Entrepreneurship among Nonprofit Arts Organizations: Substituting between Wage and Flexible Labor

Abstract

Abstract Nonprofit entrepreneurship is largely viewed through the lens of commercialization, overshadowing other ways that entrepreneurship manifests within the sector. One such way involves nonprofits' tendency to meet workforce needs by substituting flexible for wage labor, which may be especially attractive to arts organizations given the proclivity of workers in this sector to be self‐employed. The authors examine the use of flexible versus wage labor by nonprofit arts organizations, relying on panel data to account for changes in organizational size over time. The results provide evidence of a substitution effect, in which the use of wage labor by arts organizations declines in response to greater reliance on flexible labor. The findings suggest that nonprofit arts organizations are innovative employers, responding to changes in their resource environments by adjusting their mix of wage and flexible labor while also providing outlets for freelance arts workers to pursue their chosen line of work.