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The Heterogeneity of Competitive Forces: The Impact of Competition for Resources on United Way Fundraising
Abstract
How does competition for resources affect the fundraising performance of local United Way (UW) affiliates? Drawing upon population ecology, we hypothesize a nonlinear relationship between competition and organizational performance. Using a 21-year panel data set that includes UW campaign data, contributions to specialized fundraising organizations, and contributions to the general population of nonprofit organizations, we estimate a fixed effects regression model. We find that the effect of competition differs depending upon the degree of niche overlap. Contributions to organizations with greatest niche overlap have a negative effect on contributions to local UWs. Consistent with population ecology, other types of fundraising organizations that have less niche overlap show beneficial relationships at certain levels of giving. However, few communities reach the philanthropic level at which benefits of competition occur.
... Merging jurisdictions, however, can be unconducive to collaboration despite willingness, incentives, and mandates. First, a larger scope of a mandated collaboration increases competition for limited resources (Paarlberg and Hwang 2017). Two organizations with niche missions could potentially survive in two geographically near but distinct jurisdictions; bringing them into the same collaboration could lead to the duplication of services and competitive actions to claim their market niche and limited resources. ...
... Two organizations with niche missions could potentially survive in two geographically near but distinct jurisdictions; bringing them into the same collaboration could lead to the duplication of services and competitive actions to claim their market niche and limited resources. For instance, only one grant may exist for a niche service provider within one collaboration, bringing the two organizations into direct competition for that grant (Paarlberg and Hwang 2017). Second, merging mandated collaborations forces participants to collaborate, creating a unique situation where expanding the collaboration can worsen performance as participants cannot freely exit (Chen and Sullivan 2023). ...
... Merging may also increase economies of scale by reducing duplicative services, leading to more efficient services collectively and being more competitive for grants (Paarlberg and Hwang 2017). ...
... The contribution of this article is to test the ecological propositions related to why nonprofits alter their niche (measured using the national taxonomy of exempt entity codes). While motivated by organizational ecology, we participate in the tradition of ecological studies that depart from population based inference (sometimes called "demographic analysis") and seek to understand the behavior of individual organizations (Baum & Singh, 1994Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017;Paarlberg et al., 2018;Sullivan et al., 2021). We posit that organizations alter their niche to increase access to resources (revenue), and the likelihood of an organization altering their niche is a function of selection pressure and structural inertia, where selection pressure represents the forces motivating adaptation and change among organizations, while structural inertia represents the forces that allow organizations to sustain their current structure (Baum & Singh, 1996;Hannan & Freeman, 1984, 1989. ...
... In contrast, the niche is a property of organizational populations, and is focused on the intersection of the resources the population requires to survive and reproduce their structure, as well as their productive capacities (Hannan & Freeman, 1977;McKelvey, 2020). The organizational niche has been used extensively in nonprofit research, as different niche segments respond differently to environmental conditions (Baum & Oliver, 1996;Jeong & Cui, 2020), competition in fundraising (Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017;Thornton, 2006), and retain different financial structures (Fischer et al., 2011). The organizational niche was formalized by Hannan et al. (2003), and it becomes clear that the organizational niche can be altered, just as the status of an organization in its environment changes. ...
... Carroll, 1984;Hannan & Freeman, 1977). Importantly, the organizational niche defines the boundaries of selection pressures (Hannan et al., 2003;Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017). Niche density describes the shared resource requirements among organizations providing similar services in a geographic region, which may foster competition or provide opportunities for collaboration (Baum & Oliver, 1996;McPherson, 1983). ...
The organizational niche is a concept integral to organizational ecology, reflecting an organization’s mission, expertise, capacity, and resource requirements. The choice of niche is crucial to the viability of the organization; however, the reasons organizations alter their niche are poorly understood. We hypothesize that nonprofit organizations alter their niche to reduce environmental pressure and gain access to resources. The results indicate that niche alteration predicts increases in total revenue with average increases in revenue from program services and contributions (depending on measure). Additionally, nonprofits that are younger, larger, and have more concentrated revenue, are more likely to alter their niche.
... The continuous approach produces a more sensitive relational description between network actors than the dichotomous one. However, the approach does not seem to allow the coexistence of Focus Scale of relational frame Dichotomous Continuous Discrete Friend Dichotomy of collaboration or not, as IV (Boenigk and Schuchardt, 2015) n/a Actions of collaboration, as IV and DV (Emerson et al., 2012) Correlation b/w distrust and characterization frame (Lee and Lee, 2017) Four discrete dyadic relationships b/w friend and foe, as DV; contact and power imbalance, as IV (Lee and Lee, 2022) Two discrete network structures, as DV; influence/power, as IV (Lee et al., 2018) Foe Dichotomy of competition and cooperation, as IV (Lee et al., 2011) Degree of competition, as IV (Hefetz and Warner, 2011) Degree of conflict, as DV (Berardo et al., 2014) Degree of conflict, as IV (Grissom, 2012;Sanzo et al., 2015) Categories of competition over funding, as IV (Paarlberg and Hwang, 2017) Definitions/frames of conflict, as DV (Mikkelsen, 2012) Research gap opposing relationships, such as friends and foes, as well as adversaries and allies. Also, it is not descriptive enough for viable strategies to manage delicate relationships between two opposite relationships (e.g. ...
... Emerson et al., 2012), categories of competition (e.g. Paarlberg and Hwang, 2017), and frames of conflict (e.g. Mikkelsen, 2012). ...
Purpose
This article aims to explore (1) specific frames of dyadic relationship in policy network beyond a simplistic dichotomy of “friend or foe” and (2) the multi-dimensional drivers behind the framing patterns.
Design/methodology/approach
To that end, the interviews with the key actors in a nuclear energy policy network in South Korea were conducted, and their relationships in terms of three dimensions were analyzed: belief accordance, communication frequency and resource symmetry.
Findings
As a result, 12 relationships that can occur in the policy networks were identified: helping, collaborating, cooperating, unconcerned, stabilizing, observing, pushing, confronting, challenging, ignoring, watching and avoiding. These 12 frames were observed in various in-/congruent patterns between network actors.
Originality/value
The findings provide theoretical and practical implications on why and how the network actors may assess one another through the 12 discrete frames, which are drawn from the three dimensional drivers of belief accordance, communication frequency and resource symmetry.
... For those organizations that have either a clear niche or sit in a dominant position relative to other organizations, resource acquisition may be relatively consistent and different from settings where organizational niches are less clear, at least provided that the composition of the market is relatively stable (Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017). In the settings where competitive pressures may be minimal, an organization in a dominant position may not need to focus much on differentiating itself from other organizations but rather on maintaining its dominant position (Gayle et al., 2017). ...
... First is a focus on the nature of the market itself, typically in consideration of how broad community characteristics affect the population of nonprofits and the nature of the markets that they work within (Gronbjerg & Paarlberg, 2001;Koch et al., 2015). Secondly, there are studies that assess how market competition affects outcomes like grant acquisition or financial stability (Faulk et al., 2016;Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017). Our interest is similar, but rather than focus on outcomes we are more interested in the interplay between competition and strategy-or more generally speaking, we are interested in the moderating effect that strategy plays on both organizational outcomes and the competitive environment itself (Harrison & Thornton, 2022). ...
In this paper, we investigate how an organization’s position within its nonprofit marketplace influences how nonprofits convey images about themselves to their stakeholders. We discuss the nature of competition in the nonprofit sector and explore the different competitive positions that nonprofits find themselves in. We assess how this positionality affects the ways that nonprofits attempt to convey images, or senses, of themselves to external audiences. We find that these sensegiving approaches are affected by competition, particularly when considered together with the stage of the organization’s lifecycle.
