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NGO Failure: A Theoretical Synthesis
Abstract
An extensive literature identifies conditions under which markets and states work efficiently and effectively towards their stated missions. When these conditions are violated, these institutions are deemed to show some level of failure. In contrast to the study of market and government failures, scholars have tended to focus on non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) successes instead of failures. This is probably because they view NGOs as virtuous actors, guided by principled beliefs rather than instrumental concerns, not susceptible to agency conflicts, accountable to the communities they serve, and working cooperatively with each other. A growing literature questions this “virtue narrative.” When virtue conditions are violated, NGOs could exhibit different levels of failure. In synthesizing this literature, we offer an analytic typology of NGO failures: agency failure, NGOization failure, representation failure, and cooperation failure. Finally, given NGOs’ important role in public policy, we outline institutional innovations to address these failures.
... When an organisation is categorised as an NGO, it is perceived as 'good' simply in virtue of this categorisation (White, 2010;Burt, 2014). Scholars have identified several distinguishing features of NGOs, such as their moral legitimacy to act on and contribute towards the public good (Frumkin, 2002;Minkoff and Powell, 2006), being caring and warm (Aaker et al, 2010), altruistic (Rose-Ackerman, 1996), and selfless (Dolšak and Prakash, 2022). Being categorised as an NGO thus can confer a perception that NGOs are virtuous, that is, morally good. ...
... Scholars have considered that the same general organisational characteristics that explain the good side of organisations can also explain their bad, that is, unethical, side (Durkheim, 1938). Existing research has identified factors such as trust (Bhattacharjee et al, 2017;Gillespie et al, 2023), reputation as a moral entity (Hornsey et al, 2021;Ruddle et al, 2023), the NGO virtue narrative (Dolšak and Prakash, 2022) to contribute to the creation of blind spots for NGO unethical behaviour. Other studies have looked at how NGOs construct narratives about their moral agency, such as through the symbolic power of the 'good glow' (Dean, 2020) and reputation (Krause, 2014;Giridharadas, 2018), to generate an external perception of NGO goodness, a perception that NGOs can then use to conceal their unethical behaviour. ...
... First, we introduce the concept of the NGO halo effect as a novel root cause for unethical behaviour in and by NGOs. By building upon the existing literature that explores how the same organisational characteristics can explain both the good and bad sides of organisations (Durkheim, 1938;Vaughan, 1999;Kaptein, 2017;Dolšak and Prakash, 2022;Kaptein, 2023), we present a new underlying mechanism that can explain the emergence of NGO unethical behaviour. Second, our framework elucidates how characteristics inherent to organisations can enable mechanisms that facilitate unethical behaviour. ...
There are various examples of unethical behaviour in and by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), yet NGOs are perceived as morally good organisations. Drawing on social identity theory and cognitive dissonance theory we develop a conceptual framework to develop a new root cause for NGO unethical behaviour, namely that such behaviour can be explained because of NGO perceived moral goodness. We propose that when mission, morals and people are perceived as morally good within the NGO, this perception can be glorified, creating an NGO halo. We propose that the NGO halo can drive unethical behaviour through: (1) prioritising mission over other organisational considerations, creating an end-justifies-the-means mentality (moral justification); (2) prioritising the NGO’s morals over legal or social norms, motivating the NGO to trump others’ norms (moral superiority); and (3) prioritising the NGO’s people over ethics management, leading to unethical behaviour being dismissed (moral naivety). We discuss our framework’s implications.
... However, NGOs are perceived to be morally good organizations. Studies have highlighted that NGOs are overall positively perceived compared to other types of organizations (Aaker, Vohs, and Mogilner 2010;Dolšak and Prakash 2021;Farwel, Shier, and Handy 2018;Grønbjerg 2009;Hansmann 1980Hansmann , 1987Handy et al. 2010;Hornsey et al. 2020;McDougle and Lam 2013;Salamon 2002). Burt (2014) notes that when an organization is categorized as an NGO, it is considered a good organization simply in virtue of this categorization. ...
... According to other scholars, the general distinguishing feature of NGOs is their predisposition to do good (Frumkin 2002;Minkoff and Powell 2006). They are also referred to as do-gooders (Hilhorst 2005;Raelin 1994), caring and warm (Aaker, Vohs, and Mogliner 2010), altruistic (Rose-Ackermann 2016), and selfless (Dolšak and Prakash 2021). ...
... Nonprofit scholars argue that recent examples of NGOs' deviant behavior have resulted in a growing research agenda on the topic, when previously such literature was "virtually non-existent" (Beaton, Erynn, and LePere-Schloop 2021: 2). Others note that in contrast to the study of market and government failures, scholars have historically tended to focus on NGOs successes, however they show that there is a growing literature on NGO behavioral failures (Dolšak and Prakash 2021). And a systematic literature review found that research on NGO's deviant behavior has grown exponentially between 1990 and 2020, with more than half of the 71 empirical articles in the review published between 2017 and 2021 (Chapman et al. 2022). ...
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are perceived to be morally good, yet NGOs engage in multiple types of unethical behaviors. Research explains NGO’s unethical behavior despite their moral goodness. We conceptualize how NGO unethical behavior can be explained because of their moral goodness. We propose that the three characteristics inherent to NGOs—the nondistribution constraint, being private, and voluntary—can explain why NGOs can be perceived to be morally good. We apply the construct of the halo effect and focus on the perception of people in NGOs to conceptualize how they can overestimate the goodness of their NGO’s mission, morality, and people, including themselves. We define this as the NGO halo effect. We propose that the NGO halo effect can relate to unethical behavior by people in NGOs by three moral mechanisms—moral justification, moral superiority, and moral naivety. We discuss our model’s implications for theory building and future research.
