The Shield of Purpose: Legitimizing Marketization in Nonprofit Welfare Organizations

Why are some organizations able to maintain focus on their mission while others founder? This theoretical and empirical dissertation examines the relationships among funding sources, management practices, and organizational stigma within an internally resource-constrained environment. Using Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) as a basis to manage external resource dependencies, I build a theoretical model and empirically test a research model to understand how funding source affects mission drift, how management practices might help organizations manage that drift, and what effect organizational stigma might have on those relationships within an environment of internal resource constraints. Specifically, this study hypothesizes that nonprofits that receive funding from commercial revenue and government funding have a higher probability of experiencing mission drift than other organizations and that organizational stigma and management practices proposed by RDT will affect those relationships. Using a random sample of 8,359 nonprofit tax returns between 2010 and 2021, representing 961 publicly supported charities, I find no evidence that commercial revenue or government funding is associated with higher levels of mission drift. In addition, the use of management practices and organizational stigma does not appear to have a statistically significant effect on the incidence of mission drift. This study contributes to the literature on mission drift in nonprofit organizations, primarily related to the incidence of and management of mission drift. In addition, it also begins to explore resource dependency theory in the context of internal resource constraints. This study also suggests that, contrary to prior findings, commercial revenue may not result in mission drift in nonprofit organizations.

Electronic cigarettes have become subject to highly contested public and political debates, including the role of commercial actors in development and implementation of e-cigarette policy. There are concerns that e-cigarette debates provide opportunities for commercial actors to demonstrate alignment with public health interests, build reputation, and gain influence over policy processes. While previous research on commercial sector engagement in policymaking has enhanced understanding of its impact on public health, a striking research gap exists regarding commercial actors’ engagement in e-cigarette debates. Taking the Scottish context as a case study, this project aims to increase understanding of commercial actors’ engagement in policy debates on e-cigarettes, generate critical debate on the sector’s engagement in e-cigarette policy, and contribute to the development of effective e-cigarette policy. The project is investigating commercial actors’ interests in, and position on, the benefits, harms and regulation of e-cigarettes, the ways in which interests and positions are presented and evidence is framed, and efforts to build collaboration and shape e-cigarette policy. A mixed-method approach was applied, combining the use of social network analysis to systematically analyse the relationships between commercial and other policy actors and thematic analysis of documentary and interview data to explore the nature of commercial actors’ engagement in policy debates on e-cigarettes in Scotland. Publicly available policy documents and data from semi-structured, in-depth interviews with key stakeholders are currently being analysed. The analysis will focus on stakeholders’ interests in, and position on, the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes, the ways in which positions are presented, and their efforts to build coalitions in order to achieve specific policy outcomes. The presentation will also shed light on stakeholders’ use of evidence and strategies of dealing with uncertainty.

Purpose – this chapter contrasts the ethical climates in government and nonprofit organizations (npos) in japan, a setting where the relationship between these two sectors has been recognized as close and long-lasting (estevez-abe, 2003; hirata, 2002; ritu, 2008). Yet, there has been little comparison of the value difference (or congruence) or discussion of how this may influence their interaction over time. This chapter explains why nonprofit partners may be more attractive partners for governmental contracts, notwithstanding the dangers of “mission drift” (young & denize, 2008) and/or high monitoring costs (malloy & agarwal, 2008).Design/methodology/approach – Using survey data from matched samples of nonprofits (441, 86% response rate) and governmental organizations (321, 64%), the factor structure equivalence and measurement invariance of ethical climates in these two sectors were rigorously tested.Findings – The findings extend prior typologies of ethical climate from for-profit and nonprofit organizations to governmental organizations. The chapter revisits the notion of opportunism, which continues to be pervasive and problematic in third-sector studies (Hawkins, Gravier, & Powley, 2011) to suggest that significant overlap in ethical climates between nonprofit and governmental organizations rules out value differences as a possible source of opportunism.Originality/value – This study contributes a deeper awareness of the similarities and differences in ethical perceptions between nonprofit and governmental organizations that can inform policy makers in government to better understand the implications of using nonprofit partners to deliver services.

Since the early decades of the American republic, nonprofit organizations have played a critical role in helping people in need by providing education, training, residences, counseling, and in-kind and cash support. Moreover, President George Bush has followed Ronald Reagan in calling upon nonprofit agencies to take the leading role in American society in addressing social problems. Their belief in the efficacy of nonprofits (President Bush's thousand points of light) combined with the current political and financial constraints on government spending, suggests an even larger service role for nonprofit organizations in the future. Nonprofit organizations invoke the images of community, voluntarism, civic dependability, and neighbor-helping-neighbor that have always exerted a powerful impression on American public consciousness.1 However, largely as a result of this expanded role in providing services for government, these images are at variance with the contemporary reality of nonprofit service organizations. Rather than depending mostly on private charity and volunteers, most nonprofit service organizations depend on government for over half of their revenues; for many small agencies, government support comprises their entire budget. In contrast to the

In Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden in the 1980s, coalitions of politicians, fiscal bureaucrats, and capital and labor in sectors exposed to international competition allied to transform the largest single nontradables sector in their society: the state, particularly the welfare state. They exposed state personnel and agencies to market pressures and competition to reduce the cost of welfare and other state services. The impetus for change came from rising foreign public and private debt. Rising public debt levels and expensive welfare states interacted to create a tax wedge between employers' wage costs and workers' received wages. This undercut international competitiveness, worsening current account deficits and leading to more foreign debt accumulation. Two factors explain variation in the degree of reorganization in each country: differences in their electoral and constitutional regimes; and the willingness of left parties to risk splitting their core constituencies. Introduction of market pressures is an effort to go beyond the liberalization of the economy common in industrial countries during the 1980s, and both to institutionalize limits to welfare spending and to change the nature of statesociety relations, away from corporatist forms of interest intermediation. In short, not just less state, but a different state.

