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A significant management issue for nonprofit organisations (NPOs) is the disconnect between services beneficiaries and the funders of those services. Individual donors and fundraisers provide the resources to enable other people (or animals) to be supported. The purpose of this paper is to address this service management challenge through new types of customer service interactions that bring together service donors and service recipients through innovative digital communication.

Based on a review, and illustrated by recent examples of innovative best practice, the authors develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between customer participation and service brand communication.

The paper starts by identifying the problem of “nonprofit service disintermediation”. The paper also outlines the inadequacies of popular frameworks of communication, widely taught in business schools, to understand the new reality of customer-service organisation engagement in the digital age. Through adopting a customer engagement lens, the paper develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between customer participation and service brand communication.

Given the authors’ focus on the intersection between new communication opportunities and customer service interactions, this paper adds novel insight to theory and raises important implications for management.

The paper explores how, through these new communication interactions, engagement with, and loyalty to, the brand is built over time in a fluid and dynamic way. It identifies a disintermediated relationship, distinct to other service contexts, but significant in terms of value and social impact.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are evolving toward sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how innovation can develop these mission-based service industries to value-added manufacturing enterprises. Here, innovation is embedded in altering the understanding of stakeholders toward the objectives and managerial systems of these infrastructures.

This study uses multidisciplinary principles in management, economics and engineering to assess the integration of innovation and quality management with different perspectives. It initially compares the conventional and innovative approach for operating WWTPs. Subsequently, it emphasizes the contribution of the tailor-made managerial system of wastewater treatment enterprises through prospective markets, customers’ preferences, probable competitions and shared values.

The tailor-made managerial system for wastewater treatment can add economic values by manufacturing multiple demand products for local markets. Water, green energy, organic fertilizers and raw materials are the main products that can be simultaneously recovered according to the customers’ demand. The Kano model also verifies that the new managerial system has this potential to turn the conventional must-be treatment systems into delightful enterprises. It can provide different stakeholders with shared social and environmental values. Accordingly, locals and customers can be engaged in monitoring the quality of products to consider their feedback for decision making and upgrading. This indirectly defines shared values among operators and society to reinforce localization and ecosystem protection. Additionally, this research reveals that the market of the aforementioned strategic products is promising as a blue ocean for set sail due to the lack of competitors.

This study introduces wastewater treatment as a promising enterprise for integrating innovation and quality management.

Within the context of the nonprofit resiliency framework, the authors use nonprofit functional expenses and contribution revenue to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the ability of nonprofits in different subsectors to carry out their mission, as well as their ability to “pivot” fundraising strategies to integrate social media and digital engagement.

The authors use IRS form 990 return data for organizations with a year-end return that includes at least six months of COVID-19 impact (“Wave 1 Effects” period) and also have a prior-year return (“Business as Usual” period). The authors use Wilcoxon signed rank tests to examine whether there are differences in our variables of interest between the two periods.

While the majority of nonprofits in most subsectors experienced a significant decrease in program spending, fundraising spending and fundraising efficiency ratios between the two time periods, the authors found variation in the change in contribution revenue and fundraising ratio between the two periods between subsectors. The authors also find that the percentage of nonprofits able to “pivot” their fundraising strategies varies by subsector between 13.33 and 31.23%.

This paper provides new information regarding the pandemic's initial effect on nonprofit program and fundraising spending, the related contribution revenue and the ability of nonprofits to “pivot” fundraising to remote strategies. The authors propose a more robust fundraising efficiency measure and a new measure indicating a nonprofit's “ability to pivot” their fundraising strategy. The authors encourage future researchers to conduct further longitudinal studies to understand how these effects may continue or change.

Precarious work, characterized by low wages, unpredictable schedules and hours, physical hazards, and stressful psychosocial conditions, is a significant problem in the twenty-first century US economy. It most harshly affects women, racial/ethnic minorities, and immigrants. Caring labor jobs often involve precarious work and home health aide jobs are among the most precarious of these. With an ageing population creating high demand and a decline in the number of available workers, a societal crisis looms. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a business form that could positively impact the home care work environment.

This paper reviews previous research to call for closer examination of worker cooperatives as a means to reduce precarious work among home health care workers.

Worker cooperatives provide opportunities for economic empowerment for impoverished and marginalized workers. Cooperative Home Care Associates, a worker cooperative in the home care industry, reports better outcomes to workers than similar conventionally governed businesses.

This paper reviews results of a study comparing three organizational forms in the home health industry. Although there are relatively few worker cooperatives in the USA, future research should investigate this structure both where there is a low-wage labor force, and in general.

Better outcomes for employees in the worker cooperative suggest that this is a viable business form for workers in precarious work environments.

The paper highlights the features of an organizational form that could help alleviate social ills caused by precarious work.

This paper considers the structure and function of a business form little studied in the management discipline. Based on their unique features and possibilities, worker cooperatives should be of interest to equality, diversity, and inclusion scholars; and to strategy, organizational behavior, and entrepreneurship scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a review of the history of the service‐learning movement, a description of the contemporary philosophical models of service‐learning, and an interpretation of which futures are implied in each model's learning objectives.

