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Investigate how leaders of illegal organizations build and maintain positive reputations and how the deaths of these firms impact groups of external stakeholders.

We conduct a forensic analysis of nine firms in eight different countries by leaders who appeared to be highly successful corporate citizens but who turned out to be operating illegal Ponzi ventures.

These illegal firms built positive reputations by engaging in activities that enhanced perceptions of their firms’ perceived quality, gaining certifications and approvals from influential external individuals/organizations, engaging in philanthropic activities, and affiliating with high-status actors. Death of these nine firms had profoundly impacted external stakeholders resulting in investor devastation, a toxic environment of mistrust, damage to reputations of anyone affiliated with these illegal firms, and a major earthshake to the philanthropic community.

Extends Rindova et al.’s (2005) research on how leaders use signals of quality and prominence to build reputations in the context of illegal organizations. Philanthropic activities are added as a reputation-building mechanism used by illegal organizations. The results draw attention to the need to examine how the death of illegal organizations affects a variety of external stakeholders, both individuals and organizations.

Leaders of illegal firms can be quite successful in building positive reputations and this success exacerbates the negative consequences that occur when the firms collapse.

Provides a qualitative study of reputation building and the extensive impact on stakeholders of the dissolution of illegal ventures.

The purpose of this article is to analyze intellectual capital (IC) measurement, management, and reporting practices at organizational level, with the aim to address a relevant research question: are IC reports used as accountability or as image-building tools? The article presents a single in-depth case study of an Italian nonprofit organization (NPO) which has been measuring and reporting its IC for several years. The research project was conducted using an interpretative approach, by analyzing organizational IC reports in the light of a framework, derived from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and IC literature, able to provide researchers with useful insights to interpret the role played by IC report in the investigated organization. The lenses provided by the designed framework give researchers the opportunity to offer a skillful interpretation of the information provided by the IC report. From the analysis, it results that the investigated NPO use IC report more as a managerial rather than an accountability tool. Even though the use of a single case study provides in-depth and rich data, it also limits the generalizability of the observations to other companies. Moreover, the results obtained can be influenced by the model built and adopted to address the research question. The findings can support companies to enable IC reporting practices and readers to understand the orientation of the companies towards a reputation or an accountability approach by reading the IC report using the research model. The article fills a gap in the research of voluntary disclosure of NPOs from a different approach (i.e., to analyze IC reports to make evident the approach followed in disclosing IC information). So doing, the article contributes to narrowing the gap between IC theory and practice and offers new insights on the reasons why NPOs disclose IC.

This article aims at investigating knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) between founder firms and corporate foundations (CFs), looking at mechanisms able to enhance CFs’ orientation of effectiveness.

We analyze 50 questionnaires collected through a survey of CFs based in Italy (redemption of 42.7% of the total). We use a number of regressions to verify the change of explained variance moving from a basic model with control variables (enter method) and a model including KTE mechanisms with an impact on orientation to effectiveness (stepwise method).

The analysis produced a model which underlines the influence of knowledge transfer mechanisms in stimulating orientation to effectiveness. The adoption of specific knowledge transfer mechanisms by founder firms can have a significant influence on how CFs manage their effectiveness. Three mechanisms emerge from the study as elements with a positive impact.

The results apply to nonprofit or public bodies, especially if we consider partnerships or organizational networks. The individuated criteria for selecting a positive KTE could drive similar choices of other nonprofit bodies.

The study individuates a set of practices that are potentially able to influence positively the orientation to effectiveness of CFs, and the capacity to perform their activities and respond to social needs more successfully.

This research considers CFs as founder firms’ subsidiaries, with a growing strategic importance. This research reveals how KTE mechanisms can foster the development of orientation to effectiveness if implying interaction, firms’ commitment, autonomy, and alignment with the firms’ strategy and CFs’ purposes.

Founder’s syndrome is when one individual holds disproportionate power and influence in an organization. It is not limited to the founder of an organization and can be found particularly in dominant and charismatic organizational leaders. While the nonprofit leader in this case was not a founder, he was highly charismatic and was granted as much authority as a founder. He became reluctant to share power, even when it was clear he needed help to build the capacity of the organization. The board of directors did not feel it necessary to check the executive director’s power because he had been so successful in growing the organization up to a point. When it was discovered he was having an inappropriate affair with a subordinate employee, however, the board did ask him to resign. Yet it allowed him to name his successor, and accepted the executive director’s nomination of the employee with whom he had an affair. Board and staff of nonprofit organizations have obligations to act in good faith in the governance of the organization and to enforce the duties of care and obligation. This requires transparent communication. Without two-way symmetrical communication maintained throughout the organization, this executive director abused the power granted him for his own gain.

