Search results

This paper aims to investigate the contribution of brokers to business non-profit collaborations, in the context of employee volunteering. It investigates the roles brokers play and ways they contribute to value creation within social alliances.

This research focusses on a case study of a UK employee volunteering broker programme run by a local volunteer centre. A combined qualitative methodology involved document analysis and interviews, with brokers and business, community and government partners involved in employee volunteering collaborations.

Brokers play three key roles in business non-profit collaboration as connectors, facilitators/co-designers and learning catalysts. These roles help stimulate manifestations of associational value, transferred resource value, interaction value and synergistic value.

Results indicate brokers play an important part in nurturing conditions underpinning innovation and value co-creation, key characteristics of transformational forms of business non-profit collaboration. This study was based on a single case study. Future research could explore broker contributions within a variety of business non-profit settings.

For managers implementing business non-profit collaborations, this paper provides a framework depicting key broker roles and ways brokers enable collaborative value that may be useful when assessing whether to use the services of a broker.

This paper enriches the understanding of business non-profit collaboration and the role of individual actors in affecting value creation, an under-researched area in the social alliance literature. It provides a framework for assessing broker contributions in business non-profit collaborations.

This paper is rooted in practitioner experience of working within the non‐profit sector. It is both underpinned by Master’s level research and built on as part of an on‐going sense‐making process for the author in terms of her doctoral research. Focusing on a specific part of the sector – local development agencies, explores how personal theories emerge and the rules of thumb chief executives of such agencies use to develop their practice. This paper draws on fieldwork involving interviews with 20 chief executives and considers the roles of chief executives in relation to learning and development needs. As such, this is not a search for “truth” or for blueprints for managers, but represents a concern for and interest in how people – “puzzled” individuals who have to deal with ambiguous situations day‐by‐day – juggle multiple realities, and what informs their (thinking and) actions.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the impact of leadership on workgroup climate and performance in a religious/church‐based non‐profit organization.

The impact of leadership is investigated using a questionnaire comprised of established scales such as the transformational leadership scales (TLS), team climate inventory questionnaire (TCI), team effectiveness, workgroup cohesion, and interdependence scales. This is a context based study that considers the unique culture comprised of social, political, economic, technologic, personnel, and personal concerns. Descriptive, correlation, hierarchical regression, and SPSS macro developed by Preacher and Hayes were used as statistical techniques to assess the indirect effects (Sobel Tests) of variables.

Transformational leadership was identified as a key variable for the functioning of workgroup performance whilst transactional leadership was identified as a key influencing factor of workgroup climate. In addition, the study found a significant and positive large effect of workgroup climate on workgroup performance whilst both transformational and transactional leadership did not influence workgroup performance through workgroup climate. This finding provides areas in need of further research.

There is likely to be posing risks of method variance or response biases as all data were drawn from employee surveys. There is also likely to be selection bias as the authors could not directly compare respondents with non‐respondents. The fact that there may be operational differences in other as well as smaller organizations, based on the limited size and the ability to allocate job functions, could limit the generalization of this result to other organizations.

This study makes a significant contribution to both scholarly theory and workplace practice in the non‐profit sector as the findings indicated that the influence of workgroup climate on workgroup performance provided an enabling context for the delivery of leadership in a religious/church‐based non‐profit organization.

This paper aims to examine five key strategic management concepts: industrial organisation (I/O), resource‐based view (RBV), knowledge‐based view (KBV), balanced scorecard (BSC) and intellectual capital (IC) within the non‐profit context and to determine which is most applicable in the non‐profit sector.

This paper reviews the above concepts in the light of the unique non‐profit environment.

The IC concept is more effective compared with other strategic management concepts within the non‐profit context. IC is an important resource that non‐profit organisations need to develop in order to gain sustained strategic advantage.

This paper helps to build a nascent body of literature suggesting that the concept of IC is the most effective strategic management concept in NPOs. The increased awareness of the IC concept in the sector, as a result of this paper, is likely to generate further research from both non‐profit practitioners and scholars.

