Program Performance and Multiple Constituency Theory

Abstract

This article seeks to deepen our understanding of performance measurement in the nonprofit human services sector by investigating issues related to funder and provider motivations for collecting and analyzing program-level performance information. Using survey and interview data from nonprofit human service organizations and their funders (nonprofit and local government), we analyze this study's research questions through the lens of multiple constituency theory. Consistent with multiple constituency theory, the study found similarities and differences in funder and provider motivations for collecting performance information. The study also indicates that other key constituents (such as service beneficiaries, donors to nonprofit organizations, and other levels of government that provide resources to local governments) play a role in defining program performance. The article suggests that multiple constituency theory applies to program-level performance and that understanding program performance requires considering the perspectives of multiple stakeholders.

What is performance measurement for? Multiple uses of performance information within organizations

“…Moreover, this article focused mainly on the internal stakeholders’ uses of routine performance information. Future studies could explicitly investigate the use of non‐routine performance information and apply multiple constituency theory (Campbell and Lambright ) to examine the differences in the perception and use of performance information between external stakeholders, such as central government agencies, regulators, funders, and citizens. Finally, future research could consider whether the way performance information is used depends on whether the performance is above or below the target and examine the effects of performance information on service improvement.…”

The managerial and relational dimensions of public-nonprofit human service contracting

“…Prior research on service contracting, including the MCC model, has been informed by theories of the firm and has tended to assume strict organizational boundaries and the autonomy of actors within service delivery networks. In contrast, we wonder if, when, and how boundary-spanning managers may collaborate across organizations in order to build networks of accountability that span individual principals and agents (Quick and Feldman, 2014;Campbell and Lambright, 2016). This possibility is seen perhaps most vividly in our findings that public managers can take an active role in providing technical assistance and organizational development to valued but at-risk nonprofit agencies, and that nonprofit managers can make suggestions to public managers about program needs which may result in contract modifications.…”

International NGO Centralization and Leader-Perceived Effectiveness

“…Among those approaches, the stakeholder satisfaction approach (Tschirhart & Bielefeld, 2012), which follows stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) and multiple constituency theory (Connolly, Conlon, & Deutsch, 1980), is a social construction approach to evaluating nonprofit effectiveness that has become widely accepted in recent decades (Campbell & Lambright, 2016;Herman & Renz, 2008;Mitchell, 2013). From this perspective, there exist many organizational stakeholders with their own sets of interests and notions of effectiveness, thus influencing and evaluating effectiveness in different manners (Campbell & Lambright, 2016;Herman & Renz, 1997 Emerging along with the stakeholder satisfaction approach is the reputational approach to evaluating nonprofit effectiveness Liket & Maas, 2015;Willems et al, 2016). Also emphasizing the socially constructed nature of effectiveness, the reputational approach was developed by scholars who viewed effectiveness reputation as an important social construct that might profoundly shape an organization's ability to fit in an industry or community, attract and retain resources, and so on (Lange, Lee, & Dai, 2011;Mitchell & Stroup, 2017;Sharman, 2007).…”