... This was because of both vaccine nationalism and pharmaceutical company monopolies (Brown, 2021;Peacock, 2022). This major failure of global health governance on this issue emphasizes the significant role of and need for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote alternatives for the public good (Dolšak & Prakash, 2022). During the COVID-19 pandemic, this included advocating for global health justice, as well as delivering health services and influencing national pandemic responses (Capano et al., 2020;Levine et al., 2023). ...
... The choice of advocacy issues to focus on during the pandemic was influenced by INGOs' existing priorities based on their moral, organizational or reputational incentives (Szent-Iványi, 2022). Membership in advocacy networks is also critical for gaining visibility and legitimacy and amplifying resources and power to influence policies (Alexander et al., 2023;Dolšak & Prakash, 2022;Smith & Shiffman, 2016). This indicates the importance of looking at an INGO's wider network to understand the context and background of its health advocacy. ...
The increasing health inequity and injustice of
the COVID-19 pandemic rendered visible the inadequacy
of global health governance, and exposed the self-interested
decision-making of states and pharmaceutical companies.
This research explores the advocacy activities of
humanitarian and development international non-governmental
organizations (INGOs) in responding to this
inequality and investigates how they framed alternatives
for global health justice. It reviews 47 organizational
documents and 43 media articles of five INGOs (ActionAid,
Me´decins Sans Frontie`res, Oxfam, Save the Children,
and World Vision) and points to the importance of
understanding advocacy frames in analyzing how these
organizations prioritize agendas and advocacy strategies.
The dominance of the ‘human rights’ frame, sometimes in
combination with ‘scientific evidence’ and ‘security’
frames, reflects the identities, mandates, and histories of
campaigning and collaboration of these INGOs. This paper
contends that the advocacy of humanitarian and development
INGOs highlights both deontological and teleological
ethics, promoting the voices of people in lower-income
countries, clarifying duty bearers and their accountabilities,
and addressing structural barriers from a human rights
perspective in a global health agenda setting.
... Organizational growth and associated changes, such as bureaucratization and professionalization, have been identified as antithetical to the professed identities of TNGOs as authentic and independent civil society organizations. With rapid sector expansion since the 1970s ( Bush andHadden 2019 , 1135), TNGO growth is associated with a greater focus on organizational survival at the expense of their missions ( Cooley and Ron 2002 ;Dolšak and Prakash 2021 ), falling prey to elite capture ( Dill 2009 ;Stroup and Wong 2017 ), and shifting attention from local needs to global aspirations ( Balboa 2018 ). These analyses propose a fundamental paradox: as TNGOs become larger and more successful, they also become less principled, collaborative, and effective at advancing their missions. ...
... This literature has explored not only TNGO competition ( Bob 2010 ), but also the failure of TNGOs to adopt deserving causes ( Carpenter 2007 ). This literature established a theoretical basis for explaining TNGO struggles, especially issues of mission drift driven by donor demands, competitive behavior, and power differentials privileging wealthy TNGOs and their agendas ( Jordan and Van Tuijl 2000 ;Dolšak and Prakash 2021 ). ...
A growing chorus of critics have called upon transnational nongovernmental organizations (TNGOs) from the Global North to “decolonize” their practices, to “shift the power” to the Global South, and to put an end to “white saviorism” by initiating a variety of significant organizational changes. Despite these repeated calls, the TNGO sector still struggles to reform. Explanations for TNGOs’ ongoing struggles from within the field of international relations have generally centered on TNGOs themselves and the ironies and paradoxes of organizational growth and financial success. This article introduces a different argument that TNGOs’ struggles to adapt in response to their critics are the result of TNGOs’ “nonprofitness.” By virtue of being nonprofit, TNGOs are embedded in an architecture consisting of forms and norms that inherently limit the extent to which they are able to change. Using the construct of the architecture, this article provides a novel account for the challenges that TNGOs confront as they attempt to close the gap between the rhetoric and reality of inclusive and transformational socioeconomic, political, or environmental change.
... However, unless such income-generating activities are through passive income such as rentals from real estate or returns from nancial investments that may not require a lot of day-to-day running around as in social enterprises, NPOs may lose focus from serving the underprivileged to become for-pro t organizations whose focus is pro t generation. The literature review found that NGOs can get distracted by the pursuit of pro ts and lose sight of their mission and values (Dolšak and Prakash 2022). There is therefore a need for a balance for NPOs to remain focused on service delivery, especially in under-privileged communities and other sectors of society which need such services while engaging in less distractive investments that can assure reasonable and less operational distraction to the day-to-day business. ...
Introduction: Local Non-Profit Organisations (LNPO) play an important role of providing services to vulnerable communities especially in rural areas where for-profit organisations do not reach. However, sustainability of the Non-Profit Organisations is often not guaranteed as evidenced by closures of Non-Profit Organisations that were once thriving. This study assessed the financial sustainability of local organisations that are funded by the Churches Health Association of Zambia. Methodology: The study used a mixed methods approach which comprised of a desk review, qualitative and quantitative survey. Data analysis of the qualitative component was done using the thematic analysis approach. Quantitative data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22; descriptive and inferential statistics was done by summarization of the findings which included an assessment of the financial position and operational activity of the NPOs and multivariable linear regression. Results: A total of 87 participants were interviewed in the survey and 21 participated in the qualitative in-depth interviews. CHAZ's significantly contributed to the financial suitability of the four local NPOs, with its funding heavily relied upon by NPO 2 (up to 99%) and less so by others (8-19%). Operating margins fluctuated widely, with three NPOs averaging negative margins, reflecting financial instability. Cash reserves varied, showing limited liquidity across NPOs. Regression analysis identified Financial Planning and Strategy and Leadership as key contributors to financial sustainability, while Sound Administration negatively impacted it. From interviews, challenges included limited donor funding, restricted domestic resource mobilization, economic instability, and internal issues such as inadequate long-term planning and founder dependency. Conclusion: The study highlighted that funding from CHAZ significantly enhances the financial sustainability of LNPOs in Zambia by promoting income diversification and reducing reliance on single funding sources. However, it encourages that there should be a need for the studied LNPOs to expand funding avenues beyond CHAZ to help mitigate risks and longer financial viability. Organizations with positive reserve ratios are financially stable, but those with low or negative reserves face vulnerabilities. Key factors like strategy, leadership and financial planning related to improved financial sustainability.
