Nonprofit organizations are increasingly advised to become fiscally self-sufficient and reduce resource dependence to preserve autonomy. However, little is known empirically about the relationships between particular resource streams and the roles espoused by nonprofit organizations that define their public value, including service delivery, innovation, advocacy, individual expression, social capital creation, and citizen engagement. To address this gap in the literature, we collect and analyze survey data from more than 100 nonprofit organizations, developing and testing a new “Nonprofit Sector Public Role Index” that assesses their perceived performance on six different roles simultaneously. Furthermore, we evaluate characteristics that make nonprofits more or less likely to fulfill various roles, with primary emphasis on financial resources. We find evidence that particular resource streams are strongly associated with particular nonprofit roles. Therefore, resource dependence—particularly dependence on public support—may play an important value preservation role in the nonprofit sector.
Evaluating the performance of nonprofit organizations has been of growing importance for the last several decades. Although there is much good that can come out of self-improvement, there is substantial heterogeneity within the sector that calls into question the usefulness of ''across the board'' evaluation tools. In this article, the authors assess nonprofit evaluation practices, at both the organizational and the programmatic levels. Through a multitheoretical framework, the authors explore the extent to which the adoption and uses of evaluation reflect strategic alignment with heterogeneous nonprofit roles or the institutionalization of the organizational environment. The authors find evidence that institutional perceptions are consistent predictors of whether nonprofit organizations adopt particular practices. Diverse roles are not consistently associated with the adoption of particular practices, but the uses of evaluation are diverse and specific to nonprofit organizations' unique strategies and roles.
In this study, we argue that contract design is a predominant strategy to set contractual expectations among supply chain partners to manage risk. We draw upon resource dependence theory and transaction cost economics to suggest that variation in risk management strategies is dependent upon both the complexity of the procured product or service and the extent to which it is mission critical. In this preliminary study of publicsector supply chains, we find evidence based on an analysis of over 240,000 buyer-supplier contracts that when both mission criticality and service complexity are low, suppliers tend to bear most of the disruption risk by agreeing to fixed-price contracts. When mission criticality is high, we find that the federal government is more likely to share risk with suppliers by utilizing incentive contracts. Evidence suggests that cost-reimbursement and incentive contracts are preferred when service complexity is high.
Supply disruptions are commonplace in today's global supply chain environment. The sheer magnitude of daily transactions makes it inevitable that there will be disruptions, further exacerbated by differences in cultural norms and attitudes that add a layer of complexity to managerial response. In this research, we examine the impact of national culture on individuals' responses to supply disruptions due to psychological contract breach. Using data from controlled experiments conducted with 158 subjects in China and 125 subjects in the U.S., we evaluate changes in decision-making behaviors and assessments of attitudinal outcomes regarding trust and repurchase intentions. Our results show post-breach behavioral differences based on national culture, but find that these differences are short-term in nature. Additionally, cultural differences show up in both of the attitudinal outcomes assessed in this research. Following a psychological contract breach, individuals from the U.S. express less trust in their supply chain partner and less willingness to work with that partner again in the future as compared to individuals from China. Our research suggests that managers and scholars interested in the cultural influences on the response to supply disruption will benefit from further research and understanding focusing on the intersection of psychological contract breach and cultural distance.
The environmental gentrification hypothesis predicts that environmental quality improvements in poor communities may spur gentrification and the displacement of residents. The author analyzes the relationship between hazardous site cleanups and gentrification in Portland, Oregon, during the 1990s. Using resident-defined neighborhoods as the unit of analysis, the author finds that there is no relationship between the extent of gentrification a neighborhood experiences and the perceived or actual environmental improvement that precedes it. Based on this evidence, the author suggests that similar types of cities may be able to improve environmental conditions relatively equitably without exacerbating concerns related to gentrification and social justice.
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