... Workplace giving may have great unmet potential (CAF, 2015;CECP, 2015;Potter & Scales, 2008;Scaife et al., 2016), but it is also facing a number of challenges to its viability. These include an increasingly crowded nonprofit/nongovernmental sector, the ease of regular/ monthly giving through bank accounts and credit cards, competition from peer-led informal workplace crowdfunding campaigns, the turn to contract employees and part-time personnel, more "active" approaches to engaging employees in corporate social responsibility programs, and changing giving preferences of the Millennial generation (Australian Charities Fund, 2016;Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017;Walker, 2016). A slowdown in the growth of payroll giving is observed in the U.K., and two large U.S. campaigns are in a long-term decline (CAF, 2017;CECP, 2015;. ...
... Consideration of organizational field, Barman (2007) argued, allows researchers to study the social embeddedness of charitable giving and nonprofit and donor behavior. Researchers have examined the effect of organizational competitors on workplace fundraising organizations (Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017) and how local context might mediate field-level pressures on workplace campaigners (Paarlberg & Meinhold, 2012), but these usually do not include individual level analysis. ...
Workplace giving is a widely used philanthropic tool. Although it may have great unmet potential, it is also facing a number of challenges, including competition from informal crowdfunding campaigns. In the face of such challenges, we take stock of the extant research to better understand the value and future of workplace giving, emphasizing employee actions and preferences in our review. Workplace giving studies can also augment knowledge about contextual giving or bounded settings for exploring basic philanthropic questions (e.g., donor control or gift elasticity). We use a three‐part conceptual framework to synthesize and discuss research on individual workplace giving in the context of broader giving behaviors. We address what researchers know, do not know, and need to know on the topic of workplace giving.
... However, as community grant-making organizations, they legally must meet the public support test, and they are heavily dependent upon local contributions from individual and corporate donors to support their operations. The mandate to engage in ongoing fundraising inherently creates competition among CPOs within the defined local market for donor contributions (Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017). ...
... Many nonprofits did so by embracing more entrepreneurial approaches including heightened marketization. There is a considerable body of literature on the integration of businessoriented ethics, values, and practices into the nonprofit world, especially regarding fiscal health, performance measurement, and staff control through approaches such as the New Public Management model (Harrison and Thornton 2022;Maier, Meyer, and Steinbereithner 2016;Paarlberg and Hwang 2017;Robichau, Sandberg, and Russo 2023;Smith 2018;Smith and Phillips 2016;Turpin, Shier, and Handy 2021). ...
Forty years of neoliberal policies and protocols, such as privatization, austerity measures, and managerialism, has pushed the U.S. human service sector to the brink of collapse. This commentary delineates the impact of neoliberalism on nonprofit human service agencies. Specific attention is paid to the untenable working conditions of professional frontline staff, who are tasked with providing much needed programs and services to often vulnerable populations. Worker strategies for coping with and fighting against neoliberalism, both individual and collective, are delineated. This piece concludes with some suggestions for more systemic responses to ameliorate and challenge neoliberalism’s impact on the human service sector workforce, although additional strategies are also needed.
... These organizations raise funds within their immediate communities to distribute back into these communities to benefit the public good. United Ways are one of, if not the, largest community funding organization in the United States (Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017) and raised over $3.6 billion dollars in private donations as of 2020 (Barrett, 2020). Given this dedicated relationship with their immediate geographic communities, the attitudes and characteristics within these locations may relate to the recruitment of women to their boards of directors. ...
Nonprofits that serve particular communities are in essence products of those communities. Community logics are localized norms, beliefs, and attitudes that may impact local organizational behavior. Gender status beliefs, which are also normative assumptions about the abilities of women, may be transmitted into nonprofit organizations through community logics and may color recruitment choices for board members. This paper attempts to understand the relationship between these gendered community logics and the presence of women on United Way boards of directors over a period of 15 years. This paper uses a nationally representative sample of United Ways across 23 states to identify community characteristics that may change attitudes and receptiveness to women as members of boards of directors, an area of board selection that has been little studied. There is some evidence for community logics such as having more female local business leaders or advanced degree holders in the community being related to an increased presence of women on these prestigious boards, perhaps indicating new status beliefs and community logics around the abilities of women in leadership roles. K E Y W O R D S board composition, community logics, gender, nonprofit boards, representation, status beliefs, women
... Despite a recent push to acknowledge the role of competition in nonprofit environments (Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017), collaboration has been the modus operandi in the nonprofit context since the early 1980s (Gazley & Guo, 2020). However, competition has distinct benefits and can lead to more effective and better performing organizations (Barman, 2002;Chetkovich & Frumkin, 2003). ...
Research on fundraising performance links organizational size, professional donor engagement, and legitimacy with fundraising outcomes. But can we assume the same factors will positively impact fundraising performance in light of increasing competition among nonprofits? This study explores whether and how traditional factors known to impact fundraising performance perform in the context of online fundraising tournaments: an environment that is explicitly competitive as those who lose drop out. Our analysis draws on data from 596 US nonprofits that participated in such tournaments. This inquiry addresses increasing competitive pressures placed on nonprofits as they likely cannot avoid competition in the future.
... Despite increased giving in 2019, competition for donations among nonprofits remains high, especially when a charitable organization's niche overlaps with that of others'. Paarlberg and Hwang (2017) put it simply, the greater the overlap, the greater the competition for resources and donors. Consequently, nonprofit charitable organizations must tell stories that persuade donors to support their mission and contribute, and nonprofits are relying increasingly on having an online presence (Shier & Handy, 2012) as a platform for their stories. ...
Despite increased giving in 2019, competition for donations among nonprofits remains high, especially when a charitable organization’s niche overlaps with that of others’. Consequently, nonprofit charitable organizations must tell stories that persuade donors to support their mission and contribute. This study uses positioning theory to examine how websites of the charitable organizations that appeared in Forbes Magazine’s 2019 top 100 charities use storytelling to facilitate their ethos such that they gain support and thus increase their donor base. The results revealed that nonprofits use positioning to establish two types of partnerships: invited and assumed. Furthermore, the coding revealed three primary types of positioning within these partnerships: savior-follower, business partners, and teacher-student. These positions organize and set the parameters for each organization’s story and will not only influence and potentially dictate the speech acts that follow, but also the responsibilities and rights of all those involved.
... Transparency may be necessary for restoring trust, so nonprofit scholars' interest in disentangling the antecedents and outcomes of transparency has increased (e.g., Harris & Neely, 2021). Second, the growing instability of public funding for NPOs and the arrival of many for-profit firms in sectors traditionally occupied by NPOs have sharpened NPOs' competition for funding (Hung & Hager, 2019;Paarlberg & Hwang, 2017;Topaloglu et al., 2018). They also have strong incentives to demonstrate their competitive advantage by openly reporting on their performance and effectiveness (Charles & Kim, 2016;Fonseca et al., 2021;Woodroof et al., 2020). ...
Over the past 20 years, as the study of transparency has evolved into a burgeoning multidisciplinary field, nonprofit scholars have developed an impressive body of research on the antecedents and outcomes of the transparency of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). From both theoretical and practical purposes, it is necessary to develop an overall picture of such antecedents and outcomes, to allow scholars and NPOs to understand why, when, and how transparency should be implemented. Current studies provide a fragmented view, focused on specific elements of NPO transparency; with a systematic literature review of 76 articles, this article offers both an integrative framework of the antecedents and outcomes of NPO transparency and an agenda for research, based on a critical analysis of the integrative framework. Four relevant research orientations emerge: (1) direction of NPO transparency, (2) distinguishing actual from perceived transparency, (3) the dark side of NPO transparency, and (4) NPO transparency contingency factors. Research along these four orientations could add nuance to existing knowledge of transparency and provide key insights with regard to why, when, and how transparency works.
