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This chapter reviews the contribution of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to Africa developmental transformation by exploring key activities around three key areas where NGOs have impacted Africa's development namely environmental, social and economic context. This perspective emphasises the central role of NGOs in triggering developmental changes in Africa. Exploring the complexities of NGOs' management and its impact on the development of Africa through a collective action lens, we discovered that although NGOs have been responsible for developmental growth in Africa, there exists a certain tussle between the NGOs and state actors due to relegation of the state. With recent calls for accountability and transparency, NGOs would have to include more strategies geared towards collaborative partnerships and more inclusion of state in order to maintain sustainable growth. We conclude by reflecting on the socioeconomic impact of NGOs and implications for sustainable development in Africa.

In 2009 and 2010, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) adopted new accounting standards for nonprofit mergers and acquisitions. The new accounting standards are an example of the constitutive role accounting can play in how people think about economic events, since the FASB defined a new concept (the “inherent contribution”) and required valuation of intangible assets that were often previously unrecognized.

The FASB’s stated goals included minimizing “pooling” accounting and maximizing transparency regarding fair value information, acquired identifiable intangible assets, and the relation between consideration paid and the fair values of identifiable assets acquired. The FASB expected many combinations would involve little or no consideration. It also expressed concern that some organizations would undervalue assets acquired, especially intangible assets.

For a sample of 2012–2017 nonprofit hospital combinations, we find general agreement with the FASB’s expectations. Almost all combinations were accounted for as acquisitions, not mergers, even though there was frequently no consideration paid. More acquirers recorded “inherent contributions” than goodwill, because the net fair value of the acquired hospital’s identifiable assets exceeded the consideration paid. Acquirers ascribed value to assets, such as intangible assets, that would have gone unreported under the prior accounting rules, although lower levels of intangible assets were recognized in nonprofit business combinations, relative to total non-goodwill assets acquired, than in public companies’ acquisitions.

The scope of the participation of civil society organizations (CSOs) in providing public services as well as the models and formats of implementing State–CSO partnerships have varied both in sectorial terms and from a historical perspective. The discussion on State–CSO partnerships in service delivery has recently produced many studies, especially related to public management reform agenda, although many ideas based on public governance have appeared in recent years within the Brazilian context. This study features a historical analysis of the State–CSO partnerships in three different areas: AIDS, social assistance, and culture, and seeks to identify the main characteristics of each management model (bureaucratic, managerial, and new public governance), based on an analysis of sectorial norms produced by the federal government to regulate these relationships.

Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) can be found in education, healthcare, and other not-for-profit sectors as well as in the accounting, financial, and legal professions. DeMarzo et al. (2005) show theoretically that SROs can create monopoly market power for their affiliated agents, but that governmental oversight, even if less efficient than oversight by the SRO, can largely offset such market power. We provide an experimental test of this conjecture. For carefully rationalized parameterizations and implementation details, we find that the predictions of DeMarzo et al. (2005) are borne out.

This chapter outlines the nascent history of the Benefit Movement, discusses the theoretical implications that predict the long-term success of movement goals, and provides recommendations for firms who seek to safeguard practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The chapter provides an overview of Benefit forms and describes the indicators of Movement success. For the Benefit Movement to achieve success, it must establish legal options in all 50 states for Benefit incorporation, pave the way for both publicly and privately held organizations to incorporate, and mobilize diverse organizational actors with high levels of commitment to sustain contention for Movement goals. The chapter provides a framework to understand how the Movement can achieve its goal of safeguarding the effective practice of CSR within firms and across the planet.

Purpose – This study aims at presenting an overview, development, and process of current corporate governance practices in Bangladesh.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Based on New Institutional Sociology (NIS) as a theoretical framework and by using archival data, this study highlights the roles of key institutional forces in reinforcing the existing corporate governance practices in Bangladesh.

Findings – This study notes that corporate governance practices in Bangladesh are still at infancy. While Bangladesh is trying to adopt many international corporate governance best practices for institutional legitimacy, the weak institutional enforcement regime, along with the absence of an effective check and balance, poses serious challenges to the firm-level good corporate governance practices in Bangladesh. The absence of isomorphic pressures to regulate the firms leads to many incidences of noncompliance.

Practical implications – This study takes part in the following global debate: whether corporate governance in an emerging economy is a reality or an illusion.

Originality/Value – This study seeks to contribute to the increasing literature by recognizing the interest of readers, academics, practitioners, and regulators to gain more insight and understanding of corporate governance practices in an emerging economy, such as Bangladesh.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing businesses and daily life, with AI-powered technologies like personal assistants and medical diagnostic systems transforming how we interact and make decisions. However, the ethical implications of these technologies cannot be ignored. AI systems can produce biased results and decisions if not designed to be fair and unbiased. Corporate digital responsibility (CDR) provides a valuable framework for addressing these ethical dilemmas. Service organizations need to navigate CDR issues across the data and technology life-cycle stages (e.g., their creation, operation, refinement, and retention) and across its digital service ecosystem (including its external business partners). Despite the risks associated with poor CDR practices, companies may adopt them to benefit from data monetization, enhanced customer experience, and productivity improvement. To mitigate these risks and build a strong CDR culture, organizations need to establish ethical norms, prioritize customer privacy, and ensure equitable power dynamics with business partners. The emergence of generative AI poses enhanced CDR challenges, such as AI complexity, monitoring, accountability, and workforce changes. Going forward, CDR is a crucial framework for firms to address the needs of their multiple stakeholders and to ensure sustainable business practices in the increasingly digital service world.

Change in ownership among U.S. community hospitals has been frequent and, not surprisingly, remains an important issue for both researchers and public policy makers. In the past, investor-owned hospitals were long suspected of pursuing financial over other goals, culminating in several reviews that found few differences between for-profit and nonprofit forms (Gray, 1986; Sloan, 2000; Sloan, Picone, Taylor, & Chou, 2001). Nevertheless, continuing to the present day, several states prohibit investor-ownership of community hospitals. Conversions to investor-ownership are only one of six types of ownership change, however, with relatively less attention paid to the other types (e.g., for-profit to nonprofit, public to nonprofit). This study has two parts. We first review the literature on the various types of ownership conversion among community hospitals. This review includes the rate at which conversions occur over time, the relative frequency in conversions between specific ownership categories and the observed effects of conversion on hospital operations (e.g., strategic direction and decision-making processes) and performance (e.g., access, quality, and cost). Overall, we find that the impact of ownership conversion on the different measures is mixed, with slightly greater evidence for positive effects on hospital efficiency. As one explanation for these findings, we suggest that the impact of ownership conversion on hospital performance may be mediated by changes in the hospital's strategic content and process. Such a hypothesis has not been proposed or examined in the literature. To address this gap, we next study the role of strategic reorientation following hospital conversion in a field study. We conceptualize ownership conversion within a strategic adaptation framework, and then analyze the changes in strategy content and process across sixteen hospitals that have undergone ownership conversions from nonprofit to for-profit, public to for-profit, public to nonprofit, and for-profit to nonprofit. The field study findings delineate the strategic paths and processes implemented by new owners post-conversion. We find remarkable similarity in the content of strategies undertaken but differences in the process of strategic decision making associated with different types of ownership changes. We also find three main performance effects: hospitals change ownership for financial reasons, experience increases in revenues and capital investment post-conversion, and pursue labor force reductions post-conversion. Membership in a multi-hospital system, however, may be a major determinant of both strategy content and decision-making process that is confounded with ownership change. That is, ownership conversion may mask the impact of system membership on a hospital's strategic actions. These findings may explain the pattern of performance effects observed in the literature on ownership conversions.