This chapter investigates the impact of coordination and control mechanisms on the orientation to performances, looking at the relation between Corporate Foundations and their Founder Firms. The research starts from the consideration that the relationship between CFs and Founder Firms can be considered similar to the relationship between headquarter and subsidiaries in large corporations, as the ties are very strong and significant.

In order to address the impact of control and coordination mechanisms on CFs’ orientation to performance, we managed a survey addressed to 188 CFs from six European countries, representing the most significant context for corporate philanthropy in Europe.

The results of a linear regression show that only selected mechanisms are effective for boosting CFs’ orientation to performance, and that these tools must be adapted to the specific nature of the CFs.

The study can help Founder Firms to identify the more effective mechanisms to improve the performance of the CFs they support, in order to ensure the possibility for both the parties to pursue the shared value creation.

The research has put in evidence that CFs must be explored taking into consideration their close tie to Founder Firm, which differentiates them from other interdependent foundations.

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) increasingly view social entrepreneurship as means to expand their mission scope while simultaneously diversifying revenue streams and strengthening financial foundations. However, the pursuit of social entrepreneurial ventures often incites a tug-of-war phenomenon between the deep-rooted social welfare logic of the parent NPO and a newly evolving commercial logic at the subsidiary social enterprise (SSE). The present study seeks to understand how NPOs navigate such logic conflicts as they strive to become more entrepreneurial. Based upon case studies of two NPOs, we found divergence in organizational identity, legitimacy, and mission/vision between parent nonprofits and their SSEs as they struggled with a defining question: Are we a program or are we a business? Our research indicates that organizations reconcile such cognitive dissonance through four distinct processes: connecting, variegating, separating, and augmenting social welfare and commercial logic spheres. We, thus, contribute to the social entrepreneurship and nonprofit management literatures by illustrating ways in which noncommercial organizations may address issues of logic divergence when engaging in revenue-generating commercial activities.

Recent literature on nonprofit boards of directors has extensively investigated the composition, role, responsibilities, and characteristics of boards. Given the growing number of studies on nonprofit boards, which added new impulse to the debate on the role and characteristics of these players, it is time to analyze the state of the art and systematize the current knowledge. On the other hand, despite the presence of some literature reviews, a research comparing the debate among the nonprofit, private, and public sectors is still lacking. Using Gabrielsson and Huse’s (2004) framework, we wanted to identify factors that can influence research on nonprofit boards and compare our results with existing studies on private and public sector.

We conduct a systematic literature review, selecting empirical articles published in international scientific journals from 1992 to 2012.

We found similarities and differences in relation to research on boards among sectors. As a common result, we found that evolutionary studies still remains a neglected area in all of three realms. Finally, whereas input–output studies prevail in the private sector and contingency studies prevail in the public sector, behavioral studies prevail in the nonprofit sector, demonstrating, also, that the sector itself can make a difference in the board’s research.

This literature review provides some suggestion for further research on boards for all of three sectors. For example, we suggest complementing research on boards on all three sectors, especially in relation to evolutionary studies.

This paper fills the need to clarify the status of research on nonprofit boards, in order to address scholars in the understanding of the phenomenon.

The UK government has taken the lead in accelerating the capacity of higher education to engage with sustainability accounting and adopting a novel systematic approach toward a collective implementation of and contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN SDG 16 “Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions” promotes the (re)building of effective and accountable institutions. In line with the institutional logics metatheory, we provide empirical evidence on how the alignment between social mechanisms alongside the reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) and SDGs on transparent and responsible service (SDG 16) affect the students' overall experience. Using a sample of 142 UK HEIs, interpretative content analysis and ordinary least squares, the results show that integrating HEIs' responsible-oriented research agenda proactively with high sustainability reputation adds significantly to greater student satisfaction.

The purpose of this article is to develop a nonprofit integrated social accounting (NISA) model that takes into account the particular objectives of nonprofit organizations (achieving their mission and remaining viable as an organization), their specific characteristics (e.g., the engagement of volunteers), and their economic, social and environmental impacts. The conceptual framework includes defining social accounting, setting the boundaries of the reporting entity, identifying the objectives of nonprofit reporting, identifying the users of the accounts and their information needs, and considering the questions that have to be answered in order to know if the organization is achieving its goals. From the conceptual framework, the NISA model is developed, incorporating four elements: (1) economic and human resources; (2) economic, social and environmental value creation; (3) internal systems and processes; and (4) organizational learning, growth and innovation. Overall, the model provides a mechanism to address both functional and strategic accountability concerns of the organization, its effectiveness and efficiency, and to drive behavior through feedback and readjustment. In this way, accounting plays an important role in shaping the ‘reality’ of the organization.