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In the context of a care crisis in Germany, care work done by volunteers is increasingly being semi-formalized by the state and used in professional care work contexts to relieve families and professionals. However, voluntary care has not yet been adequately studied from a care-specific perspective. This study examines in what way voluntary care can be considered decent care from a care-ethical and empirical perspective.

Considering findings of a qualitative interview study, the study examines the special features of voluntary care, addresses its socio-political expansion, and asks about the decency of voluntary care in elder care and social work.

Care work done by volunteers is a special kind of care work, which has advantages but also disadvantages regarding care-ethical requirements of decent care. The study examines under which conditions voluntary care violates these requirements and how this can be countered in socio-political terms.

Voluntary care is an under-researched phenomenon despite its increasing socio-political importance. While its state-led expansion can informalize and deprofessionalize care work at the expense of users, professionals, and volunteers, its analysis can help to illuminate the preconditions for decent care.

This paper aims to integrate the extant literature on the impact of positive leadership on organisational outcomes within the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) organisations, identifies existing gaps in the literature and proposes a framework capturing feasible pathways for future research on positive leadership in NFP organisations.

This is a systematic review of the existing literature on positive leadership and external/environmental factors and organisational values as applied to Australian NFP organisations mainly based on journal articles.

This paper proposes a plausible conceptual framework postulating how Australian NFP organisations could attain superior performance outcomes when there is a perfect alignment between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values. We explain the conceptual framework through testable research propositions explaining interrelationships between positive leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.

The review focused on two positive forms of leadership (i.e. transformational and servant) and could benefit by including other closely related leadership styles and behaviours (like authentic and ethical leadership). In addition to the positivist paradigm and quantitative approach adopted by this paper, interpretative and critical paradigms and related qualitative approaches may also lend themselves well to exposing pertinent issues and relationships that have not been imagined before in the under-researched NFP sector.

Leaders within NFP organisations need to understand when and how to align positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values to maximise limited resources available to Australian NFP organisations.

This systematic review adds to the limited literature exploring the impact of positive forms of leadership within Australian NFP organisations. The proposed framework offers unique insights into the relationships between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.

This paper explores how INGOs communicate their activities and achievements. In doing so, the study seeks to increase our understanding of INGOs' accountability practices.

This paper uses thematic analysis to analyse 90 ‘leaders’ letters' (the letters that many charities include at the beginning of their Annual Reports and Accounts), published by 39 INGOs between 2015 and 2018.

This paper argues that within the Annual Report letters under consideration, INGOs' accountability practices focus on quantitative, process-driven, output reporting. In doing so, it is the actions and agency of INGOs that are primarily emphasised. INGO constituents are largely excluded from representation. Donors are presented only as contributors of financial capital. Drawing on field theory, the paper argues that this representational practice means INGO constituents are almost irrelevant to INGOs' representational and accountability communication practices.

This paper is indebted to previous important work and, building on such scholarship, seeks to contribute to the ongoing conversation about INGO accountability. While reinforcing some prior knowledge, the findings here also differ in the understanding of how donors are portrayed. The paper extends previous analyses by using field theory to show that the INGO field as considered here is a space in which representations of accountability are based on organisational and transactional factors, and does not value the humanity of INGOs' constituents. This connects to operations of power, between donors, INGOs, and constituents, and reinforces inequitable power within the development system.

This study seeks to estimate union wage effect in the public and private sectors of Ghana, respectively. It also seeks to ascertain whether the union wage effect in the two sectors varies.

The authors use data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (GLSS 6, 2012/2013) and Ghana Labour Force Survey (GLFS, 2015). In terms of estimation technique, the authors employ the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique to estimate union wage effect in public and private sectors, respectively.

The findings indicate that union wage effect in the public sector is positive and higher relative to that of the private sector.

The findings imply that strict enforcement of Section 82 of Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) will curb the political influence of public sector unions over their employer (Government).

This research paper has not been presented to any journal for publication and it is the authors' original work.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0045

Learning and development occur in many spaces both within and outside formal education settings. This chapter explores progress and possibilities of a knowledge exchange programme with a third sector organisation involved with community development, playwork and youth work in an urban area of the East Midlands. Theoretical concepts draw on a growing international interest in intergenerational play (Graves, 2002) and ‘cultural circles’ (Gill, 2020) as a method of challenging power and communication barriers between practitioners and families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Using Foucault, post-structuralist feminism and autoethnography, as well as insight from a knowledge exchange partnership – the chapter offers a critique of a national initiative aimed at addressing ‘holiday hunger’ and community engagement. Practitioners in international contexts may benefit from the chapter’s attempt to address a series of co-constructed questions that include:

1. How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

2. What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

3. How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

How do we raise the profile of children’s play as a non-negotiable starting point for universal service provision to children and young people?

What can be done to ‘connect’ diverse communities living in close proximity and sharing amenities within urban areas?

How can we celebrate differences whilst designing universal services, which promote social cohesion through play and leisure spaces?

There is a longstanding debate over the role of modern business methods in the contemporary non-profit organisation (NPO). Critics of business practices assert that they may undermine the missions of NPOs. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate. Many accounting researchers have shifted research focus to concepts such as trust and crises. These are important topics. But they may overshadow practices which are taken for granted as accepted practice which does not merit re-examination.