... While the environment influences organizations, managers make decisions to respond to this competitive environment. First, organizations looking for new resources may innovate to become more successful, such as entering a less-served and less-competitive area, mainly when there is a heterogeneous demand for services (Jeong and Cui 2020;Kim 2015); doing so allows these organizations to differentiate themselves and potentially receive more funding and provide a more comprehensive array of services in the sector (Paarlberg and Hwang 2017). Second, organizations may be more competitive for funds, such as government grants and private contributions, if they provide services more efficiently than other organizations (Charles and Kim 2016;Lecy and Searing 2015). ...
What happens to local services’ performance when service-provider density increases in a community? The answer is difficult. To explore how density relates to multiple aspects of performance, this study aims to examine the effects of service-providers’ density on service outputs and policy outcomes. Using a panel dataset of local homeless service planning bodies, the Continuum of Care Programme, we found that service outputs improved; however, the prevalence of homelessness did not decrease. Drawing upon organizational density theory, our findings contribute to the extant knowledge on public management by exploring how service-provider density relates to service outputs and policy outcomes separately.
... In 2014, nonprofit organizations with less than $50,000 in annual revenue are not required to file a 990 form with the IRS, but in 2003, nonprofit organizations with more than $25,000 were required to file a 990 form. Our dependent variable is a per capita measure of the sum of monetary contributions to nonprofit organizations nested in counties (Beaton and Hwang, 2017;Paarlberg and Hwang, 2017). ...
... Given that DAFs are much more flexible than foundations and enable gifts to be anonymous (for donors who do not wish to be 'cultivated' by many other organizations when their gifts are public), they have boomed in popularity in recent years, becoming the fastest growing destination for charitable giving in the US and Canada (Rooney, 2017). At the same time, the federated United Way campaigns are in trouble in the US and to a lesser extent in Canada, and giving to social services has flatlined (Blum, 2017;Paarlberg and Hwang, 2017). ...
To appear in: Helmut Anheier and Stefan Toepler (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Nonprofit Management. London: Routledge. abstract The contexts in which nonprofits operate in the US, UK, Canada and Australia are undergoing significant change. This chapter assesses the implications of three sets of recent developments in: the regulatory regimes; philanthropy and social finance; and contracting for social services. The actual 'public benefit' and impact of philanthropy and charities is under increased scrutiny, and this is being embedded into regulatory and financing systems. Although these countries have strong traditions of philanthropy, it has become more reliant on older and High Net Worth donors so that most nonprofits must work harder for their income. The Millennials are starting to shake up the brand loyalty of the Boomer generation and have differing expectations for engaged, inclusive work environments. Social finance is widening the gap between the nonprofits with the sophistication and financial acumen to take advantage of these new tools and those that lack the capacity to do so. This division is reinforced by changing models of service delivery, which are also creating greater pressures for collaboration and mergers. To manage these major shifts nonprofits need to pay even greater attention to leadership, organization governance and more effective sector self-regulation.
... Median household income is a widely used determinant for the size of the nonprofit sector (Lecy and Van Slyke, 2012), and is correlated with the mobilization of community resources for collective action. Third, annual private nonfarm payroll is employed to control for the size of the local market; the variable is divided by the total population as per capita (Paarlberg and Hwang, 2017). Fourth, the local government revenue variable is employed to measure the size of local government institutions because the existing literature emphasizes that strong local public institutions positively influence social integration within the community (Paarlberg et al., 2018). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social capital and collective action at the county level in the US while incorporating the moderating effects of community racial diversity and urbanity and to find the changing effects of social capital on philanthropic collective action for community education.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper employs a quantitative research design. The dependent variable measures philanthropic collective action for community education while the independent variable for social capital is measured as a community level index. Moderating variables include a community racial diversity index and urbanity. This analysis tests and interprets interaction effects using moderated multiple regression (MMR), with the baselines of MMR being grounded to multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Analyses are carried out in the context of the USA during 2006 and 2010, with US counties employed as the unit of analysis.
Findings
The effects of social capital on philanthropic contributions decline in counties with low- and mid-levels of racial diversity. On the contrary, the effects of social capital increase in highly racially diverse counties. The three-way interaction model result suggests that racial diversity positively moderates social capital on philanthropic collective action for community education where the effect of social capital is strong and positive in highly racially diverse urban communities.
Originality/value
This research complicates the notion that social capital and racial diversity are negatively associated when exploring collective action and community education, and suggests effects of social capital varies with moderating effects on philanthropic collective action for community education.
... MacIndoe and Whalen (2013) distinguish the two according to the targeted customers or the segments of the population a nonprofit serves; if it is the general population, the organization is classified as generalist, otherwise it is specialist. Paarlberg and Hwang (2017) follows a different approach by focusing on the nature of work; specialist organizations are those with missions focused on generating resources for themselves or another organization, generalist organizations are all other organizations. Finally, according to Galaskiewicz and Bielefeld (1998), generalist and specialist nonprofits differ in terms of the range of service activities they undertake (for example, health and/or welfare) and the diversity of their funding sources (private, individual, government, and others). ...
Nonprofits’ capacity and scope can impact organizational performance, separately and jointly. Yet, the relationship between the two constructs remains unexplored. In this article, we examine the association between organizational capacity and scope. Relying on a dataset of environmental nonprofit organizations in Lebanon, we find that, when examined separately, human resources and external relations capacities are significantly associated with single-domain organizations while strategic planning and financial capacities are significantly associated with multiple-domain organizations. When considered together, however, external relations lose such association. Implications for practice and future research on the effect of organizational scope and capacity on nonprofit performance are discussed.
... In this way, our results concur with recent research on nonprofit competition concluding that nonprofit crowding is not leading to intense competition (Harrison and Thornton 2014;Seaman, Wilsker, and Young 2014). While some organizations may be losing revenue, total sector revenue is benefiting from specialization and legitimacy (Paarlberg and Hwang 2017). ...
The number of nonprofit organizations is rapidly increasing, which has led nonprofit practitioners to complain of funding scarcity, nonprofit scholars to closely study nonprofit competition, and policymakers to consider increasing nonprofit barriers to entry. Underlying each of these perspectives is an assumption of limited financial resources. We empirically examine this assumption using county-level panel data on nonprofit human services organizations from the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Contrary to the limited resources assumption, our fixed-effects models show that increasing nonprofit density, at its current levels, has the effect of increasing sector financial resources in each county. We suggest that these findings prompt a tradeoff for policymakers. A sector with free market entry results in a nonprofit sector with more, smaller nonprofits, but such a sector may have the capacity to serve more people because it has more total sector financial resources. Conversely, a sector with higher barriers to entry would translate to a sector with fewer, larger nonprofits with less overall capacity due to fewer sector financial resources.
We analyzed two samples representing two very different types of nonprofits to explore the under-researched relationship between fiscal performance and board members’ contributions of money and time. The first sample featured survey responses from 72 presidents and board chairs from associates-degree granting colleges. It showed that board members’ time contribution was significantly and positively related to fiscal performance, but that board members’ financial contribution was not, although it exhibited a negative relationship. The second sample was extracted from a database of survey responses from 834 community-based performing arts nonprofits. The analysis found that board members’ time contribution was positively associated with fiscal performance, and that the percentage of overall donations made by board members showed a negative relationship with fiscal performance. These converging results from samples drawn from two different types of nonprofits suggest that board involvement (time contributed) is associated with improved fiscal performance whereas overreliance on boards for funding could undermine nonprofits’ financial sustainability.
