particularly important in this context of poverty was the need to learn how to ask for support by overcoming feelings of shame and concerns about respectability, and to reduce social burdens by, among other things, refusing to participate in the ‘gift economy’ and limiting constraining social relationships. Finally, this study shows how the seemingly divergent interpretations of negotiation in social-exchange theory and symbolic interactionism (reaching an agreement that maximizes benefits versus preserving the relationship) often converge in everyday life situations.     

Strategy Formation Across Organizational Boundaries: An Interorganizational Process Model

Strategic decision‐makers today face complex environments with meta‐problems that cut across multiple industries. Single organizations cannot address these meta‐problems. As a result, organizations collaborate with partners, among them also competitors, and commonly work together in multi‐partner initiatives (MPIs). How these organizations jointly form an interorganizational strategy (IOS), however, is not well understood. In this paper, we extend the current strategy process conceptualizations from an intraorganizational focus of a single firm to an interorganizational process of multiple strategy‐making entities working together. We selected the eMobility sector as our research context to develop such an IOS process model. We first developed 25 cases on MPIs in the German‐speaking area based on interviews and desk research, before we focused on the eMobility ecology in the southern part of Germany. We identified 291 MPIs, conducted interviews with 19 central actors, held several workshops and informal gatherings, and complemented these data with an analysis of publicly accessible documents. Using an inductive research design, we developed a process model that unfolds in three phases: initiation, negotiation and execution. We reveal specific process dynamics in MPIs to be critical in the formation and manifestation of IOS.     

The role of marriage in immigrants’ human capital investment under liquidity constraints

This paper presents a two-period human capital investment model, which is used to study the optimal investment decisions of credit-constrained married immigrants relative to single immigrants and native couples facing a perfect capital market. The model predicts that: (1) The comparative advantage in investment in local skills of one of the spouses may emerge from his/her higher growth rate of imported human capital. (2) The optimal investment of each spouse is non-increasing in the level of imported human capital of the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment, while it is non-decreasing in the level of imported human capital of the other spouse. (3) When two immigrants get married, the spouse with the comparative advantage in investment invests more than when he/she was single whereas the other spouse invests less.

The Siting of Radioactive Waste Faculties: What Are the Effects on Communities?1

Abstract Despite literally dozens of attempts, and the expenditure of billions of dollars, efforts to site radioactive waste disposal facilities in this country have been uniformly unsuccessful. While both researchers and policymakers continue to address reasons for these failures, little attention is being given to the consequences for the communities themselves of these intensive siting battles. Using a research framework that addresses both the sources and consequences of community conflict, we examine what is happening in four different areas currently being considered as potential hosts for either a high- or a low-level radioactive waste facility. Some degree of conflict is observed in each community, although it varies from one area to another based on such differences as potential to experience economic benefits, perceptions of class and ethnic equity, and the role of extra-local players in the controversy. We conclude that current policies lead to inequitable distributions of risk that, in turn, create “fairness” questions that are important both in explaining current patterns of conflict and in anticipating long-term consequences for the affected communities.     

Butch bottom-femme top? An exploration of lesbian stereotypes

Lesbian gender labels (i.e., butch, soft butch, butch/femme, femme, and high femme) have set the stage for assumptions about lesbian attractions to sexual behaviors. This study explored the intersection of lesbian gender labels and attraction to sexual behaviors in 214 lesbian-identified women. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 69 with 48% being women of color. Contrary to stereotypes about sexual behavior in the lesbian community, very few differences emerged in regard to lesbian gender label. Overall, results do not support stereotypes about lesbian gender labels and suggest that behaviors in the lesbian community are fluid across labels.     

Behind Closed Doors: An Exploration of Kinky Sexual Behaviors in Urban Lesbian and Bisexual Women

This study of 347 urban, self-identified lesbian (n = 289) and bisexual (n = 58) women examined women's engaging in 4 kinky sexual behaviors: bondage/domination, sadomasochism, photo/video exhibitionism, and asphyxiation/breath play. A cross-sectional, brief-intercept survey was administered at 2 New York City gay, lesbian, and bisexual community events. Over 40% reported engaging in at least 1 of these behaviors, and 25% reported engaging in multiple behaviors. Bisexual women were more likely to have engaged in any kinky sexual behavior and photo/video exhibitionism. White women were more likely than women of color to have engaged in bondage/domination. Compared to older women, younger women were more likely to have engaged in photo/video exhibitionism and asphyxiation/breath play. Participants who were younger when they came out to others, and younger at their same-sex sexual debut, were more likely to have engaged in any and each of the behaviors compared to women who were older at those developmental events.     

Nonprofit governance during organizational transition in voluntary associations

This explorative field study examines the governance challenges that voluntary associations face in the transition from an internal focus on members to the provision of services to mainly nonmembers. This transition is an important stage in the life cycle of many associations. A qualitative research design was used to study five Swiss patient organizations. This article describes the transition process in terms of five main management challenges: different target groups, self‐help group versus competence center, cooperation, fundraising, and transparency. It then examines the implications for four governance aspects that confront managers and board members: recruitment and selection of board members, tasks of the board, relationship between the board and managing director, and the role of the general assembly of members.     

Modeling of persistent homology

Abstract

Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a novel statistical technique, particularly powerful for the analysis of large and high dimensional data sets. Much of TDA is based on the tool of persistent homology, represented visually via persistence diagrams. In an earlier article we proposed a parametric representation for the probability distributions of persistence diagrams, and based on it provided a method for their replication. Since the typical situation for big data is that only one persistence diagram is available, these replications allow for conventional statistical inference, which, by its very nature, requires some form of replication. In the current paper we continue this analysis, and further develop its practical statistical methodology, by investigating a wider class of examples than treated previously.