... Их типология была предложена в [Salamon 1987]. Сложившаяся вокруг нее концепция Л. Саламона, как и концепции Г. Хансманна и Б. Вайсброда, в кругу исследователей третьего сектора приобрела статус основополагающей и получила развитие во многих работах (см., например, [Dolšak, Prakash 2022;Jang, Valero, Ford 2023;Shafiq, Albrecht, LeRoux 2023]). Слабые стороны некоммерческих организаций Л. Саламон назвал voluntary failures (провалы добровольчества). ...
This paper aims to explore ways to foster more effective collaboration between the state and non-governmental non-proft organizations (NGOs) when their interests align. While NGOs often perceive state policies as well intentioned but poorly executed, this paper argues that a more effective approach would leverage the unique strengths and weaknesses of NGOs, informed by scientific insights. By comparing Russian realities with established theories, we identify the prerequisites for a thriving NGO sector. A key factor is the intrinsic motivation of NGOs, coupled with adherence to legal frameworks that define their role within the broader societal landscape. Our analysis reveals shortcomings in current state policies. These include a lack of clear distinctions between sectors, hindering the optimal utilization of each sector's strengths, as well as an underestimation of the NGO sector's innovative potential and its unique governance structures. To improve this situation, we propose a gradual transition towards a more efficient model of NGO sector operation. This model would encourage the state to support NGOs without disrupting existing practices, while fostering a shift toward more progressive approaches.
... Trust (Bhattacharjee, Dana, and Baron 2017) and reputation as moral entities (Ruddle, Robinson, and Fister 2023) play significant roles in fostering this perception. Additionally, the NGO virtue narrative (Dolšak and Prakash 2021) and the symbolic power of the "good glow" (Dean 2020) further contribute to this positive image. By constructing narratives around their moral agency and leveraging their reputation (Giridharadas 2018), NGOs create a strong external perception of goodness. ...
This study explores why nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engage in unethical behavior because of, and not despite, their perceived moral integrity. Contrary to expectations, we show how a glorified perception of moral integrity within NGOs can create blind spots for unethical behavior, a phenomenon termed the NGO halo effect. The NGO halo consists of people in NGOs glorifying the moral goodness of their organization's mission, morals, and people and prioritizing them over other considerations, the effect of which is unethical behavior. The relationship between the NGO halo and NGO unethical behavior has not been measured. We conduct two studies to measure the relationship between the NGO halo and NGO unethical behavior. In Study 1 ( N = 256), we define and establish the content validity of the two NGO halo effect constructs. In Study 2 ( N = 544), we validate the constructs and use a regression design to show that the NGO halo is positively and significantly related to unethical behavior. Our research reveals the dark side of moral idealization and confirms that the NGO halo effect is a risk factor for NGO unethical behavior.
... Looking at voluntary failures as organizational level failures creates the additional problem of distinguishing between voluntary and other kinds of failures. While there has been consistent interest in organizational failure of nonprofits (Anheier 1999;Hager et al. 1996;Dolšak and Prakash 2022), and Seibel (1989;2022) even suggested that nonprofits often fail successfully and permanently, Salamon's voluntary failure concept specifically focused on failures that justify government to step in and help remedy them. Not every nonprofit failure is therefore a voluntary failure and sorting out which are which provides ample ground for a research agenda. ...
Voluntary Failure or Interdependence Theory remains among the most salient of Salamon’s conceptual contributions to nonprofit studies globally. Broad criticism has been scarce. Yet, there are questions about how the theory can be tested, or whether it is even testable in the first place. A lot of these questions focus on the four voluntary failures. In this commentary, I argue that the role of the voluntary failures is often overemphasized as part of Salamon’s theoretical constructs. This overemphasis in turn lends itself to problematic interpretations of his theory, which was not intended to offer a ‘failure rationale’ for the existence of the nonprofit sector—akin to the twin failures of the market and government, but at its core seeks to provide a rationale for the positive collaborative relations between government and the nonprofit sector. Within that rationale, the voluntary failures play only a relatively minor role.
... Professionalization was also crucial for gaining legitimacy in the eyes of donors, government authorities, and local society. However, the trend of professionalization -in other words, the NGOization of civil society -has turned out to be detrimental to civic functions, as research has shown it led to overdependence on external funders, inclination towards elitism, detachment from grassroots citizens, loss of membership and voluntary activism and overall depoliticization (Fagan 2005;Lang 2012;Chahim and Prakash 2014;Dolšak and Prakash 2021). Carothers and Barndt (1999) noted that NGOs were mistakenly equated with the concept of civil society because of their dominance already before the turn of the century. ...
Whereas nearly half of the world’s countries have imposed restrictions on civil society organizations (CSOs) since the 1990s, little is known about how those regulations reshape the civic space and actors. This article delves into the patterns of transformation of organizational behaviours of traditional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and new CSOs before and following the enforcement of coercive state policies against civil society in Azerbaijan. By applying the theory of new institutionalism, the article first analyzes the development of post-independence Azerbaijani civil society and the vulnerabilities thereof. Then, it uses original data to portray CSOs’ survival strategies in the face of institutional pressures – operationalizing Christine Oliver’s typology of strategic responses. The findings underscore dual unintended consequences. First, extant and emerging democracy-oriented Azerbaijani CSOs have pursued existence outside the regulative institutional control of the authoritarian regime since 2015. Second, the crackdown brought about marked de-NGOization of civil society while engendering alternative modes of organization in civic associations.