Theories of density dependence emphasize the role of competition and legitimation in organizational life. However, agglomerative configurations and ecological processes vary substantially over space, resulting in heterogeneous sub-populations which organizations select into by choosing locations. Using geostatistical data constructed from form-990 submissions and the American Community Survey, this article studies the role of location and density in the operations of nonprofits using generalized additive models. After controlling for organizational and neighborhood features, the results show substantial variation in the effect of location on total and contributed revenue. Nonprofit density is positively associated with the location effects across a range of distances. The results suggest organizations benefit greatly from locating in high-density regions and may be most sensitive to variation in density in their immediate proximity. The study emphasizes location dependence through the importance of location and the intra-county distribution of nonprofits.
Nonprofit organizations are vital to the implementation of social policy and provide myriad benefits to those nearby, yet few studies consider founding patterns in small areas. Conceptualizing ecological processes at the local level and in the context of developmental regimes, this article investigates nonprofit founding events among neighborhoods with a unique data set aggregated by census tract from 2010 to 2016 in one northeast Ohio county (United States) using a hierarchical Bayesian model. The results broadly support the density dependence hypothesis, however, suggest high density is required to reduce founding rates in small areas. The results indicate nonprofit founding rates are lower in tracts with higher levels of economic disadvantage and higher shares of Latino residents. The paper calls for further research into nonprofit population dynamics among small areas and for policymakers to closely consider nonprofit founding events, as founding determines the future of a region’s nonprofit infrastructure.
To what extent do organizations conform to external pressures within a highly institutionalized federated system? Drawing on the theory of middle‐status conformity, and distinguishing between ascribed and achieved status, we examine variation in linguistic conformity across the United Way (UW) system. Using a unique set of data collected from multiple sources, we analyzed the effect of both ascribed status (age) and achieved status (fundraising performance) on local UW conformity to the community impact language of the United Way Worldwide (UWW). We found a curvilinear relationship between linguistic conformity and achieved status but not ascribed status. Local UWs with achieved middle status based on fundraising performance were more likely to conform to the UWW's community impact language than low and high‐status local UWs. The presence of a state UW association moderated the relationship between achieved status and linguistic conformity. This study contributes a novel conceptualization and operationalization of organizational conformity, refines the theory of middle‐status conformity by distinguishing two types of status in the context of a highly institutionalized federated system, and examines moderating conditions of middle‐status conformity.
This study examines how institutional multiplicity shapes nonprofit organizations’ mission-oriented actions by using the institutional logics perspective. We test how different institutional logics (professional, market, state, and community logics) independently and collectively affect mission-oriented actions of nonprofit organizations, focusing on the two focal subsectors: human service organizations and art and culture organizations. Using a panel dataset of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations between 2000 and 2010, we find that multiple institutional logics jointly as well as independently affect nonprofits’ mission-oriented actions and this relationship varies between the two subsectors. The findings offer empirical evidence of how multiple logics co-exist and how the dynamics among multiple logics may shape nonprofits’ actions across different subsectors.
The current research aims to test the effect of environmental analysis in reducing the Strategic Anxiety of the Iraqi Airways Company. Given the importance of the two variables for the company from the perspective of society and the sample resulting from directing various organizational phenomena to reduce its strategic anxiety as a goal that should be viewed from multifaceted perspectives(Not sure, relational disorder, competitive disorder, resources). It was embodied by choosing the exploratory analytical method as the most appropriate in that aspect, To prepare the research questionnaire from solid scientific standards adopted by previous studies, with the introduction of some expert professors and arbitrators to it with appropriate modifications, As the research sample was intentional stratification from the community of leaders, who numbered by comprehensive enumeration, to be distributed to a sample (98) of the company's leaders (General manager and department managers, and officials of the people). As it was retrieved (83) questionnaire subject to analysis in addition to the use of some statistical programs (SMART PLS V.3.4 , SPSS V.28) and use appropriate statistical methods K (normal distribution tests, Testing the scale's validity, stability and confirmation after it has been explored, Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis through the weighted arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Relative importance, Relative coefficient of difference, Pearson correlation coefficient, Multiple regression by regressive elimination method, And test the influence of the mediator by the method of Barron and Kenny, and Sobel's touchstone, and structural modeling), The practical analysis, through the data obtained by the researcher from the sample answers, reached the most prominent result (Enabling Iraqi Airways to adopt environmental analysis to reduce its level of strategic Anxiety)
Many nonprofit organizations operate under immense financial pressure. Revenue volatility is a common target for managers to minimize under the assumption that maintaining consistent revenue enhances the viability of the organization while high revenue volatility may disrupt planning. However, the relationship between revenue volatility and the viability of nonprofit organizations is poorly understood. This article presents the first empirical test of the link between volatility and dissolution in U.S. public charities from 2010 to 2018 ( N = 2,126,894) using discrete time survival models. The results show that a 10% increase in revenue volatility predicts an increase in dissolution risk between 7% and 14%. In addition, the effect of revenue volatility varies by the age of the organization, suggesting volatility may be a greater threat to older organizations than to those newly formed. Implications for managers and future research are discussed.
This article introduces a novel empirical approach to the nonprofit literature that can measure competition between nonprofit organizations. Our approach provides a framework to determine how the number of organizations may be incorporated into empirical competitive analysis. We then systematically estimate the average population needed to support a given number of nonprofits in a market. We find that, for the 10 nonprofit industries examined, markets reach competitive levels once four or more nonprofits have entered. The results suggest that a relatively small number of nonprofits are needed to ensure robust competition. Our findings demonstrate that donor market competition is both predictive in nonprofit entry decisions and remarkably similar to competitive behavior among for-profit firms. We discuss several implications of these findings, in terms of both policy and future empirical research.
Philanthropic endeavors are a form of institutionalized collective action that enhances a community’s capacity to address community needs and interests. Despite studies investigating the complex relationships between local economies, social capital, and local philanthropy, much remains unknown concerning the interaction between diverse local economic structures, social capital, and local philanthropy. Therefore, we explore whether local economies and social capital affect a community’s capacity to mobilize collective resources for two distinct forms of local philanthropy: elite and social welfare-oriented. Using a quantitative analysis, we empirically examine these relationships using a dataset covering three specified years spanning 3,036 US counties. Findings suggest that the diversity of local economic structures play a moderating role in facilitating the effect of social capital on local philanthropic activities aimed at satisfying local community demands and interests. The results illustrate important policy implications concerning the diversification of economic resources for local policymakers and community leaders.
The growing push in nonprofit studies toward panel data necessitates a methodological guide tailored for nonprofit scholars and practitioners. Panel data analysis can be a robust tool in advancing the understanding of causal and/or more nuanced inferences that many nonprofit scholars seek. This study provides a walk-through of the assumptions and common modeling approaches in panel data analysis, as well as an empirical illustration of the models using data from the nonprofit housing sector. In addition, the paper compiles applications of panel data analysis by scholars in leading nonprofit journals for further reference.
By enabling more efficient information and knowledge sharing and reinforcing the shared goals for participating members, inter-organizational information technology (IT) becomes instrumental to both accomplishing coopetitive outcomes and avoiding the pitfalls of partner opportunism. We posit that as network social capital is accumulated in technology-enabled coopetition networks, collaboration will enhance the strategic value of outcomes and positively affect goal convergence among network users. Our findings illustrate that the role of technology in coopetition extends beyond facilitating knowledge exchange and may play a vital role in the strategic development of firms pursuing coopetitive options.
