Nonprofit organizations in Germany

Hippel, Thomas von

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511712128.009

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“… 8. For example, in German law, ‘A tax-exempt organization must not distribute its assets to its members, directors, officers or to any third person if it does not receive an adequate value in return.’ (Von Hippel, 2010 , p. 207). Similar provisions apply in other countries.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wealth creation without domination. The fiduciary duties of corporations

Claassen

2022

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosoph

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Corporations wield power in today’s economies, and political theories of the corporation argue about the legitimacy conditions of corporate power. This paper argues in favour of a double-fiduciary theory for corporations. Based on a concession theory of markets, it sees all markets as authorized by states (in the name of society), for the purpose of creating economic value, or wealth. Hence corporations, as much as non-incorporated firms, have a fiduciary duty to the state/society to create wealth, in the competitive structure of the market. However, their pursuit of wealth often creates unbalanced relations of power between corporations and their stakeholders, which can at some point be classified as instances of domination. Therefore, corporations need to be subjected to a second fiduciary duty, i.e. not to dominate others in the economy. This duty is also, in the final instance, owed to the state/society. In an era when everyone can incorporate their business, states/societies can be interpreted as having, through corporate law, mandated shareholders as ‘proximate beneficiaries’, to incentivize corporations to create wealth. Now states/societies need to think about how to prevent corporations from dominating others. New mechanisms of accountability towards stakeholders and/or citizens as proximate beneficiaries are needed. Only in this way can corporations be effectively held to account for both of the fiduciary duties which characterize their normative status.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wealth creation without domination. The fiduciary duties of corporations

Claassen

2022

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosoph

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“…Following this argument, we first engage in a discussion around contextual conditions that differ between the German and the U.S. context (which is the basis of most of the research on overheads) and that might affect starvation cycle dynamics in Germany. For our analysis, we draw on research on comparative welfare regimes (Salamon & Anheier, 1998), comparative corporate governance (von Hippel, 2010), and recent surveys on the nonprofit sector (Priemer, Labigne, & Krimmer, 2015; Priller et al, 2012). As elaborated subsequently, this analysis yields four contextual differences as potentially relevant in the context of the starvation cycle: differences in nonprofit sector financing (Priemer et al, 2015; Salamon, Sokolowski, & List, 2003), differences in transparency regimes (Anheier, Hass, & Beller, 2013), differences in professionalism (Langer & Schröer, 2011), and differences in use of funds regulations (von Hippel, 2010; Zimmer, 2015).…”

Section: Toward An Empirical Generalization Across Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although financial data of most U.S. nonprofit organizations is publicly disclosed in the form of tax filings to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), financial information of German nonprofit organizations generally falls within the realm of tax secrecy and is therefore not disclosed by the tax authority (von Hippel, 2010). Although tax secrecy builds the core of the regulatory system, varying reporting requirements exist for specific fields of activity (e.g., educational institutions) or legal forms (e.g., nonprofit corporations with limited liability status), resulting in a highly fragmented system (Anheier et al, 2013).…”

Section: Differences In Transparency Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: Empirical Evidence From a German Context

Schubert

Boenigk

2019

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

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The nonprofit starvation cycle describes a phenomenon in which nonprofit organizations continuously underinvest in their organizational infrastructure in response to external expectations for low overhead expenditure. In this study, we draw on nonprofit financial data from 2006 to 2015 to investigate whether the German nonprofit sector is affected by this phenomenon, specifically in the form of falling overhead ratios over time. We find reported overhead ratios to have significantly decreased among organizations without government funding and that the decrease originates from cuts in fundraising expenses—two results that are in contrast to previous findings from the U.S. nonprofit sector. With this study, we contribute to nonprofit literature by engaging in a discussion around the starvation cycle’s generalizability across contexts.

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Third Sector Organizations in a European and Comparative Legal Perspective

Fici

2023

The Law of Third Sector Organizations in Europe

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Nonprofit organizations in Germany

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

Wealth creation without domination. The fiduciary duties of corporations

Wealth creation without domination. The fiduciary duties of corporations

The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: Empirical Evidence From a German Context

Third Sector Organizations in a European and Comparative Legal Perspective

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