The aim of this article is to explore a neglected issue – the organisation of failure in projects. The existing literature has primarily focused on explaining the causes, factors and circumstances that lead to failure, and how organisations account for and make sense of failure. However, this is only a partial explanation, particularly for organisations where decisions about project success and failure are routinely made. Drawing on a pragmatic approach that emphasises social agency as the ongoing determination of an inherently uncertain reality by knowledgeable actors, I describe the processes by which failure is managed in organisations so that it is both part of the productive workflow and recognisable and acceptable to all stakeholders. I highlight the critical role of evaluation infrastructures, allowing the assessment of whether a project's outcomes are in line with its objectives or the resources used, yet remaining largely invisible. The manipulation of these infrastructures allows sponsors to achieve the desired success/failure ratio of the projects they support without having to change their value objectives. The subjective dimension of the sponsor's organisation of failure has also been shown to play an important role, which can lead to failure being marginalised or made ambivalent. In developing the argument, I have drawn on both theoretical literature and empirical research in four different areas of organised labour – start-ups, platform work, development aid and environmental education.
Despite voluntary failure theory (VFT)’s foundational role in public and nonprofit management scholarship, we do not know how it is used and evaluated. Our systematic literature review finds that scholars’ use of VFT centers on descriptive purposes, rather than providing theoretical propositions about the causes and consequences of government support to nonprofit organizations. Assessment of voluntary failure has also gone beyond the four types articulated by Salamon. We conclude by proposing a future research agenda centered on elucidating testable hypotheses, articulating the focal levels of analysis, and orienting voluntary failure by creating a broad set of public values.
With the occurrence of high-profile scandals in the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector, scholars and practitioners alike have questioned why “good” organizations behave badly, yet little empirical research has explored this topic in depth. The present study examines the NGO halo effect, a conceptual framework that proposes three mechanisms to explain how NGO moral goodness can lead to NGO unethical behavior, that is, moral justification, moral superiority, and moral naivety. Through an analysis of 34 interviews with NGO staff and volunteers, we identify 151 unique cases and 17 different types of unethical behavior. We find that 92% of these cases are related to the halo effect, with 22% through moral justification, 25% through moral superiority, and 45% through moral naivety. This study provides empirical support for the NGO halo effect as a factor for understanding NGOs’ unethical behavior, with implications for future research.
Scholars have used varying terminology for describing non-state entities seeking to influence public policy or work with the EU’s institutions. This paper argues that the use of this terminology is not and should not be random, as different ‘frames’ come with different normative visions about the role(s) of these entities in EU democracy. A novel bibliometric analysis of 780 academic publications between 1992 and 2020 reveals that three frames stand out: The interest group frame, the NGO frame, as well as the civil society organisation frame; a number of publications also use multiple frames. This article reveals the specific democratic visions contained in these frames, including a pluralist view for interest groups; a governance view for NGOs as ‘third sector’ organisations, and participatory and deliberative democracy contributions for civil society organisations. The use of these frames has dynamically changed over time, with ‘interest groups’ on the rise. The results demonstrate the shifting focus of studies on non-state actors in the EU and consolidation within the sub-field; the original visions of European policy-makers emerging from the 2001 White Paper on governance may only partially come true.
In this study, we experimentally test the impact of a formal signal (a third-party certificate) and an informal signal (self-proclaimed management quality with respect to social entrepreneurship) on stakeholder supportive intentions and perceived organizational effectiveness. Our study confirms the social entrepreneurship advantage, but we find no proof of a convincing effect from the formal signal. However, complementary analyses and additional testing of control variables add new perspectives on the relative importance of the social entrepreneurship advantage and on potential moderators that could better explain in future studies the varying effects and specific contextual elements that influence formal and informal reputation-building signals.
Social capital generated by frequent, face-to-face interactions provides the foundation for collective action. Does this also hold for a community action in post-communist, Central European countries where modern NGOs are perceived to be ineffective? This article examines this question in the context of the cleanup of illegal dumpsites organized by a Slovenian NGO, Ecologists without Borders, in 2010. This community cleanup effort sought to produce local public goods such as improved aesthetics, sanitation, and ground water quality. Local participation levels (percentage of adults contributing to the cleanup effort) varied across 192 districts of Slovenia. Analyzing an original, micro-level dataset, this article finds that, all else equal, social capitals rooted in frequent face-to-face interactions (the common Catholic religion and membership in Hunters clubs) are associated with increased participation levels. However, social capital generated via common native language does not show statistical association with participation levels.
In theory, nonprofit boards of directors exist to perform mission-setting and oversight functions that help to ensure organizational accountability. Yet there is evidence that board behavior often falls short of this ideal. Using survey data from a sample of 241 executive directors of nonprofit agencies, we investigated whether nonprofit boards are meeting executive directors’ expectations, and if not, what factors explain this? We find that although board behavior tends to align closely with executive directors’ preferences for involvement in administration and management tasks, there is a greater disconnect between board behavior and executive directors’ preferences for involvement in mission-setting and oversight duties. Factors that mitigate this gap include organizational professionalization and stability, whereas more extensive reliance on government funding exacerbates it. Female executive directors experience a greater disconnect in their preferences for board involvement and actual board involvement than male executive directors. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.
In the field of civil society and democracy promotion, the relevance and effectiveness of donor strategies is often linked to their ability to adjust to local contextual factors. Despite the importance attached to tailor-made approaches , donor-sponsored democracy promoting NGOs in such different parts of the world as Ghana and Indonesia have very similar organizational characteristics. This paper explores the question of why they are so similar. We draw on institutional theory and use the concept of organizational isomorphism to illustrate how different pressures result in the homogenization of organizational characteristics. We find that besides the more commonly identified unequal power relation between donor and recipient, homogenization also stems from the NGOs themselves and from the relation between their various organizational characteristics (i.e., mission, staff, strategy, and structure). Furthermore, we argue that the process of homogenization can be seen as the institutionalization of trust between donor and recipient. In our discussion, we reflect on the limitations of our findings and on what they mean for donor support to NGOs and democracy.