Based upon the existing literatures surrounding collective action and the environmental justice frame, consciousness-raising is a social tool for community constituents facing the hazards of environmental pollution to community health. Environmental pollution is a complex phenomenon that poses grand societal challenges including global implications and locally situated contexts. We believe that locally situated social problems, such as air pollution emissions, influence the functions of community philanthropy, a means of effective collective civic action. By drawing upon resource mobilization theory and organizational ecology theory, this study aims to examine the direct effects of the social problem of environmental pollution to community health and its impact on collective resource mobilization. This is accomplished by analyzing both the organizational growth of the environmental nonprofit sector in terms of the density and aggregated resources at the community level, conceptualized here as community philanthropy. Collective civic action supports environmental activism and is embodied in the shared beliefs, values, and understandings of a community whom seek a legitimate means of collective action; these opportunities are often provided by the nonprofit sector. We also examine the moderating role of community racial diversity on this relationship. Empirical results demonstrate that in racially diverse communities, community philanthropy is facilitated when facing the social problem of increased environmental pollution. Our problem-driven research implies that community racial diversity may impact the mobilization of collective resources when dealing with locally situated social problems.
This paper extends the theoretical framework of nonprofit activity in three-sector economies. Perspectives from existing theories on nonprofit organizations and the agenda setting literature are simultaneously considered. The nonprofit form provides one solution to the causes of market failure that are inherent to the different classes of goods discussed by previous theory. However, issue salience can lead to public policies that correct market failures. Such policies can lead to greater competition for tax-supported funding and to for-profit entry. This combined framework allows for the integration of the various theories on the existence of nonprofit organizations under one theoretical lens. It also yields a framework to empirically analyze industry dynamics and inter-organizational competition specifically within nonprofit and mixed-sector markets. The temporal variation and relative strength of issue salience in various mission areas in which nonprofits participate are particularly considered. This theoretical perspective leads to several important implications for industrial structure, nonprofit competition for resources and market share, public policy, advocacy, contracting, and public–private partnerships as the issues nonprofits address evolve over time.
In this unique longitudinal examination of the "third sector" of the economy, the authors explore why, in a major U. S. metropolitan area, some nonprofit organizations grew while others shrank during the 14-year period of the study. The authors' striking conclusions contribute to an understanding of how organizations juggle commitments to donors, grantmakers, members, and service populations, while trying to keep costs down and worker morale high. In the face of these often conflicting tasks, the study demonstrates that it is ultimately an organization's coping strategies that keep it afloat.
In an era of dramatic financial challenges, pressure is growing for U.S. nonprofit organizations to consolidate. Yet, we know little about the current concentration of the sector and even less about the degree of competition in various nonprofit sub-sectors. In this paper we offer a detailed analysis of concentration patterns across the sector and analyze variations in these patterns by sub-sector and metropolitan areas.
It is well known that measuring concentration is not identical to assessing effective competition, and is but a starting point for a more thorough competitive analysis. An important distinction is made between the concentration of resources within larger subsector organizations and inequality in the distribution of resources across those organizations. Some subsectors may be concentrated yet behave competitively because resources are distributed relatively equally among several large organizations. By contrast, other concentrated sub-sectors may behave less competitively because resources are very unequally controlled by very few organizations. Understanding the patterns of both concentration and inequality in the nonprofit sector is likely a prerequisite to drawing defensible conclusions about the degrees of competition in the sector and the desirability of further consolidation. This analysis has implications for both public policy and philanthropy. It bears on the issues of whether anti-trust policy should be forcefully applied to the nonprofit sector, whether government funding programs should encourage nonprofit consolidation or competition, and whether philanthropic institutions should implore nonprofit organizations to consolidate further or to compete more vigorously.
In response to ongoing changes in local economic and philanthropic structures, the United Way of America has encouraged local affiliates to adopt a new philanthropic model-Community Impact. Despite efforts to rebrand the system, significant variation exists in local implementation of the new initiative. Drawing on case studies in 6 communities, we explore how local contexts shape local practices. Consistent with a growing body of research that describes the impact of local institutions on organizational practice, we find that local United Way practices are shaped by local institutions and the field level pressures to adopt Community Impact often conflict with local performance logics. These local logics are influenced by historical stocks of philanthropic and civic capital that both constrain and offer alternatives for local strategies.
This research expands upon organizational ecology theory to examine variations in founding of organizations in the formalized sector of the environmental justice movement across U.S. counties for two time periods (1990–1999 and 2000–2008). Cross-movement effects are examined to determine if founding is more or less likely to occur in counties where related civil rights and environmental organizations are located. Consistent with the notion of agglomeration effects, we hypothesize that during the 1990s the relationship among civil rights density, environmental density, and environmental justice founding is positive and suggests cooperative efforts. That is, environmental justice organizations should form in counties where civil rights organizations and environmental organizations exist. Because the focus of environmental justice organizations may have expanded over time and created a more competitive atmosphere, cross-movement relationships that were positive across counties during the 1990s are hypothesized to turn negative across counties during the 2000s. Multivariate analysis suggests mixed support for these hypotheses. Specifically, civil rights density is positively associated with environmental justice founding during the 1990s and negatively associated with environmental justice founding during the 2000s—suggesting potential cooperative and then competitive effects across counties over time. However, the correlations between environmental density and environmental justice founding, while positive and statistically significant during the 1990s, are not statistically significant during the 2000s. Thus, in the case of organizations in the formalized sector of the environmental and environmental justice movements it appears that there is a trend toward competitive effects even as those effects have yet to materialize.
Combining insights from organizational ecology and social network theory, we examine how the structure of relations among organizational populations affects differences in rates of foundings across geographic locales. We hypothesize that symbiotic and commensalistic interpopulation relations function as channels of information about entrepreneurial opportunities and that differing access to such information influences the founding rate. Empirical analyses of U.S. instruments manufacturers support this argument. The founding rate of instruments manufacturers rises with the densities of organizational populations that have symbiotic and commensalistic relationships with instruments manufacturers. These factors encourage the initial foundings of instruments manufacturers in areas where such organizations were not previously found. The dominance of organizational populations tied to instruments manufacturing by symbiotic or commensalistic relations increases the rate of foundings of instruments manufacturers, whereas the dominance of organizational populations that lack these relations decreases it. Finally, we find that interpopulation relationships that hinge on direct contact have less impact on initial foundings as geographic distance increases. These results have implications for research on organizational ecology, entrepreneurship, urban sociology, and economic geography.
United Way (UW) organizations have long portrayed themselves as performing three core functions for local communities: fund-raising, community planning, and fund-allocation. Contradictory forces increasingly threaten the ability of UW organizations to perform all of these core functions. Some remain hidden and unacknowledged for some period of time. Many UW systems face the same challenges: how to raise funds, address needs, and respond to diverse constituencies; how to manage conflicts with adjacent United Ways; and how to create and maintain internal consensus to address these challenges effectively These are important questions for understanding how organizations relate to their environment and for understanding U.S. society. The scope of United Way systems is impressive and plays a key role both in shaping community perceptions of problems and as a major avenue through which the corporate sector takes an active role in local communities.
Literature on the nonprofit sector focuses on charities and their interactions with clients or governmental agencies; donors are studied less often. Studies on philanthropy do examine donors but tend to focus on microlevel factors to explain their behavior. This study, in contrast, draws on institutional theory to show that macrolevel factors affect donor behavior. It also extends the institutional framework by examining the field-level configurations in which donors and fundraisers are embedded. Employing the case of workplace charity, this new model highlights how the composition of the organizational field structures fundraisers and donors alike, shaping fundraisers' strategies of solicitation and, therefore, the extent of donor control.
Departing from the population-level emphasis of density dependence research in organizational ecology, the authors examine how organizational niches within populations influence patterns of competition and mutalism. Organizational niches characterize intrapopulation variation in productive capacities and resource requirements and are operationalized for a population of day care centers (DCCs) based on the ages of children they are licensed to enroll. The authors find competitive effects of overlap density, the aggregate overlap of a DCC's organizational niche with those of all others, and mutualistic effects of nonoverlap density, the aggregate nonoverlap, which are strongest among neighboring DCCs. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for studying organizational population dynamics.