This qualitative project is based on an initial survey followed by comparative case studies of three NPOs. The researchers have used both interviews and documentary analysis in this study.

The contention that the adoption of business-like practices undermines the fundamental aim of altruism of NPOs is challenged by the findings of this paper. The very concept of altruism is not a single unifying concept in NPOs – it is a contested idea. However, and most importantly, in this research there is no evidence of mission drift by NPOs which adopt business practices. This research highlights the way many NPO CEOs are mission-driven but also pragmatic bricoleurs in their consideration of new business practices. Most importantly, these case studies demonstrate a variation in practices within the participating organisations. This raises challenging questions about a receptive context for the adoption of new business practices which are explored in this paper.

The case studies in this paper are from the UK, and further studies in different operating contexts in other countries would be useful. In particular, the finding that the fundamental ethos of NPOs is not challenged by being business-like merits further research. There is also scope for further research on what constitutes a receptive context for the adoption of new business practices by NPOs.

This study reveals the potential significance of NPO boards, particularly non-executive directors, in the shaping of organisational practices. There is evidence in this study of NPOs recruiting business experts for purposes of legitimation. But this study also shows how business expertise can be mobilised to enhance NPO performance by bricoleurs in NPO who are highly motivated individuals who will adopt useful business practices to hand if they improve charity outcomes.

The NPO organisations are motivated by the desire to make a difference to the lives of people who are vulnerable or disadvantaged. This study has interesting implications for managers and directors of NPOs on their effectiveness.

This study challenges the critical view that becoming more business-like undermines the fundamental ethos of altruism in NPOs. This is an important finding, but this study also reveals the recruitment of business expertise by NPOs purely for purposes of legitimation. However, these legitimating practices differ from the well-established view of isomorphism in the field of NPOs and suggests that, on the contrary, there is a variation in practice within the NPO field which has important implications for donors, regulators, directors and managers of NPOs.

Understanding disabled people as gray-collar workers who are under-paid, under-valued and under-employed is recognized as in urgent need of attention but remains unaddressed. Based on 30 semi-structured interviews with disabled people, observations and document analysis, the authors argue that the disabled gray-collar workers in the performing arts provide a context and socio-cultural perspective on how gray-collar workers can attain dignity through social inclusion. Building on a novel framework of four dimensions of social inclusion theory – access, participation, representation and empowerment – the authors identify social interactions portrayed in the performing arts in order to deconstruct the processes that normalize and reinforce exclusion and inequality. The authors demonstrate how social inclusion can be “enabled” which has implications for theory, policy and practice.

The concept of governance recognises the power dependency that exists between institutions that are engaged in collective action. Government, according to UNESCAP, is a process through which choices are made and executed or rejected. Corporate governance, international governance, national governance and municipal governance are just a few examples of how the term governance may be employed. Governance was also cited by UNESCAP as a player in government. To build a smart city and economy, national level of governance focuses on freedom of media, country history and traditions, civil society, private sector and good government. All those elements are important to build a smart economy and smart city. This chapter discusses the role of government to ensure good governance and good citizen policy choices that benefit the smart city and economy in Bangladesh.

The purpose of this article is to show (1) how social innovations are created through co-production in social enterprises in Finland and (2) how enabling ecosystems for the creation of social innovations can be enhanced by the government.

This study is a descriptive case study. The data comprises focus group interviews that were conducted during a research project in Finland in 2022. The interviewees represented different social enterprises, other non-profit organisations and national funding institutions.

Social enterprises create social innovations in Finland through co-production, where service innovation processes, activism and networking are central. Also, to build an enabling ecosystem, government must base the system upon certain elements: enabling characteristics of the stakeholders, co-production methods and tools and initiatives by the government.

The authors address an important challenge that social enterprises struggle with: The position of social enterprises in Finland is weak and entrepreneurs experience prejudice from both the direction of “traditional” businesses and the government which often does not recognise social enterprise as a potential partner for public service delivery. Nonetheless, social enterprises create public value by contributing to the co-production of public services. They work in interorganisational networks by nature and can succeed where the traditional public organisations and private businesses fail.

Socioeconomic aims and impacts are an explicit part of the UK City of Culture (UKCoC) application, bidding, delivery and evaluation stages. This article engages with existing debates on evaluating cities of culture and introduces perspectives from critical data studies to examine the collection and analysis of different data for the purposes of the CoC application and evaluation processes.

The meta-methodological concept of accompanying researcher is used to analyse the experiences of researchers based within a city bidding for UKCoC 2025 in dialogue with the evaluation reports from past UKCoC host cities.

Findings are analysed under three themes: defining data morsels; local histories and infrastructures of data generation and sharing; and resources, capacities and expertise for data generation and evaluation. The discussion examines data still to be generated and/or brought into relation; tensions around data and measurement; and how constructing an evaluation baseline is generative—creating new organisations, relationships and practices.

The conceptual and methodological approach and empirical findings will be relevant for academic, policymakers and practitioners engaging with cultural evaluation.

In focussing on the bidding stage in real time through the accompanying researcher position, this article presents original empirical insights into the process of creating a baseline for cities of culture evaluation. The conceptual originality of this article is in using critical data studies to explain strategies of data generation and analyse data relations and frictions.