This article assesses how strategies applied by Cambodian NGOs to reduce their dependence on external resources affect the sustainability of their mission, program and funding. At the empirical level, the findings suggest that NGO dependence on foreign aid has mixed effects on the organizations such as unpredictability of funding, goal displacement, reduced organizational autonomy, and top-down accountability. Funding from commercial activities is more predictable and potentially promotes bottom-up accountability and increases organizational autonomy but may conflict with the mission-drift of NGOs. At the theoretical level, this article contributes to resource dependence theory by introducing a perspective from developing countries, which implies large power differentials between international funding agencies and receiving local NGOs. The strategic responses employed by local NGO leaders to reduce external resource dependence entail a paradigm shift from external control to local embeddedness and increased autonomy. The findings have important policy implications regarding the regulation of NGO-related and unrelated business activities. © 2014, International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University.
This book brings together classic writings on the economic nature and organization of firms, including works by Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Michael Jensen and William Meckling, as well as more recent contributions by Paul Milgrom, Bengt Holmstrom, John Roberts, Oliver Hart, Luigi Zingales, and others. Part I explores the general theme of the firm's nature and place in the market economy; Part II addresses the question of which transactions are integrated under a firm's roof and what limits the growth of firms; Part III examines employer-employee relations and the motivation of labor; and Part IV studies the firm's organization from the standpoint of financing and the relationship between owners and managers. The volume also includes a consolidated bibliography of sources cited by these authors and an introductory essay by the editors that surveys the new institutional economics of the firm and issues raised in the anthology.
This article combines the evaluation capacity building and nonprofit accountability literature to examine how nonprofits use evaluation data to address stakeholder expectations. Our study investigates how staff competency, technological resources, learning climate, and strategic planning influence a nonprofit's ability to demonstrate upward, lateral, and downward accountabilities. Results indicate different combinations of evaluation capacities matter more for particular stakeholder groups. We argue a more integrative nonprofit accountability requires that managers and staff know how to utilize evaluation results for internal and external audiences. Nuances between specific evaluative capacities and their influences on multiple accountabilities suggest several implications for practice.
We examine Twitter data to assess the impact of media exposes on the reputations of two international nonprofits, Oxfam and Save the Children (STC). Using a random sample of 6794 Tweets, we study the daily gap between positive and negative sentiments expressed towards these organizations. The “unweighted gap” and the “weighted gap” (weighted by the number of followers) of the Twitter handle follow broadly the same trajectory with high fluctuation in response to new negative or positive media stories. Twitter handles with large audiences amplify variability in weighted gap. While Oxfam’s reputation did not fully recover to pre-Haiti levels even 6 months after the scandal, STC’s reputation returned to pre-scandal levels in 8 days, although it fluctuated in response to new revelations. Overall, reputation recovery for both organizations was aided when they received celebrity endorsements and focused public attention on their positive activities, especially by linking to visible global events.
An examination of whether accountability mechanisms in global environmental governance that focus on monitoring and enforcement necessarily lead to better governance and better environmental outcomes.
The rapid development of global environmental governance has been accompanied by questions of accountability. Efforts to address what has been called “a culture of unaccountability” include greater transparency, public justification for governance decisions, and the establishment of monitoring and enforcement procedures. And yet, as this volume shows, these can lead to an “accountability trap”—a focus on accountability measures rather than improved environmental outcomes. Through analyses and case studies, the contributors consider how accountability is being used within global environmental governance and if the proliferation of accountability tools enables governance to better address global environmental deterioration. Examining public, private, voluntary, and hybrid types of global environmental governance, the volume shows that the different governance goals of the various actors shape the accompanying accountability processes. These goals—from serving constituents to reaping economic benefits—determine to whom and for what the actors must account.
After laying out a theoretical framework for its analyses, the book addresses governance in the key areas of climate change, biodiversity, fisheries, and trade and global value chains. The contributors find that normative biases shape accountability processes, and they explore the potential of feedback mechanisms between institutions and accountability rules for enabling better governance and better environmental outcomes.
Contributors Graeme Auld, Harro van Asselt, Cristina Balboa, Lieke Brouwer, Lorraine Elliott, Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Aarti Gupta, Teresa Kramarz, Susan Park, Philipp Pattberg, William H. Schaedla, Hamish van der Ven, Oscar Widerberg
What influence do funders have on the development of civil rights legal mobilization? Fundraising is critical to the creation, operation, and survival of rights organizations. Yet, despite the importance of funding, there is little systematic attention in the law and social movements and cause lawyering literatures on the relationship between funders and grantees. This article recovers a forgotten history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) campaign to protect black lives from lynchings and mob violence in the early twentieth century. I argue that funders engaged in a process of movement capture whereby they used their financial leverage to redirect the NAACP's agenda away from the issue of racial violence to a focus on education at a critical juncture in the civil rights movement. The findings in this article suggest that activists tread carefully as the interaction between funders and social movement organizations often creates gaps between what activists want and what funders think movements should do.
Why do nongovernmental organizations face difficulty creating lasting change? How can they be more effective? In this book, Cristina Balboa examines NGO authority, capacity, and accountability to propose that a “paradox of scale” is a primary barrier to NGO effectiveness. This paradox—when what gives an NGO authority on one scale also weakens its authority on another scale—helps explain how NGOs can be seen as an authority on particular causes on a global scale, but then fail to effect change at the local level. Drawing on case studies of transnational conservation organizations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, The Paradox of Scale explores how NGOs build, maintain, and lose authority over time.
Balboa sets a new research agenda for the study of governance, offering practical concepts and analysis to help NGO practitioners. She introduces the concept of authority as a form of legitimated power, explaining why it is necessary for NGOs to build authority at multiple scales when they create, implement, or enforce rules. Examining the experiences of Conservation International in Papua New Guinea, International Marinelife Alliance in the Philippines, and the Community Conservation Network in Palau, Balboa explains how a paradox of scale can develop even for those NGOs that seem powerful and effective. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Paradox of Scale offers guidance for interpreting the actions and pressures accompanying work with NGOs, showing why even the most authoritative NGOs often struggle to make a lasting impact.
