Colleagues,
We are in the process of developing a special issue proposal on "Strategies for Nonprofit Sustainability" for submission to VOLUNTAS, which has indicated interest in considering a full proposal on the topic in the case of the successful organization of a related panel at the 2018 ISTR Conference in Amsterdam.
Thirteenth International Conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 10. July – 13. July 2018
Strategies for Nonprofit Sustainability
Suggested Co-Chairs: Matthias Georg Will, Vladislav Valentinov, Steffen Roth
Many nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations pursue missions that address the pressing problems of social and ecological sustainability. In doing so, these organizations often run up against the limits of their own economic sustainability. Scholars and practitioners become increasingly aware that noble missions alone do not guarantee organizational success. Nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations may fail to build sufficient resource base, to devise appropriate organizational structures, and to develop wise strategies of dealing with stakeholders (Bowman, 2011; Weerawardena et al., 2010; Hung and Ong, 2012). These and other possible organizational failures can be taken to be indicative of deficits in what some scholars have called "nonprofit sustainability" (Valentinov and Vacekova, 2015; Besel et al., 2011; Bell et al., 2011).
This session calls for contributions that tease out the theoretical content of the concept of nonprofit sustainability and/or present empirical evidence on how nonprofit organizations deal with their sustainability problems. The contributions may cut across a broad range of disciplinary fields such as economics, sociology, management, public administration, and ethics.
To begin with, many economic models of nonprofit organizations have been patterned on the contract-based theories of the firm (Thompson and Valentinov, 2017). We invite nonprofit scholars to come up instead with the theoretical equivalents of the resource-based theory that would draw attention to the importance of nonprofit resources, capabilities, routines, and learning processes. Each of these concepts challenges the well-known distinction between the demand-side and supply-side economic theories of the nonprofit sector.
Governance of resource dependencies and commercial activities in nonprofit organizations have long been in the focus of attention of sociologists and management scientists (Vacekova et al., 2016). This session would seek to figure out the effects of these and related phenomena on nonprofit sustainability which itself can be given divergent interpretations. For example, the concepts of the "ambidextrous organization" that combines exploratory and exploitative strategies (O'Reilly, 2013; Turner et al., 2013) is among many points of departure in devising the management strategies of sustainable nonprofit organizations, which may also include new fresh approaches to social entrepreneurship as well as beyond-profit "business" model development.
Of particular interest to public administration scholars would be the nonprofit sustainability implications of the salient phenomena such as inter-sectoral partnerships, coproduction (Brandsen and Honingh, 2016), new governance models, and the strategic navigation of inter-sectoral and inter-functional boundaries (Roth et al., 2017, Will et al., 2017). One of provocative issues is the possible tension between nonprofit identity and nonprofit sustainability, particularly if the latter is attained at the cost of commercialization, bureaucratization, and professionalization.
Finally, nonprofit sustainability can hardly be adequately conceptualized without an account of ethics which comprises not only the issues of good governance and accountability but also the moral basis of advocacy activities. Given the growing populist sentiments around the world, NGOs may come to be controlled by vested interests that are not interested in the genuine democratic discourses. As suggested by Will and Pies (2016), nonprofit advocacy cannot be deemed sustainable if it is complicit in discourse failures which obstruct rationale debate on pressing issues of economy, policy, and further so-far neglected key aspects of social life.
Please submit your abstracts of no more than 500 words incl. key references until October 21, 2017, to matthias.will@wiwi.uni-halle.de . Please indicate in your submission whether you are planning to attend our panel at the ISTR Conference in Amsterdam and whether you would be interested to have your paper considered for the potential special issue of VOLUNTAS.
References
Bell, J.; Masaoka, J.; Zimmerman, S. Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions forFinancial Viability; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA, USA, 2010.
Besel, K.; Williams, C.L.; Klak, J. 2011. Nonprofit sustainability during times of uncertainty. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 22, 53–35.
Bowman, W. 2011. Financial capacity and sustainability of ordinary nonprofits. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 22, 37–51.
Brandsen, T., Honingh, M. 2016. Distinguishing Different Types of Coproduction: A Conceptual Analysis Based on the Classical Definitions. Public Administration Review, 76(3), pp. 427–435.
Hung, C.R.; Ong, P. 2012. Sustainability of Asian-American nonprofit organizations in the U.S. metropolitan areas. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41, 1136–1152.
O'Reilly C (2013) Organizational ambidexterity: Past, present, and future. Academy of Management Perspectives, 27, 324-338.
Rosing K, Frese M, & Bausch A (2011) Explaining the heterogeneity of the leadership-innovation relationship: Ambidextrous leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 22, 956-974.
Roth S, Sales A, and Kaivo-oja J (2017) Multiplying the division of labor: Functional differentiation of the next key variables in management research, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 34.
Thompson, S., Valentinov, V. (2017): The neglect of society in the theory of the firm: a systems-theory perspective. Cambridge Journal of Economics, online first, doi: 10.1093/cje/bew072
Turner N, Swart J, & Maylor H (2013) Mechanisms for managing ambidexterity: a review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15, 317-332.
Vacekova, G., Valentinov, V, Nemec, J. (2016): Rethinking nonprofit commercialization: the case of the Czech Republic. Voluntas, online first, doi: 10.1007/s11266-016-9772-6
Valentinov V, & Vaceková G (2015): Sustainability of Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Czech Republic and Beyond, in: Sustainability, 7, 9890-9906.
Weerawardena, J.; McDonald, R.E.; Mort, G.S. 2010. Sustainability of nonprofit organizations: An empirical investigation. Journal of World Business, 4, 346–356.
Will MG, and I Pies (2016): Discourse Failures and the NGO Sector: How Campaigning Can Undermine Advocacy, Voluntas, forthcoming doi:10.1007/s11266-016-9770-8.
Will MG, S Roth and V Valentinov (2017): From Nonprofit Diversity to Organizational Multifunctionality: A Systems-Theoretical Proposal, in: Administration and Society, online first, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0095399717728093
Dr. Matthias Georg Will
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsethik
Große Steinstraße 73
06108 Halle/Saale
Germany
Tel: +49 (0)345 55-23387
Mobil: +49 (0)157 77846213
Fax: +49 (0)345 55-27385
Mail: matthias.will@wiwi.uni-halle.de
Web: http://ethik.wiwi.uni-halle.de/