How Are We Doing? A Multiple Constituency Approach to Civic Association Effectiveness

Abstract

Increased citizen participation in policy processes through voluntary civic associations warrants an analysis of their effectiveness, which this article undertakes using a multiple constituency framework. We find a gap in the literature on nonprofit effectiveness where theoretical and empirical studies have mainly focused on organizations that directly provide tangible goods and services. We propose a multiple constituency approach to evaluate and understand the implications for assessing the organizational effectiveness of community-based advisory civic associations. We empirically analyze the evaluation of Los Angeles neighborhood councils by three different constituency groups—citizen participants, street-level bureaucrats, and city council staffs. We find that the effectiveness ratings of the constituency groups are dissimilar on different dimensions of effectiveness. These findings suggest that the multiple constituency framework holds theoretical and practical value for understanding the organizational effectiveness of voluntary associations, where the different goals of various stakeholders lead to different views on effectiveness.

Program Performance and Multiple Constituency Theory

“…Zammuto (1984) argues that how an organization's leaders choose to define effectiveness reflects whose perspectives dominate the organization. Programs within nonprofit organizations have many constituents, including program participants, staff, funders, peer agencies, the general public, and government representatives (Balser & McClusky, 2005;Herman & Renz, 1997;Jun & Shiau, 2012). (Zammuto, 1984, p. 614) Traditionally, researchers have used multiple constituency theory to understand organizational effectiveness; however, it may also explain program performance.…”

International NGO Centralization and Leader-Perceived Effectiveness

“…The growing acceptance of the stakeholder satisfaction approach and the reputational approach aligns with a trend in the nonprofit management literature toward socially constructed effectiveness measurement (Forbes, 1998;Herman & Renz, 1997Jun & Shiau, 2012;Mitchell, 2013;Willems, 2016). The acceptance of socially constructed measures in public and nonprofit management has been viewed as inevitable because, unlike for-profit organizations with profit maximization as the prime goal, public and nonprofit organizations are characterized by the complexity of multiple goals, multiple ways to measure those goals, and different perspectives among stakeholders about which goals and which measures to adopt (Brewer, 2006;Mitchell & Schmitz, 2018;Tschirhart & Bielefeld, 2012).…”

Leadership, Performance, and Reputation: A multi-method empirical view on the public and nonprofit sectors - Habilitation Synopsis

“…However, organizational goals can be very diverse and context specific, and therefore many different forms of performance can be distinguished within this overall and abstract concept. For instance, when performance is hard to measure, subjective, and multi-dimensional -as it is the case for many public and nonprofit organizations (Herman and Renz 1999;Herman and Renz 2008;Lecy, Schmitz, and Swedlund 2012;Jun and Shiau 2012 ) -stakeholders' subjective perceptions and opinions on performance play a major role. This means that organizational performance is equal to its external reputation and is thus highly determined by the various opinions held by numerous stakeholders.…”