In recent years there has been growing recognition of the role played in American politics by groups such as Common Cause, the Sierra Club, and Zero Population Growth. This book considers their work in terms of their origins and development, resources, patterns of recruitment, decision-making processes, and lobbying tactics. How do public interest groups select the issues on which they work? How do they allocate their resources? How do they choose strategies for influencing the federal government? Professor Berry examines these questions, focusing in particular on the process by which organizations make critical decisions. His findings are based on a survey of eighty-three national organizations with offices in Washington, D.C. He analyzes in detail the operation of two groups in which he worked as a participant.
Often described as a public policy “bible,” Weimer and Vining remains the essential primer it ever was. Now in its sixth edition, Policy Analysis provides a strong conceptual foundation of the rationales for and the limitations to public policy. It offers practical advice about how to do policy analysis, but goes a bit deeper to demonstrate the application of advanced analytical techniques through the use of case studies. Updates to this edition include: A chapter dedicated to distinguishing between policy analysis, policy research, stakeholder analysis, and research about the policy process. An extensively updated chapter on policy problems as market and governmental failure that explores the popularity of Uber and its consequences. The presentation of a property rights perspective in the chapter on government supply to help show the goal tensions that arise from mixed ownership. An entirely new chapter on performing analysis from the perspective of a public agency and a particular program within the agency’s portfolio: public agency strategic analysis (PASA). A substantially rewritten chapter on cost-benefit analysis, to better prepare students to become producers and consumers of the types of cost-benefit analyses they will encounter in regulatory analysis and social policy careers. A new introductory case with a debriefing that provides advice to help students immediately begin work on their own projects. Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practices remains a comprehensive, serious, and rich introduction to policy analysis for students in public policy, public administration, and business programs.
This article discusses the application of the term 'accountability' in nonprofit organizations. The term is frequently described as the means by which individuals and organizations report to a recognized authority and are held responsible for their actions or as the process of holding actors responsible for actions. This perspective focuses on accountability as being external to an organizational actor, in that an external principal holds an agent to account. This internal dimension of accountability is motivated by a felt responsibility as expressed through individual action and organizational mission. Accountability relationships are complicated by the fact that organizations often deal with competing accountability demands from patrons and donors, clients and beneficiaries, and internally to themselves in the sense of responsibility to mission and staff. Given that many nonprofit organizations are simultaneously accountable to numerous actors, these relations may be said to form a system of accountability. It is easy to overstate the potential benefits of outcome measurement, especially in terms of organizational learning. Proponents contend that it provides superior information as part of a system in which information is fed back into planning systems and goals.
The literature on nonprofit management has embraced the concept of “accountability” to target urgent challenges related to NGO probity and integrity, and there have been attempts in the literature to use rational-choice-based governance approaches to solve them. Although the existing principal–agent frameworks provide important insights, they are limited to the analysis of financial relationships between NGOs and donors. We contribute to the literature in developing a comprehensive rational-choice-based governance approach to analyze all stakeholder relationships of NGOs. Applying the research program of ordonomics, we unpack two fundamental interaction problems: (a) the “stakeholder dilemma” between the NGO and a single accountability holder as a one-sided social dilemma and (b) the “competition dilemma” among rival NGOs as a many-sided social dilemma. We show that improving NGO accountability in relation to intended beneficiaries, peer organizations, and the general public also requires identifying the underlying governance problem as a competition dilemma focusing on collective self-regulation as a solution.
Extant research in the nonprofit literature focuses on non-governmental organization (NGO) accountability, framing it relationally. We examine the interplay of several constitutive elements of NGO–donor relationships based on narratives of NGO executives and other staff: NGO perceptions of accountability and of their donors, their assumptions about donor perceptions of the NGO role and expectations of NGO accountability, and their responses to shifts in donor funding. We argue that perceptions and practices of accountability do not only determine to whom an NGO should be primarily accountable but also shape NGO behavior and alter dependence on donors. As such, accountability is not necessarily a consequence of a relationship, but more likely a constitutive element of the relationship. While a favorable response to donor interests might signify upward accountability, it might also suggest that NGOs are more assertive about managing their institutional environments, thereby mitigating their dependence on donors. Copyright
Nonprofit organizations are under more pressure than ever to provide “rigorous” evidence of program impact. However, as expectations for rigorous evidence rise, many nonprofits struggle with challenges that inhibit evaluation. Recognizing these trends and tensions, this study identifies catalysts and obstacles to evaluation activity and the correlates of evaluative rigor among US nonprofits based on a national survey of registered public charities (n = 311). Results reveal that the most important catalysts to evaluation include the desire to improve program effectiveness and legitimacy, while the most important obstacles include insufficient time and money. Moreover, regression analysis finds that evaluation appears to be most rigorous when (1) evaluation is a priority, (2) a supportive organizational culture exists, (3) management requires evaluation, (4) evaluation is not primarily motivated by personal interest, and (5) evaluation is likely to reveal success. Overall, intrinsically motivated evaluation appears to be more rigorous than externally mandated evaluation, suggesting that stakeholders should work to help capacitate receptive nonprofits to improve evaluative rigor instead of imposing external requirements.
We conduct a laboratory experiment to examine how third-party ratings impact charity choice and donative behavior, particularly in regards to preferences for local charities. Subjects are given a menu of ten charities, with a mix of local and non-local organizations included. We vary whether third-party ratings are displayed on this menu. Subjects perform an effort task to earn money and can choose to donate to their selected charity. We find evidence that subjects' choice of charity is impacted by third-party evaluations but, somewhat surprisingly, there are no obvious preferences for local charities. These third-party assessments have some impact on the percent of earnings that subjects allocate to their selected charity; local charities also accrue more donations, though these results are imprecise.
