Bureaucratization, Professionalization, and Advocacy Engagement in Nonprofit Human Service Organizations

Nonprofit Board Governance Policy Adoption: Toward an Integrated Board Interlock Network and Institutional Perspectives

“…Professionalization variable captures the extent to which a nonprofit is staffed and run by paid personnel, including staff members, employees, and CEOs (Hwang & Powell, 2009; Lu & Park, 2018; Suárez, 2010). Following previous scholarly approaches, I use a professionalization index score 5 created by summing four dichotomous indicators available in Form 990: (a) whether the organization is staffed by any paid full-time personnel (operationalized as the dichotomous variable of employees, reported in Part VIII from Form 990), (b) whether the organization uses only paid personnel to deliver services (operationalized as the dichotomous variable of volunteers, reported in Part I from Form 990), (c) whether the organization is managed by an executive director (operationalized as the dichotomous variable of the presence of the executive director, reported in Part VII from Form 990), and (d) whether the organization maintains a full-time executive director position (operationalized as the dichotomous variable of executive director compensation, reported in Part VII from Form 990).…”

“… 5. Professionalization index score captures variation among nonprofits based on volunteer-based versus paid-staff distinction and the extent to which a nonprofit is managed by professional executive leadership (Hwang & Powell, 2009; Lu & Park, 2018; Suárez, 2010). …”

Civil society – Politically engaged or member-serving? A governance perspective

“…Nevertheless, as analytical tools they allow us to formulate contrasting expectations about how the organizational features associated with each template feed into CSOs’ patterns of political engagement. Echoing the fundamental distinction between a democratic governance logic to which members are central and a bureaucratic logic with professionals at its core (e.g., Jordan and Maloney, 2007; Knoke, 1990; Lipsky and Smith, 1989; Lu and Park, 2018), the templates differ in whose interest and by whom a CSO is run, i.e., who ensures the overall direction, control and accountability of the organization (Cornforth, 2012: 1121), which shapes organizations’ core activities including political ones. Linking this distinction to Olson’s ‘by-product’ theory (1965) and the tension between a ‘logic of membership’ and ‘of influence’ within groups (Schmitter and Streeck, 1999), CSOs resembling member-oriented ‘voluntary associations’ are expected to be less politically active than those resembling staff-driven ‘voluntary agencies’.…”