This study examines the impact of localized competition on rates of failure in the Manhattan hotel industry from 1898 to 1990. The study investigates whether the organizations in a population with more similar resource requirements compete more intensely. This approach builds on existing density-based models of interorganizational competition by including variation at the organizational level directly in both the model and measures of competition. A dynamic analysis shows that hotels located in densely populated regions of the distributions of organizational size, geographic location, and price experienced significantly higher failure rates. The findings show how an ecological approach to competition that incorporates intrapopulation variation can provide a more detailed understanding of the competitive dynamics and evolution of organizational populations.
Formal social movement organizations became significant phenomena in the late 20th century. This article is part of a large national study that examines the historical evolution of one such organization, the Women’s Funding Network (WFN), which is connected to an “industry” of social change funds. WFN includes over 70 women’s funds across the United States and Canada that define fund-raising and fund allocation as a strategy for empowering women and achieving social change. Using the resource mobilization framework of Zald and McCarthy, the author considers critical issues that women’s funds have faced since their emergence as a network (1985) dedicated to social movement goals. Examples from case studies, surveys, and participant observation are used to compare individual funds and to analyze the impact of increasing institutionalization on mission, structure, resource mobilization, leadership, and programmatic activities of WFN as a social movement organization.
Sociological research on nonprofit organizations has identified several
strategies by which nonprofits may respond to environmental challenges. I
explicate a strategic response that I call differentiation, and I locate
the specific condition under which it is implemented, the condition of
competition. I compare the strategic responses adopted by one nonprofit,
a large United Way, in two different moments: a period of monopoly and a
subsequent period of competition. I show that nonprofits differentiate
themselves when facing a crowded market. Differentiation occurs when
nonprofits work to convince other actors that they, rather than their
competitors, deserve resources. They seek to assert uniqueness and
superiority over their rivals by constructing a hierarchical relationship
between themselves and others.
Research on organizations is increasingly informed by analysis of community context. Community can be conceptualized as sets of relations between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource space or in geography. In both modes, organizations operate interdependently with social institutions and with other units of social structure. Because such relationships channel flows of resources, opportunities are granted or withheld from social actors depending in part on their organization connections. Such considerations encourage analyses of organizations in ways that spread the relevance of results beyond organizationally defined research problem areas.
Fund-raising expenditures represent an important strategic decision for nonprofit managers inthe face of scarce donor resources. Privately, nonprofit managers weigh the trade-off between reaching new donors and increasing the implicit price of output to its constituents. Socially, competition among nonprofit firms for donations may produce an excessive level of fund-raising. This article empirically examines nonprofit fund-raising decisions, privately and socially, under varying market conditions. Analysis of financial data reveals that as markets become more competitive, nonprofits follow their private incentives by reducing their fund-raising expenditures. However, the author finds evidence that, collectively, nonprofits may spend an inefficiently high share of their revenues on fund-raising. As such, the author offers alternatives to the common practice of collective fund-raising through institutions such as the UnitedWay. Implications of the study include increasing price transparency to improve market discipline or raising legal and financial barriers to entry.
Objectives. This article examines the extent to which nonprofit organizational foundings are determined by various forms of social capital. Our hypothesis is that, controlling for other relevant social, political, and economic factors, communities with higher levels of social capital should experience more extensive growth in their nonprofit sectors.
Methods. Using data derived from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey and the IRS “charitable organization” Business Master Files, we test our hypothesis using a negative binomial event count regression on nonprofit organization foundings in 284 U.S. counties in the year 2001.
Results. We find that two core dimensions of social capital—political engagement and “bridging” social ties—have a significant impact on county-level nonprofit foundings. Surprisingly, a key element of social capital in the literature, the level of interpersonal trust, does not lead to an increase in foundings of new not-for-profit organizations.
Conclusions. This study provides further evidence of the strength of political engagement and bridging ties for the vitality of the community. It also shows that the different dimensions of social capital do not manifest a uniform effect on nonprofit sector growth. These results further demonstrate that the growth of a community's not-for-profit sector is dependent on a mix of ecological and environmental factors, especially preexisting organizational density, median household income, unemployment, and levels of governmental spending. Overall, social capital can usefully be seen as another key “environmental” factor in explanations of organizational foundings.
This chapter briefly summarizes the implications of this educational approach for social initiatives by nonprofit organizations. These implications extend to both governmental organizations and NGOs. We begin by emphasizing the distinct aspects of our program in terms of a focus on the know-why followed by the know-how. We then discuss how consumer and entrepreneurial literacy programs can complement other initiatives. Another section highlights the need for nonprofit organizations to adopt marketplace literacy education for their employees and volunteers and view developmental approaches from the perspective of satisfying “customers.” We then discuss operational aspects of our program. The chapter concludes with a discussion of scaling and customization issues based on our experience to date.
This article explores competition both in settings where nonprofits compete among themselves and where they compete with for-profits. Growing competition among nonprofits raises questions as to the impacts of this rivalry. How does competition affect nonprofit behavior and does it cause nonprofits to become more commercial in orientation? Does if alter organizational structures and does it cause nonprofits to become less focused on their charitable missions? The answers to these questions can influence public policy toward the nonprofit sector A definition of competition is presented and Porter's five competitive forces are introduced and used to explore competition in nonprofit marketplaces. Conditions under which commercialization is likely to occur are discussed and the nature of competition is then examined in settings where nonprofits compete in mixed (for-profit/nonprofit) markets. Organizational structures from the health cave industry ave then used to highlight the evolving legal structures that nonprofits employ in competition with for-profits. Five policy implications of the analysis are examined and the need for additional information is highlighted.
American philanthropy today expands knowledge, champions social movements, defines active citizenship, influences policymaking, and addresses humanitarian crises. How did philanthropy become such a powerful and integral force in American society?Philanthropy in Americais the first book to explore in depth the twentieth-century growth of this unique phenomenon. Ranging from the influential large-scale foundations established by tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and the mass mobilization of small donors by the Red Cross and March of Dimes, to the recent social advocacy of individuals like Bill Gates and George Soros, respected historian Olivier Zunz chronicles the tight connections between private giving and public affairs, and shows how this union has enlarged democracy and shaped history. Zunz looks at the ways in which American philanthropy emerged not as charity work, but as an open and sometimes controversial means to foster independent investigation, problem solving, and the greater good. Andrew Carnegie supported science research and higher education, catapulting these fields to a prominent position on the world stage. In the 1950s, Howard Pew deliberately funded the young Billy Graham to counter liberal philanthropies, prefiguring the culture wars and increased philanthropic support for religious causes. And in the 1960s, the Ford Foundation supported civil rights through education, voter registration drives, and community action programs. Zunz argues that American giving allowed the country to export its ideals abroad after World War II, and he examines the federal tax policies that unified the diverse nonprofit sector.
In the contemporary United States, third parties are being relied upon to deliver social services that were once chiefly the responsibility of government. Among the new philanthropic associations that have arisen in this environment are voluntary groups known as giving circles. Their purpose is to bring people together to pool resources and then collectively decide how to distribute them. Giving circles have been seen as the most democratic of philanthropic mechanisms, working to meet social needs and solve community problems, while enhancing the civic education and participation of their members. Angela M. Eikenberry examines this new phenomenon and considers what role voluntary associations and philanthropy can or should play in a democratic society.
Based on a comparative case study analysis, this paper suggests how preexisting organizations within an environment constitute resources for the genesis of new, similar organizations and how this process may expand the level of resources available from the wider environment, while the absence of similar organizations may hinder organizational genesis. As a result of the three central processes of resource exchange, legitimation, and domain definition, the emergence of new organizations can be facilitated rather than hindered by the presence of a greater number of preexisting similar organizations in the organizational field. The article raises significant questions about the conceptualization of resources and environments and contributes to the specification of the "liability of newness" hypothesis.