Many resource-strapped developing country governments seek international aid, but when that assistance is channeled through domestic civil society, it can threaten their political control. As a result, in the last two decades, 39 of the world’s 153 low- and middle-income countries have adopted laws restricting the inflow of foreign aid to domestically operating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Governments recognize that such laws harm their international reputations for supporting democracy and may invite donor punishment in terms of aid reductions. Yet, they perceive foreign aid to NGOs as supporting political opponents and threatening their grip on power. In the aftermath of competitive electoral victories, governments often take new legal steps to limit these groups’ funding. We test this argument on an original dataset of laws detailing the regulation of foreign aid inflows to domestically operating NGOs in 153 low- and middle-income countries for the period 1993–2012. Using an event history approach, we find that foreign aid flows are associated with an increased risk of restrictive law adoption; a log unit increase in foreign aid raises the probability of adoption by 6.7%. This risk is exacerbated after the holding of competitive elections: the interaction of foreign aid and competitive elections increases the probability of adoption by 11%.
Prior research has shown that many donors utilize charity ratings for decisions and they give more to higher rated charities. Because ratings are partly or completely based on financial information, the financial reporting quality of highly rated charities is more critical to donors than that of the poorly rated ones. In this study, we examine whether the financial reporting quality of charities systematically varies with charitable ratings. Examining a sample of human service charities, we find that highly rated organizations are more likely to underreport fundraising expenses and overstate program ratios. Highly rated organizations appear to be exercising accounting discretion to achieve this desirable outcome. Collectively, our findings suggest that stakeholders should be cautious when they use the rating information.
In recent years the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has emerged as this era's most renowned, and argu- ably its most influential, global health player. A century ago, the Rockefeller Foundation—likewise founded by the richest, most ruthless and innovative capitalist of his day—was an even more powerful international health actor. This article reflects critically on the roots, exigencies, and reach of global health philanthropy, comparing the goals, para- digms, principles, modus operandi, and agenda-setting roles of the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations in their historical contexts. It proposes that the Rockefeller Foundation's early 20th century initia- tives had a greater bearing on interna- tional health when the field was wide open—in a world order characterized by forceful European and ascendant U.S. imperialism—than do the Gates Foundation's current global health efforts amidst neoliberal globalization and fad- ing U.S. hegemony. It concludes that the Gates Foundation's pervasive influence is nonetheless of grave concern both to democratic global health governance and to scientific independence—and urges scientists to play a role in contest- ing and identifying alternatives to global health philanthrocapitalism. INTRODUCTION International health philanthropy, American-style, is back. Almost exactly a century after the Rockefeller Foundation began to use John D. Rockefeller's colossal oil profits to stake a preeminent role in shaping the institutions, ideologies, and practices of international health (as well as medi- cine, education, social sciences, agri- culture, and science), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has emerged as the current era's most influential global health (and education, develop- ment, and agriculture) agenda-setter. The high profile of its eponymous soft - ware magnate founder and his wife, cou- pled with the Foundation's big-stakes ap- proach to grant-making and "partnering," has made it a de facto leader in the global health field. Each of these two uber-powerful foun- dations emerged at a critical juncture in the history of international/global health. Each was started by the richest, most ruthless and innovative capitalist of his day
How do charitable donors respond to the third-party ratings that signal the quality of charities? I investigate this question using a novel data set from Charity Navigator, which provides quality ratings for 5,400 charities. Because Charity Navigator prominently displays a charity's star rating which is assigned based on its overall rating, one can identify the causal impact of a one star increase in ratings on charitable contributions with a regression discontinuity framework that exploits the threshold values of the overall ratings. I find that in general, the third-party ratings have a minor and often insignificant impact on charitable contributions received by charities. However, for relatively small charities, a higher rating leads to an increase in charitable contributions received. In particular, for these charities, I find that a one star increase in ratings is associated with a 19.5% increase in the amount of charitable contributions received. This result is robust under alternative model specifications and highlights the role of the third-party ratings in not-for-profit markets.
There is a wide-spread perception among academics and commentators that institutional dysfunction has become increasingly common in important social, political, and economics arenas. Opinion polls show a decline in trust and confidence in major actors and institutions, including inter-governmental organizations, governments, firms, NGOs, and religious organizations. For some, the core of the problem is that the hitherto well-functioning states have become less effective in aggregating and acting upon citizens' preferences. Many policy initiatives of the 1990s - deregulation, privatization, new public management, private regulation, regional integration, civil society, and so on - seemed to have failed to meet expectations. This symposium seeks to identify important theoretical and empirical questions about institutional failure, such as why do institutions fail, why are they not self-correcting, what might be a clear evaluative yardstick and analytic approach by which to measure performance, and to what extent contemporary theories of institutional evolution and design are useful in examining institutional restructuring and institutional renewal? Symposium essays by leading social science scholars offer important insights to inform future work on institutional performance and outline an agenda for institutional renewal and change.
Andreas Ortmann and Mark Schlesinger, in their article “Trust, Repute, and the Role of Nonprofit Enterprise,” examine what they term “the trust hypothesis,” namely “the claim that asymmetric information in the markets for certain goods and services can explain the existence of nonprofit enterprise in those markets” (this volume). There is much that is sensible in what they say, and they have performed a valuable service in pulling together some of the more recent empirical literature on asymmetric information in markets heavily populated with nonprofit firms. I have some concerns, however, both with respect to the authors’ formulation of the trust hypothesis and with their approach to its verification.
