With the increasing emphasis on risk management in not‐for‐profit organisations, this study is timely in its examination of risk management practices in the Australian not‐for‐profit sector. Specifically, the study investigates the relation between not‐for‐profits’ organisational culture and the maturity of enterprise risk management (ERM) practices. The results show that the organisational culture factors of Outcome Orientation (valuing achievements and results) and Innovation (valuing receptivity and adaptability to change) are associated with the maturity of not‐for‐profits’ ERM. This finding demonstrates the important role that organisational culture plays in shaping ERM practices in not‐for‐profit organisations and the crucial role that leaders play in creating and nurturing such a culture within their organisations. The results also have implications for regulatory policy‐making in, and for, the not‐for‐profit sector.

Motivated by the importance of understanding how managers of not-for-profit organizations (NFPs) in Australia perceive and prioritize their stakeholders, this study tests and applies Mitchell et al.'s (1997) stakeholder salience framework, enhanced by Neville et al.'s (2011) developments to the framework, in the not-for-profit context. The study examines the salience of six key stakeholder groups in NFPs, as perceived by top management, and the relation between three stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency, and salience. Data were collected from 260 Australian NFPs in the education and health service areas. It was found that managers in sampled NFPs weighted the three stakeholder attributes differently. In particular, urgency is weighted strongly across all stakeholder groups, a condition that we suggest is a consequence of enhanced immediacy and reach of media to escalate and manage crises in the contemporary environment of the 21st century. The study contributes to the stakeholder salience literature and has important implications for policy making and regulatory reform for NFPs in Australia as well as managerial practices in NFPs.

No abstract

We use survey and archival data from 271 fee-generating not-for-profit human service organisations in Australia to examine how the use of performance measurement systems affects those organisations' client performance. Using Simons' levers of control, we find that interactive and diagnostic uses of performance measurement systems are positively related to client performance. We also find beliefs control to positively moderate the relation between diagnostic use of performance measurement systems and client performance, and boundary control to negatively moderate the relation between interactive use of performance measurement systems and client performance. The findings have implications for research and practice.

This study investigates the multifaceted nature of accountability mechanisms in Australian not‐for‐profit organizations (NFPs), the association between organizational culture and the use of these mechanisms, and the association between accountability mechanisms and perceived NFP social performance. The findings support the theorization of multifaceted accountability mechanisms in NFPs, including upward accountability (to funders), downward accountability (to clients), and lateral accountability (to employees). The findings highlight that the use of lateral accountability mechanisms is positively associated with the use of both upward and downward accountability (i.e. external accountability) mechanisms. Also, it is found that the culture of respect for people is positively associated with the use of all three accountability mechanisms, whereas the culture of outcome orientation is positively associated with the use of upward and lateral accountability mechanisms. Further, the findings suggest that all three types of accountability mechanisms have positive relations with perceived NFP social performance.