The theory of population ecology (in contrast to economic theories of groups) is used to predict the number of interest groups in the United States. Interest-group density is a function of potential constituents, potential government goods and services, the stability of the political system, government age, and government size. Regression analysis of U.S. state data for interest groups in construction, agriculture, manufacturing, welfare, the environment, and local governments. Interest group density conforms to the predictions based on population ecology (constituents, government goods and services, and political stability), but not those based on economic theories of group mobilization.
Description There has been a long-lasting debate between two schools of thought about whether community foundations should be community-focused or donor-focused (Carson, 2003; Gronbjerg, 2004; Hammack, 1989; NCRP, 1994). The former, embodied in the practices of the Cleveland Foundation and many of those established in Midwestern cities, emphasizes community leadership, participation in community collaborative initiatives, and raising unrestricted funds in order to target high priority needs. The latter, embodied in the practices of the New York Community Trust and many of those established in Northeastern cities, focuses on fulfilling the charitable interests of individual donors and on managing donor advised funds. The debate between the above two models poses important challenges on understanding and assessing the performance of community foundations. In line with the community-focused model, the performance of a community foundation may be understood and judged by its effectiveness in terms of raising and directing unrestricted assets in response to the community's common problems. In line with the donor-focused model, however, performance may also be evaluated by its efficiency in acquiring individual donor funds, accumulating financial capital, and facilitating each donor's individual charitable interests. This situation is exacerbated by the lack of consensus by nonprofit scholars and practitioners alike as to how to understand and measure the performance of nonprofit organizations (Forbes, 1998; Herman & Renz, 1999). In light of the call for a broader definition of nonprofit performance that takes into consideration the competing interests of multiple stakeholders or constituencies (Bradshaw, Murray, & Wolpin, 1992; Herman & Renz, 1999; Kaplan, 2001), we propose to understand the performance of community foundations along their dual function as both fundraisers and grantmakers; that is, performance should be indicated not only by organizational effectiveness in acquiring resources and meeting the needs of individual donors, but also by organizational effectiveness in allocating resources and meeting the needs of the community. Such a definition for community foundation performance is consistent with the unique role of community foundations as the bridge between community resources and needs. In fact, it echoes the observation of other scholars that the most successful community foundations incorporate both community-based and donor-based models (Leonard, 1989; cited in Gronbjerg, 2004). Based on the above definition, this paper discusses a national study of community foundations that examines factors associated with their performance. Specifically, the study examines the extent to which community foundations vary in their fiscal performance, grant allocations, and development of unrestricted assets; as well as the environmental (i.e., organizational density, compliance with industry standards), organizational (i.e., age, asset size, revenue, size of service area), and governance (i.e., board performance) factors that lead to such variations. Analysis is conducted on population-level data of 677 community foundations, a national survey of 117 organizations, and subsequent interviews with This study explores the environmental and organizational factors associated with the performance of community foundations. Results of population data analysis revealed that smaller community foundations are more financially efficient and more generous with grant-making. Increased organizational density was positively associated with fiscal efficiency but negatively associated to grant- making generosity. Regional, as opposed to local foundations, were more financially efficient, but local foundations were more generous with grant allocations.
We explore the concept of regional industrial identity as an important missing component in our understanding of the development of metropolitan regions and the spatial arrangements of industries. While economists and sociologists have explained the location of industry clusters on the basis of unevenly distributed resources, and historians have provided rich descriptive insight into the developmental dynamics of particular metropolitan regions, little systematic theory has been advanced to explain cross-regional inflows and outflows of resources, especially with respect to patterns in cluster development. This paper examines the concept of regional industrial identity as a social code that (1) arises from the shared understandings of residents and external audiences about the suitability of a region for particular kinds of business activity and (2) influences decisions about where to locate investments. We argue that such understandings are principally informed by configurations of industry clusters that have already formed in a region. Clusters, which are the results of historical investments, are also important signals about the types of business that can thrive in the future. We develop theoretical propositions linking characteristics of regional industry cluster configurations, in particular cluster dominance and cluster interrelatedness, to the strength and focus of regional identity and, as a result, to the types and amounts of resources that will develop within and flow into and out of regions.
Using population data on six state populations of interest organizations from 1980 and 1990, the authors find that (a) organized interests frequently exit the lobbying community; (b) institutions exit at a higher rate than associations or membership groups; (c) exit rates potentially have great influence on the composition of interest organization populations; and (d) exit, but not entry, rates are greatly influenced by the density of interest organization populations. On the basis of these findings, the authors make a number of suggestions for the further study of the demography of interest organization communities.
Scholars have explored the idea of the determinants of the size of the nonprofit sector as a linear relationship between supply of resources and the demand for nonprofit services. This in turn has fueled debate about whether there are too many nonprofits for available resources. In this article, we propose that the scarcity (or abundance) of resources does not inherently determine the limits of a community's nonprofit "carrying capacity". Rather, network exchanges between nonprofits and other organizations may exhibit positive synergistic effects that are associated with diverse outcomes. We therefore propose a model of nonprofit carrying capacity that shifts the discussion to the ability of a community to support network exchanges among independent agents.
This study draws on organizational ecology perspective to explore the environmental and organizational factors associated with the performance of community foundations. Performance was conceptualized as fiscal efficiency and grant-making performance. Analysis was conducted on a national survey of 117 community foundations. Results revealed that increased organizational density was positively associated with fiscal efficiency but negatively associated to grant-making performance. Specialist foundations (i.e., foundations that serve a smaller sized community and those with smaller asset size) outperformed their generalist counterparts in fiscal efficiency and grant-making performance. The percentage of unrestricted funds was negatively associated with fiscal efficiency but not grant-making generosity. Board performance was positively associated with fiscal efficiency but not grant-making generosity.
What accounts for the addition of new nonprofit organizations in different U.S. states? Do new nonprofit organizations answer calls for help (Band-Aid) or calls for proposals (bandwagon) at their inception? Are nonprofit entrepreneurs pushed by the failures of government and the market or pulled by the legitimacy of the organizational form? This comparative research models the level of nonprofit incorporation in different U.S. states given fragmented legal environments, variable organizational legitimacy, and different levels of social needs. Drawing from institutional, resource dependence, population ecology, and social movement theories and using data from state legal codes, judicial decisions, the U.S. census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Nonprofit Almanac, 1992-1993, we explore the environmental and interorganizational forces that influence the level of nonprofit incorporation by state.
This paper departs from the common practice of focusing on large, generalist organizations and shows that new organizational insights are obtined by adopting a broader, ecological perspective. The newspaper publishing industry is examined as an illustration. The ecological focus shows that many small, specialized organizations operate successfully in this industry, despite apparently high levels of local concentration. A resource-partitioning model is advanced to explain the interorganizational relationships between generalist and specialist organizations. Statistical tests of the model using historical data on 2,808 American local newspaper organizations show the merit of using the ecological perspective for analyzing industries.
This paper develops an ecological model of the competition of social organizations for members. The concept of the ecological niche is quantified explicitly in a way which ties together geography, time, and the social composition of organizations. A differential equation model analogous to the Lotka-Volterra competition equations in biology captures the dynamics of the system. This dynamic model is related to the niche concept in a novel way, which produces an easily understood and powerful picture of the static and dynamic structure of the community. This new perspective provides a theoretical link between the aggregate macrostructural theory of Blau (1977a,b) and the microstructural dynamics of organizational demography (Pfeffer, 1983). The model is tested with data on organizations from a midwestern city.
