The economics of the nonprofit sector: Insights from the institutionalism of John R. Commons

Valentinov, Vladislav

doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2012.06.002

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Being framed by neoclassical economics, they had little to say on the institutional embeddedness of the nonprofit sector (cf. [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]) and indeed committed the Polanyian "economistic fallacy" [36]. As a counterpoise to the demand-side theories, Chaves and Monzón [37] see nonprofit organizations as a part of the broader social economy that contributes to sustainable development while laying bare the monistic nature of the mainstream neoclassical economics that has been mainly focused on the capitalist for-profit enterprise.…”

Section: The Split Between the Demand-side And Supply-side Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability of Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Czech Republic and Beyond

Valentinov

Vaceková

2015

Sustainability

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Sustainability of nonprofit organizations is a key concern for today's nonprofit scholars and practitioners. Building upon the nonprofit economics literature, the present paper introduces the distinction between the demand-side and supply-side determinants of nonprofit sustainability and makes the case for the discrepancy between them. This discrepancy presents not only a generic conceptual explanation of the nonprofit sustainability problems but is also applicable to the context of the European rural nonprofit sector. Three arguments are advanced. First, the notorious implementation problems of LEADER partnerships can be explained as a manifestation of the above discrepancy. Second, and related, the rural context implies the tendency of the supply-side determinants of nonprofit sustainability to undermine the demand-side ones. Third, recent empirical findings from the Czech Republic show that this tendency does not necessarily imply the possibility of a clear classification of the demand-side and supply-side sustainability determinants. Rather, those features of rural areas and communities that significantly affect the size of the local nonprofit sector exhibit a controversial entanglement of demand-side and supply-side identities.

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Section: The Split Between the Demand-side And Supply-side Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability of Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Czech Republic and Beyond

Valentinov

Vaceková

2015

Sustainability

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“…Nonprofit organizations exercise a societal self‐regulatory role by compensating, to some extent, for these provisioning gaps: ‘In many parts of the world, [these] organizations tackle the problems of rural transportation, health care, social service delivery, education, community development, and diversification’ (Valentinov, , p. 185; cf. Valentinov, ; Valentinov, ).…”

Section: The Role Of Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ostrom, ) underscores the important role of the commons, that is cooperative self‐governing institutions. Other institutional economists begin to pay increasing attention to nonprofit organizations (Valentinov, ; Valentinov, ; Valentinov, ; Valentinov, ; Valentinov, ). Common to all these types of institutions is their deviation from the unrestrained reliance on the price system embodied in the market mechanism, and Williamson's argument about hierarchy fits squarely with the thrust of the heterodox institutionalist literature.…”

Section: The Role Of Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transaction Costs, Social Costs and Open Systems: Some Common Threads

Valentinov

Chatalova

2013

Syst. Res.

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The present paper draws upon the open systems perspective to identify the common systems-theoretic core of two schools of modern economic thought, the new institutional economics and the heterodox institutionalism. This core is shown to be in the argument that the maintenance of complexity requires appropriate self-regulatory mechanisms. While the new institutional economics focuses on the technological complexity maintained by corporate hierarchies, the heterodox institutionalism is concerned with the civilizational complexity that needs to be maintained by broader self-regulatory institutions of the public and nonprofit sector. This argument highlights the complementary and paradoxical relationship between the concepts of transaction costs and social costs analyzed by the respective schools. Corporate hierarchies may successfully exercise their self-regulatory role by economizing on transaction costs, yet in doing so they generate social costs that are reducible through the self-regulatory activity of public and nonprofit institutions.

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“…Institutional adjustment is made necessary by the unanticipated consequences inevitably resulting from the previously adopted working rules [35] (p. 71), while the notion of artificial selection drives home the point that the socio-economic life unfolds as a result of purposeful activities of citizens and authoritative agents who are "looking to the future" [34]. The theory of negotiational psychology refers to a model of human behavior that goes far beyond the neoclassical logic of constrained maximization [35,36]. The distinct normative standard corresponding to these concepts is not instrumental value but "reasonable value", which is generally concerned with "whether one is giving up a larger share, and the other is therefore receiving a larger share of the social output than is 'reasonable'" [31] (p. 333).…”

Section: American Institutionalism: a Brief Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Paradox of Water Management Projects in Central Asia: An Institutionalist Perspective

Chatalova

Djanibekov

Gagalyuk

et al. 2017

Water

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After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries have been faced with numerous development challenges in agriculture, especially those related to water use. Well-intentioned foreign donors and development agencies have stepped in to support local farmers, research centers, and public authorities in devising innovative solutions. Yet, development aid projects have borne fruit only partially. Paradoxically, innovative and apparently useful technologies proposed by foreign donors have rarely and only partially succeeded in taking root in the local institutional contexts. To explain this paradox, this paper draws on the institutional approach which shows the possibility of technological innovations being encapsulated by dysfunctional institutions. Reviewing recent studies of water-related projects in Central Asia, the paper shows this encapsulation to be at the core of the development project failures pervasive both in the Soviet period and today. If the concept of encapsulation is valid, then the current development efforts can be made more effective by detecting and counteracting the structures of vested interest on the part of all the actors involved, such as foreign donors, public authorities, research centers and local farmers.

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The economics of the nonprofit sector: Insights from the institutionalism of John R. Commons

Cited by 14 publications

References 25 publications

Sustainability of Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Czech Republic and Beyond

Sustainability of Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Czech Republic and Beyond

Transaction Costs, Social Costs and Open Systems: Some Common Threads

The Paradox of Water Management Projects in Central Asia: An Institutionalist Perspective

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