Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent public sector entities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland apply sustainability reporting (SR) guidelines in line with the global reporting initiative (GRI) to respond to societal pressure. It further assesses the kind of data reported in order to illuminate whether well-balanced share of economic, environmental and social information are provided.
Design/methodology/approach
– This study provides an empirical analysis of SR based on a documentary analysis of external reports by public sector organisations (PSO) included in the GRI’s database for the years 2012-2014.
Findings
– PSO applying the GRI guidelines comply to a relatively great extent but show considerable variations and a clear imbalance of information reported concerning the three pillars of sustainable development.
Originality/value
– The paper offers insight into GRI reporting practices by PSO in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Additionally, a country and sector comparison was conducted. As previous studies mostly focus on SR in private corporations, the results contribute to advancing research on SR in the public sector where PSO increasingly have to demonstrate their (sustainable) contributions to the public benefit.
New Public Management (NPM) and follow-up reforms have extended the external accountability duties of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). They are increasingly obliged to demonstrate performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and to introduce performance measurement systems (PM systems) for this purpose. This is also the case in Austria, a country with a strong (neo-)corporatist tradition. In the field of social services, nonprofit-government relations are now commonly regulated by performance-based contracts (PBCs) entailing specific accountability obligations. We assume that these externally imposed performance accountability demands affect both NPOs' strategic focus and their relationships to important stakeholders including state authorities, and thereby influence the system of societal governance. Thus, we investigate NPOs' stakeholder focus, (power) relations between NPOs and public funders and explore to what extent the latter exert influence on PM system development and how nonprofit executives assess the cost-benefit ratio of PM systems imposed on them.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global crisis affecting the work and partially the existence of businesses, governments, administrations and nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The latter not only faced severe challenges themselves, but also play(ed) a major role in fighting the pandemic, especially those offering services in social and health care. Maintaining service delivery under pandemic conditions to serve the often vital needs of clients requires (organizational) resilience. This concept generally relates to the ability to withstand adversity, to adapt in a turbulent environment and respond to (disruptive) change. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 33 interviews with nonprofit executives, this paper explores the impact of the pandemic on Austrian NPOs active in health and social care in terms of contextual challenges faced. Our study contributes to (nonprofit) resilience research and extreme context research literature as it illustrates how NPOs coped with this disruptive extreme context. Our findings show which resilience mechanisms (i.e. all kinds of resilient behavior, resources and capabilities) were helpful in overcoming pandemic challenges and getting through these hard times.
Several accountability clubs and watchdogs issue charity labels for stimulating charitable giving, but research on the impact of such seals of approval built on certification systems is still narrow and contradictory. Based on signaling theory and theory of perceived risk, we develop a framework matching means of signaling trustworthiness by charities and of risk reducing by donors. Additionally, we present results of a study exploring the influence of the Austrian charity label "OSGS" on the donation behavior of 192 survey participants and investigate whether donors are more willing to support charities participating in this self-regulatory program. Our study provides insights into the benefits and constraints of voluntary accountability initiatives and enhances understanding of individuals' motivations for giving. Findings indicate that expectations toward the OSGS are high and partly exaggerated. Nevertheless, we found that generally the OSGS is not crucial for charity choice but mainly beneficial for nonprofits not widely known.
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