Maintaining their organization's reputation is an important challenge for nonprofit managers. Organizations are often linked via a common reputation within their industry or sector such that publicity about one organization can spill over to affect how stakeholders view its peers. The linkages of common reputations may be particularly pronounced among nonprofits because important dimensions of their quality are difficult to observe directly. In this paper, we show that when the third-party evaluator Charity Navigator rates nonprofits and displays ratings of their peers, it creates a collective reputation among groups of nonprofits performing similar functions in the same region. Through an analysis of 3,413 charities from 1993 through 2008, we find that donations to nonprofits rated by Charity Navigator rise and fall with the published Charity Navigator ratings of their peers. The effect appears to be due to the charity updating fundraising choices in response to the ratings rather than donor reactions. The presence of collective reputations has important implications for nonprofit management, such as collective self-regulation programs.
Since 2001, hundreds of academic studies have examined the "political resource curse," meaning the claim that natural resource wealth tends to adversely affect a country's governance. There is now robust evidence that one type of mineral wealth, petroleum, has at least three harmful effects: It tends to make authoritarian regimes more durable, to increase certain types of corruption, and to help trigger violent conflict in low- and middle-income countries. Scholars have also made progress toward understanding the mechanisms that lead to these outcomes and the conditions that make them more likely. This essay reviews the evidence behind these claims, the debates over their validity, and some of the unresolved puzzles for future research.
This paper examines the landscape of policy work conducted by NGOs with respect to the social inclusion agenda. Based on a qualitative case study of integration policy in a Czech city, the paper focuses on the relations between collaborative and critical policy work of NGOs. In this case, while the collaborative position is mainly justified by apolitical expertise, long-term professional experience and compliance with official standards of social work, the latter calls upon community-based knowledge and political participation. We argue that despite indisputable long-term benefits of collaborative policy work it includes risks of paternalism, accountability deficit and exclusiveness. These risks become more significant with increasing shared understanding and mutual interdependence. In this situation there is a room for the episodic external critical capacity to challenge the governance structure and enforce the accountability of collaborative networks. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Policy and Society Associates (APSS).
The productivity of government at all levels can be increased by introducing some of the principles that have already proved effective in some parts of the country. The idea behind these principles is that governments should be entrepreneurial.
Around the globe, people are forming private, nonprofit and voluntary organizations to pursue public purposes once considered the exclusive domain of the state. Economically, environmentally and socially, where the state has failed, nonprofit groups are taking advantage of revolutions in communications and bourgeois values to fill these gaps for themselves. This "associational revolution" may be permanently altering relations between states and citizens and prove as important to the latter twentieth century as the rise of the nation-state was to the nineteenth.
This article explores the emergence of nonprofit self-regulation in long-established and emergent nonprofit sectors in Europe. An application of agency, resource dependence, and institutional theories to specific national cases reveals three predominant self-regulation types, compliance, adaptive, and professional models, conditioned on varied market, political, and social antecedents. The compliance system predominates in the Western European cases (Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Austria), where the nonprofit sector is long established and public regulation of the sector is weak. The adaptive model is evidenced in the United Kingdom, where the nonprofit sector is well established but self-regulation design shifts in response to changes in public regulation and the resource environment. The professional self-regulation type occurs when the nonprofit sector and its legal system both are emergent, as in Poland, with self-regulation emerging to shape philanthropic, civil society, and nonprofit practice. An analysis of the European context more broadly reveals that as self-regulation is emerging across a number of contexts, there is evidence of isomorphism.
Recent assaults on foreign-funded civil society groups in Egypt and Russia reflect a worrisome trend: Since 2002, twenty countries have updated their laws to restrict foreign funding to NGOs. Under what conditions do governments set these restrictions in place? Using original data from nearly 100 countries and case studies of regime behavior in East Africa and the former Soviet Union, we find that vulnerable governments restrict foreign support to civil society when they feel vulnerable to domestic challenges. Yet, worries about international retaliation can restrain such behavior if governments believe that clamping down will cost them more than it is worth.
Journal of Democracy 6.1 (1995) 65-78
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Many students of the new democracies that have emerged over the past decade and a half have emphasized the importance of a strong and active civil society to the consolidation of democracy. Especially with regard to the postcommunist countries, scholars and democratic activists alike have lamented the absence or obliteration of traditions of independent civic engagement and a widespread tendency toward passive reliance on the state. To those concerned with the weakness of civil societies in the developing or postcommunist world, the advanced Western democracies and above all the United States have typically been taken as models to be emulated. There is striking evidence, however, that the vibrancy of American civil society has notably declined over the past several decades.
Ever since the publication of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the United States has played a central role in systematic studies of the links between democracy and civil society. Although this is in part because trends in American life are often regarded as harbingers of social modernization, it is also because America has traditionally been considered unusually "civic" (a reputation that, as we shall later see, has not been entirely unjustified).
When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition," he observed, "are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types -- religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. . . . Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America."
Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions (and not only in America) are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement. Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities. Similarly, research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States has demonstrated the importance of social bonds within each group. These results are consistent with research in a wide range of settings that demonstrates the vital importance of social networks for job placement and many other economic outcomes.
Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated body of research on the sociology of economic development has also focused attention on the role of social networks. Some of this work is situated in the developing countries, and some of it elucidates the peculiarly successful "network capitalism" of East Asia. Even in less exotic Western economies, however, researchers have discovered highly efficient, highly flexible "industrial districts" based on networks of collaboration among workers and small entrepreneurs. Far from being paleoindustrial anachronisms, these dense interpersonal and interorganizational networks undergird ultramodern industries, from the high tech of Silicon Valley to the high fashion of Benetton.
The norms and networks of civic engagement also powerfully affect the performance of representative government. That, at least, was the central conclusion of my own 20-year, quasi-experimental study of subnational governments in different regions of Italy. Although all these regional governments seemed identical on paper, their levels of effectiveness varied dramatically. Systematic inquiry showed that the quality of governance was determined by longstanding traditions of civic engagement (or its absence). Voter turnout, newspaper readership, membership in choral societies and football clubs -- these were the hallmarks of a successful region. In fact, historical analysis suggested that these networks of organized reciprocity and civic solidarity...