Organizations exist in a differentiated spatial ecology
generated by past foundings and failures and affecting important
organizational and individual outcomes. While ecological theory has
traditionally emphasized the temporal evolution of organizational
populations, this article considers their spatial evolution. Theories of
spatial contagion, competition, and density dependence are used to make
competing predictions on how geographically delineated subpopulations grow
and interact with neighboring subpopulations. The hypotheses are tested on
data from the early history of banking in Tokyo, with findings supportive
of density dependence within areas and among neighboring areas. This
suggests that the spatial evolution of organizational populations is
a promising new area for ecological research, with opportunities for
better understanding the theoretical and practical problems of spatial
clustering and the boundaries of organizational populations.
Like many nonprofit organizations, community development corporations (CDCs) rely on various sources of funding and support for their activities in poor and distressed neighborhoods. Funders often include the federal government, state and local government agencies, financial institutions, and philanthropic organizations. The author explains how community foundations are different from other philanthropic organizations and describes the various mechanisms that community foundations use to support community development. She suggests that there is a natural fit between the purpose of community foundations and the philosophy of community development, concluding that it is important for CDCs, as well as other nonprofit organizations, to understand how community foundations are different from other philanthropic organizations so that they may better position themselves to take advantage of the many resources that community foundations bring to their communities.
Compares the organization of regional economies, focusing on Silicon Valley's thriving regional network-based system and Route 128's declining independent firm-based system. The history of California's Silicon Valley and Massachusetts' Route 128 as centers of innovation in the electronics indistry is traced since the 1970s to show how their network organization contributed to their ability to adapt to international competition. Both regions faced crises in the 1980s, when the minicomputers produced in Route 128 were replaced by personal computers, and Japanese competitors took over Silicon Valley's market for semiconductor memory. However, while corporations in the Route 128 region operated by internalization, using policies of secrecy and company loyalty to guard innovation, Silicon Valley fully utilized horizontal communication and open labor markets in addition to policies of fierce competition among firms. As a result, and despite mounting competition, Silicon Valley generated triple the number of new jobs between 1975 and 1990, and the market value of its firms increased 1 billion for the same time period. From analysis of these regions, it is clear that innovation should be a collective process, most successful when institutional and social boundaries dividing firms are broken down. A thriving regional economy depends not just on the initiative of individual entrepreneurs, but on an embedded network of social, technical, and commercial relationships between firms and external organizations. With increasingly fragmented markets, regional interdependencies rely on consistently renewed formal and informal relationships, as well as public funding for education, research, and training. Local industrial systems built on regional networks tend to be more flexible and technologically dynamic than do hierarchical, independent firm-based systems in which innovation is isolated within the boundaries of corporations. (CJC)
Objective
We examine the effects of interest community density on generalist interest organizations. A core element of population ecology theory is competitive exclusion, which suggests two hypotheses. First, through niche partitioning of the issue space among similar organizations and the comparative advantages of specialist organizations, generalists in heavily populated systems struggle to secure members more than their counterparts in less densely populated ones. Second, surviving generalists narrow the scope of their lobbying activities to fewer issues on which they hold comparative advantage.
Methods
We test both hypotheses through regression analysis of data on the mobilization and lobbying focus of U . S . state C hambers of C ommerce.
Results
Both participation in state C hambers and the number of bills that C hambers track decline as the business interest community becomes more densely populated.
Conclusions
We conclude that even state C hambers—the old bulls of the lobbying pasture—are powerfully influenced by competition among business interest organizations.
This article provides case studies of the role of three community foundations in facilitating the establishment of community development collaboratives to galvanize support for local community development corporations (CDCs): the Cleveland Foundation, the Dade Community Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. Sentiments about community foundation support or influence upon CDC activity captured from person-to-person interviews with CDC staff and community foundation personnel and board members are included, in addition to secondary data documenting the character and activity of community foundation assistance. The article offers lessons drawn from the three cases. Although it makes no broad generalizations, the article concludes with some recommendations for community foundations interested in community development collaboratives as a means of supporting local CDCs and identifies some areas for future research.
growing body of research documents the role that organizational learning plays in improving firm performance over time. To date, however, this literature has given limited attention to the effect that the internal structure of the firm can have on gen- erating differences in these learning rates. This paper focuses on the degree to which interdependence—and in particular one structural characteristic that generates interdepen- dence, vertical integration—affects organizational learning. Firms face a trade-off. In stable environments, vertically integrating severely limits the organization's ability to learn by doing because boundedly rational managers find the optimization of operations difficult when making highly interdependent choices. As the volatility of the environment increases though, integration can facilitate learning-by-doing by buffering activities within the firm from instability in the external environment. Thus, firms with a high degree of interdepen- dence suffer less in these environments. Tests of these hypotheses on the growth and exit rates of computer workstation manufacturers support this thesis. (Vertical Integration; Organizational Failure; Organizational Growth; Computer Workstations)
Economic geography during an era of global competition involves a paradox. It is widely recognized that changes in technology and competition have diminished many of the traditional roles of location. Yet clusters, or geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, are a striking feature of virtually every national, regional, state, and even metropolitan economy, especially in more advanced nations. The prevalence of clusters reveals important insights about the microeconomics of competition and the role of location in competitive advantage. Even as old reasons for clustering have diminished in importance with globalization, new influences of clusters on competition have taken on growing importance in an increasingly complex, knowledge-based, and dynamic economy. Clusters represent a new way of thinking about national, state, and local economies, and they necessitate new roles for companies, government, and other institutions in enhancing competitiveness.
In this paper I critique the notion of ‘the creative class’ and the fuzzy causal logic about its relationship to urban growth. I argue that in the creative class, occupations that exhibit distinctive spatial and political proclivities are bunched together, purely on the basis of educational attainment, and with little demonstrable relationship to creativity. I use a case study of artists, one element of the purported creative class, to probe this phenomenon, demonstrating that the formation, location, urban impact, and politics of this occupation are much more complex and distinctive than has been suggested previously. The spatial distribution of artists is a function of semiautonomous personal migration decisions, local nurturing of artists in dedicated spaces and organizations, and the locus of artist-employing firms. Artists have very high rates of self-employment, boosting regional growth by providing import-substituting consumption activities for residents and through direct export of their work. Their contribution to attracting high-tech activity is ambiguous—causality may work in the opposite direction. Artists play multiple roles in an urban economy—some progressive, some problematic. I argue that artists as a group make important, positive contributions to the diversity and vitality of cities, and their agendas cannot be conflated with neoliberal urban political regimes. I show the potential for artists as a political force to lead in social and urban transformation and the implausibility of their common cause with other members of Florida’s ‘creative class’, such as scientists, engineers, managers, and lawyers.
This study examined the organizational context in which medical societies composed of women physicians were formed in the last decade of the nineteenth century in America. The inquiry was centered on the relationship between the number of existing organizations and the formation of a particular category of association. Two explanations for a relationship between the number of organizations and the establishment of women's medical societies were investigated: (1) the opportunities existing organizations allow for individuals to acquire skills they can use to start other organizations; and (2) the importance of social networks built within existing organizations. The results showed more medical societies in the cities where women's medical societies emerged than in a matched set of cities. The results would seem to imply that it is the presence of organizations similar to the focal one that is related to the formation of a particular kind of organization not the overall level of organizational activity.
This paper investigates the impact of international migration on technical efficiency, resource allocation and income from agricultural production of family farming in Albania. The results suggest that migration is used by rural households as a pathway out of agriculture: migration is negatively associated with both labour and non-labour input allocation in agriculture, while no significant differences can be detected in terms of farm technical efficiency or agricultural income. Whether the rapid demographic changes in rural areas triggered by massive migration, possibly combined with propitious land and rural development policies, will ultimately produce the conditions for a more viable, high-return agriculture attracting larger investments remains to be seen.
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