Very little systematic research has reviewed the applicability of strategic management concepts within the non‐profit context. The paper acts as the first attempt to fill this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to tests three hypotheses: non‐profit organizations follow a customer‐centered approach to marketing; marketing is run by marketing‐trained staff; and cross‐continental differences in the adoption of marketing in the UK, the USA, and Australia exist due to differences in the operating environment.

A survey study was conducted with non‐profit managers. The sample contains 136 respondents; 36 from the UK, 33 from the USA and 67 from Australia.

Non‐profit managers indicated that the most important marketing activities are promotional in nature. The importance of market research and strategic marketing was acknowledged only by a small proportion of non‐profits, supporting Andreasen and Kotler's assertion that non‐profit organizations have an “organization‐centered” mindset. Only one fifth of marketing staff are trained in marketing. Non‐profit organizations in the UK, the USA, and Australia did not differ in their use of marketing and marketing operations, suggesting that the similarity of market pressures may be more influential than the differences in operating environments.

Shifting from an “organization‐centered” to a “customer‐centered” approach to marketing represents a key opportunity for non‐profit organizations to increase their competitive advantage and improve their outcomes in terms of the organizational mission. The primary strategy to achieve this aim is to make increased use of formally trained marketing staff.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to assess the state of marketing practise in non‐profit organizations since Kotler, the first to test the organization‐centered hypothesis and the first to test differences across countries.

The starting‐point of this paper is the observation that, while intellectual capital (IC) management seems to be a potential approach for non‐profit elderly care organizations, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how it could actually be applied. This paper aims to add to knowledge of this issue.

This is an exploratory, qualitative case study including three case organizations. The case descriptions and analysis are based on interviews with managers of the case organizations.

The study describes which intangible resources are highlighted in the operations of non‐profit elderly care organizations, the existing practices regarding the management of IC factors and the IC needs of management in these organizations.

The study focuses on Finnish non‐profits. The operations of the third sector may vary across countries.

The elderly care sector is facing big challenges due to the changing age structure in many Western countries and due to the pressure to produce cost‐effective but still high‐quality services. The IC approach seems well‐suited as a managerial framework that can capture the intangible aspects of operations. However, more research and practical application experience are needed at this stage.

IC research on non‐profit organizations is rare and has so far been rather generic and conceptual. The paper makes a contribution by presenting empirical and industry‐specific findings.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of organizational culture on the conflict handling style in non-profit organizations. Conflicts in non-profit organizations and especially in associations are more numerous, mainly because of the search for compromise in the decision-making phases and the high level of loyalty in mission that strongly stimulates the voice of one’s opinion. The authors observe that a modification of the organizational culture, through symbolic changes, can resolve the conflicts sequence.

Culture is measured through the organizational culture profile tool and the culture deciphering technique. The authors detail two cases of non-profit organizations, in which conflicts sequence resolution was handled through organizational culture change while conflicts resolution at the individual level could not bring an end to the conflicts sequence.

These cases highlight how organizational culture shapes behaviors and conflicts handling styles. These cases also give insights on how an organizational culture can be changed to setup new default conflict handling styles in an organization. The cultural change management only worked when it was planned on critical cultural change readiness factors with a strong enforcement of the change by the governing bodies.

This study complements research studies on how organizational culture shapes attitudes and behaviors and shows how and under which conditions a cultural change could resolve a conflict sequence. This study also presents a conflict resolution method when the roots of conflicts are embedded in the existing organizational culture. In such conflicts situation, interpersonal conflict resolution technique did not solve the conflicts sequence and only cultural change finally brought an end to the sequence.

A combined search on two levels, the individual level and the organizational culture level, will thus show convergent conflict sources and get a great deal of knowledge before solving individual-level conflicts.

The non-profit sector is sometimes subject to high-conflict situation and this research contributes to more efficient conflict resolution protocols with an applicable method of conflict analysis, change management and conflict resolution.

The work showed how the organizational culture is a key element in the explanation of conflict sources and conflict handling in case of high and repeated conflict situation. It is thus possible to resolve conflict sequence by changing a carefully chosen cultural trait. Nevertheless, the culture change management program is complex and risky. In a high-conflict situation, the authors identified several key conflict resolution factors: the careful identification of the organizational culture traits explaining conflict handling style; the alignment of the management team on the cultural change plan to raise up the intensity of the new set of behaviors; and the selection of the most efficient symbolic change decision.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a sustainability-based typology for non-profit organizations and corresponding strategies to sustain the mission and/or financial objectives of non-profit organizations. The balance of mission and money, known in the non-profit literature as the double bottom line, is a challenge for professional managers who run non-profits and scholars who study them.

