Good Governance: A Radical and Normative Approach to Nonprofit Management

Abstract

This article proposes a radical and normative approach to understanding governance as one of the core issues dealt with in nonprofit management. The radical component traces ideas of good governance through a series of historical transformations, from the governance of Italian city-states in the fourteenth century through the Enlightenment and on to the American Revolution. The normative component challenges the instrumental understanding of good governance as effective organizational behavior and puts the emphasis on the moral values underpinning managerial practices in the public sphere. In concluding, the radical and normative approaches are being integrated into a framework for nonprofit management education. Unlike existing curricula, the proposed model does not focus on preparing students for a particular type of organizations, but for the career of civic professionals engaged as intermediaries in the public sphere. In this respect, the article addresses both, researchers interested in overcoming the division that exists between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to understanding governance and faculty concerned about the relevance of nonprofit management in an increasingly complex organizational environment.