Intangible Assets and Performance in Nonprofit Organizations:A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) promote citizens' participation in community life through several different kinds of organizations: some more informal (such as associations and volunteering groups), others more formal or public (such as charities and foundations). This heterogeneity, as well as the well-known peculiarities of NPOs when compared to profit and public ones, poses new challenges to their management. In the constant need to find balance between financial constraints and social value, a main resource for NPOs is the management of intangible assets, such as knowledge, positive relationships within the organization and with users, external image, loyalty and commitment, and so on. From the literature on for-profit organizations, it is well known that proper management of intangible assets improves an organization's sustainable competitive advantage, not only by enhancing its members' affiliation and commitment but even by enhancing their productivity. This is particularly relevant when taking into account the main role of volunteers in the third sector. Volunteers, indeed, show different job attitudes and organizational behaviors than paid employees, as their membership and accountability are less formalized and they frequently lack a proper teamwork, due to the high volunteer turnover. At the same time, from the managers point of view, managing volunteers and paid workers require higher skills and competencies than managing human resources in for-profit organizations. Developing these reflections and considerations, we aim to conduct a systematic literature review on the association between intangible assets and performance in NPOs. The literature will be conducted following the indications from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. It provides an evidence-based minimum set of items to be included in the review, as well as a workflow to properly manage and choose the papers to be included. The authors conducted the research using EBSCO, ProQuest, and Scopus databases.

Learning to Be Employable Through Volunteering: A Qualitative Study on the Development of Employability Capital of Young People

“…The main aim of the study was to investigate the participation of the Universal Civil Service as an experience of informal and non-formal workplace learning useful to develop an employability capital. The focus on this special context was justified by the assumption that the asset of knowledge and soft skills acquired through this opportunity could be considered as an intangible and strategic capital both for individuals as well as for organizations (Buonomo et al, 2020). Therefore, the Civil Service is an experience that students and/or young graduates often chose before concretely entering the labor market; the study argued for the crucial role it could take as a context of vocational guidance, being useful to become more aware of the personal resources that will be strategic for future career management (Manuti, 2019).…”

“…In their extensive literature review, Colley et al (2003) classified learning as formal, non-formal, and informal, recognizing that the continuum of learning may range from highly formal to highly informal ( Schugurensky, 2000 ; Hager and Halliday, 2009 ; Van Noy et al, 2016 ).…”

From Motivation to Organizational Identity of Members in Non-profit Organizations: The Role of Collectivism

“…The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented boom in the NPOs in China (Ma and Liu, 2019). Accordingly, the human resource management of NPOs and organizational identity promotion of NPO members have been paid more and more attention (Buonomo et al, 2020). Organizational identity is a stabilizing force that binds individuals to organizations (Ng, 2015).…”

Review of Methods and Tools for Intellectual Property Analysis of Public Sector Entities

“…In spite of the controversial approach applied by the authors when they consider various intel-Higher School of Economics lectual capital components (including human, relational and structural capital) as intangible assets, the discussion opened up by the authors concerning the parameters characterising the performance of non-commercial organisations is noteworthy. In that study, the relation between intangible assets and performance manifests itself in the fact that the use of intangible assets allows non-commercial organisations to carry out the core activities in the circumstances of government financing decrease and to withstand competition for additional funding sources with other non-commercial organisations [13].…”