Typologies are often used to classify phenomena to improve understanding and bring about clarity. In this paper, non-profit organizations are viewed from a social and fiscal viability perspective, developed from the long standing challenge of balancing mission and money.

The typology developed in this paper identifies several normative strategies that correspond to the social and fiscal viability of non-profit organizations. In fact, the strategies offered in this paper can help non-profit managers achieve organizational sustainability, thus enabling them to continue what they are meant to do – to provide greater social value to their constituents.

The typology presented is a classification system rather than a theoretical typology. Its purpose is to help managers of non-profits to recognize threats to their organizations’ long-term survival and offer strategies that if adopted can move the organizations to less vulnerable positions. However, the recommended strategies are by no means exhaustive. Furthermore, the focus of the paper is on non-profit organizations, not profit-driven or hybrid entities. The sustainability-based typology of non-profit organizations and the corresponding strategies have implications for practitioners and academics. The typology and its contents can help managers assess their non-profits, competitive environment and their current strategies, plan their double bottom line strategies and last but not the least, develop and implement strategies for social and fiscal sustainability. In addition, our paper provides great opportunities for future research to subject our typology and its contents to conceptual and empirical scrutiny.

The strategies described here are developed based on scholarly research and examples from successful non-profits. The typology and the related list of strategies provide a manager with the tools to accurately diagnose organizational challenges and adopt plans to improve the organization’s viability.

Non-profit organizations are an integral part of society that bolsters economic prosperity, environmental integrity and social justice. This paper may provide guidance for a number of non-profit managers to keep their organizations operating and serving important social missions.

In the context of organizations for social mission, several typologies exist that looked at firms from the perspectives of ownership versus profit objectives, entrepreneurship conceptualizations of economists and origins and development paths of social enterprises. While these typologies provided foundations for theoretical and empirical work into social enterprises, our typology offers strategies for the sustainability of mission and/or money objectives of non-profits. The value of this research lies in integrating virtuous and pragmatic objectives of non-profit sustainability that, in turn, can ensure the social mission of non-profits.

Considering in one side, the differences between the non-profits and profits entities and, in other side, given the importance of governance to monitoring the protection of the interests of the different stakeholders, this literature review aims to identify the special features of the social economy entities and its effects in the principles and guidelines of an adequate governance model for these entities.

An important conclusion after the analysis of several frameworks is that the latest approaches place less importance on formal aspects such as the governing body roles or composition. Nowadays the concerns are increasingly focused in the best ways to adopt viable strategies and business models that will ensure survival and growth of non-profit entities.

In Portugal we identified the specificities of the Portuguese third sector that is limited to the fulfilment of the legally imposed requirements to these organizations. Regarding governance aspects, Portuguese organizations are not subject to codes of good practice or if they follow them, they are designed for the for-profit sector and do not address the main concerns of the non-profit sector.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and show how public relations contributed to enhancing the visibility of Croatian non-profit organization Foundation “Croatia for Children” and its activities within its stakeholders, as well as how public relations contributed to the mobilization of target publics in Foundation’s activities.

Using a single case study approach, data were collected over a 12-month period. Quantitative and qualitative media research was applied in order to compare visibility of Foundation in the period before and after the strategic communication campaign.

Strategic communication campaign enhanced the visibility of Foundation “Croatia for Children” in national and local Croatian media and positioned it as the primary instance for children without an adequate parental care and children in need. However, local media devoted more attention comparing to the national media. All children wishes (1,000) were fulfilled by mobilizing the target publics.

The results derived from this case study cannot be generalized since they are based on a single case in one country.

This study can serve as a starting point for another research about the role and importance that public relations have in enhancing the visibility of non-profit organizations.

The results of this study point to the role and importance public relations have in the non-profit sector in order to proactively communicate with all stakeholders in society.