A historical and philosophical review of service‐learning is conducted.

Current service‐learning practice has a 40‐year history, evolving from a social movement to a more mainstream pedagogical method. Historical and contemporary versions of service‐learning show three separate models with different assumptions about the purpose of service‐learning. The models are the professional model, which focuses on career training with cognitive learning goals; the civic engagement model, which focuses on developing active and engaged citizens, with affective learning goals; and the social change model, which focuses on empowerment and social justice, also with affective learning goals. While the civic engagement and social change models represent the historic values of the service‐learning movement, evidence suggests the professional model is most common.

To meet the demands of the unscripted future(s), individual teachers and institutions should reflect on their assumptions about the connection between service and learning to ensure that their learning objectives are aligned with their practice.

Teachers benefit from understanding the range of assumptions and values represented in service‐learning, and from the increased personal awareness from comparing their own views and service‐learning objectives with those of the larger field.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and economic performance, with focus on social cooperative enterprises (SCEs) that work in non-profit sectors.

A survey was developed and administered in Italy. A final sample of 151 SCEs participated in the study. Data were collected on IC measures, social enterprise activities and economic and mission-based performance outcomes.

Two hypotheses that proposed a positive association between IC sub-components (i.e. human capital, structural capital and relational capital) and the economic and mission-based performance of SCEs were tested. Findings highlight that human capital contributes to explain economic performance which is positively affected by the presence of graduate employees and value added per employee. However, economic performance is negatively affected by the yearly training per employee. In addition, human and relational capital contribute to explain mission-based performance which is positively affected by yearly training, the value added per employee and the quality of relationships with customers. However, mission-based performance is negatively affected by the relationships’ quality with the reference territorial community. Therefore, relational capital would seem to affect only mission-based performance, and human capital influences both dimensions of corporate performance. Structural capital does not affect social cooperatives’ performance.

Some of the results in this study are particular to this research setting. It is therefore important for senior leaders of SCEs to take the results of general IC literature with a grain of salt. Whereas most of the academic literature generally supports the positive relationship of all IC sub-components (i.e. human, structural and relational capital) with performance outcomes, this is not the case in this particular study.

This is the first empirical study that has examined the linkages between IC sub-components and performance outcomes in SCEs in Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutionalization of screening and metrics in conventional finance and reflect upon the implications for Islamic finance.

The study involves the analysis of archival data, interviews and fieldwork with current impact investors in North America and the European Union to trace the historical development of impact investing screening and metrics.

First, the paper explores how conventional investors have applied positive and negative screens in the creation of their values/mission-based investment strategies. This is followed by a historical analysis of the development and implementation of impact metrics and regulatory frameworks that influenced the growth of conventional impact investing. The possible benefits of learning from these experiences for the Islamic finance industry are then considered. The paper concludes with an analysis of the potential value of mission/values-based investing for the economic development of the Middle East and North Africa region.

Though not a comprehensive study of institutionalization, this study supports recent calls for more intentional use of capital for blended returns within Islamic markets. To support these initiatives, it provides scholars and practitioners with multiple recommended points of entry into this growing market.

There has been scant organizational research examining the development of best practices within the impact investment community and how these might be applied to other contexts such as Islamic finance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of health-care governance and ownership structure on the performance of hospitals in Ghana.

The study uses multiple regression models based on a sample of 132 hospitals in Ghana.

The results of the study indicate that hospitals with a governing board perform better than those without a governing board. The results of this study also suggest that board characteristics and ownership structure are important in explaining the performance of hospitals in Ghana. The results further indicate that mission-based and private hospitals with effective board governance structures exhibit better performance than public hospitals.

This study makes a number of new and meaningful contributions to the extant literature and the findings support managerialism, stakeholder and resource dependency theories. The findings also have important implications for the effective governance of hospitals.

Manufacturing companies increasingly have to deal with uncertainty and complexity without being sufficiently prepared for it. High-reliability organizations (HROs) successfully deal with dynamic and unknown situations. The authors ask the question whether learning concepts of HROs can be a role model for manufacturing companies and if their learning principles can be successfully applied there. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors’ research is based on high-reliability theory and former qualitative empirical studies on learning and development of mission-based HRO. The authors compare their learning practice with learning and development demands of the own empirical cases studies of three manufacturing firms.

Learning concepts in the manufacturing firms are disconnected from their practical demands. In HRO in contrast, learning and development follows a distinct choreography, with a focus on collective reflection. Manufacturing firms can learn from HROs about learning principles especially with respect to collective reflection-on-action in order to develop situational awareness. However, the HROs’ learning should not be seen as a strict role model as their work organization differs significantly from that of manufacturing firms.

The research is based on in-depth case analyses (e.g. interviews and observation). The outcomes are case specific and focus on manufacturing firms. Hence, only patterns or principles can be generalized. To gain a more complete picture, the authors suggest further case analyses in different industries.

Manufacturing firms can benefit from learning principles of HROs, like combining formal and informal learning and collective reflection on practice.

The paper connects previous research on HRO with original empirical research on manufacturing firms. Through the matching of data, the authors contribute to the discussion on whether the concept of HROs can be seen as a role model for learning and development in manufacturing firms.