ABSTRACTCommercial actors play a key role in promoting public health agendas as they move into space previously occupied by the state-sponsored health sector and welfare state. This paper examines how marketing of digital self-monitoring devices promotes public health. Existing self-monitoring research often separates or compares positions of commercial actors and users, using a discourse lens to examine commercial actors’ ‘expectations’ and ‘promises’, and user research focusing on ‘practices’. The research on which this paper is based moves beyond this divide, examining commercial and user worlds through a practice lens. We draw on the research’s first stage which examined self-monitoring device marketing, arguing that marketing can be understood as constituting self-monitoring practices. Much literature on self-monitoring focuses on novel networked devices, resulting in potential over-emphasis on change and innovation. Taking cases of well-established bodily monitoring (weighing and blood pressure), we set self-monitoring within a longer history. We draw on Shove’s practice theory which attends to histories of practices and evolutions in practices required elements materials, meanings and competences. Commercial companies are shown to rework well-embedded practices as they constitute the practice elements of self-monitoring. They thus keep in play continuities and novelty, maintaining connections to health while moving away from clinical associations. We argue that, in constituting self-monitoring practices as ‘aesthetic’, ‘enjoyable’, and ‘shared’, commercial actors address implicit resistances to negative connotations of ‘individualised’, ‘responsibilised’ consumer citizens implied in neo-liberal health-promotion agendas, widening the self-monitoring market and promoting public health by creating more desirable ‘lifestyle’ practices.

This study investigated technology's role in advancing Strategic Human Resource Alignment in Tanzanian Ministries, Independent Departments, and Agencies (MDAs), focusing particularly on emergent Information Systems, Leadership Commitment, and Institutional Readiness. Guided by the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Contingency Theory, the study theorizes these constructs as critical organizational resources and contextual factors influencing the alignment of HR practices and institutional goals. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design, which was quantitative in nature. HR managers, line managers, and IT managers in selected MDAs constituted the study population. Through the application of purposive sampling, 111 respondents were targeted, and 104 usable responses were obtained, representing a response rate of 93.7%. Data was collected using structured questionnaires, and hypotheses were tested through the application of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings show that strategic human resource alignment is significantly facilitated by the use of emerging information systems, with leadership commitment and institutional readiness also exerting strong direct effects. The explanatory model demonstrated high variance in strategic human resource alignment and confirmed its predictive validity. These findings confirm RBV's contention that human capital and technology are strategic resources, while contingency theory emphasizes organizational fit as a condition for alignment effectiveness. Theoretically, the study adds to digital HR transformation knowledge by illustrating how new information systems, leadership, and institutional readiness together enhance alignment in the public sector. Practically, it offers lessons for MDAs: technological investments must be followed up with leadership commitment and organizational preparedness so that HRIS implementation can contribute to strategic results and national development agendas. The results emphasize the need to adopt a synergistic strategy: technological implementation should be followed by aggressive leadership backing and good organizational preparedness. Managers and policymakers need to accord topmost priority to creating capacity, training leaders, and infrastructure so that HRIS could make a stronger strategic impact. On theoretical contributions, this study adds to theoretical understanding by resolving the conflict between the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Contingency Theory, demonstrating that new information systems as strategic assets appreciate only when supported by leadership and institutional readiness. In showing how alignment comes out of the interaction between resources within the organization and conditions within the context.

While extant research identifies strategies to prevent or counterbalance mission drifts at an organizational level, the examination of entrepreneur level responses to manage such drifts remains limited. The present study, borrowing from paradox theory and using the case of an Indian nonprofit organization which gradually evolved into a social enterprise, identifies factors which helped the entrepreneur to make sense of, and manage multiple mission drifts with the organizational evolution. These factors, namely, ability to integrate idealism and pragmatism, awareness of contextual factors, and ability to navigate contradictory forms of organizing helped the entrepreneur manage two different types of drifts – referred to as sustenance drift and mission drift. We conclude with implications for paradox theory and mission drift literature.

PurposeInnovation partnerships are a popular model for organizing publicly supported innovation projects. However, partners often have different timelines and planning horizons, understanding of purpose and concepts of value. This hybridity poses organizational challenges pertaining to trust, goal setting, learning and coordination, which may lead to “mission drift,” i.e. compromising or displacement of intended goals. Despite the risk mission drift poses, its underlying dynamics are not sufficiently understood, and the means to mitigate it are unclear. This study aims to address these questions.Design/methodology/approachThrough eight broad and one deep case study of innovation partnerships funded by Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD), the authors investigate how partnerships reconcile multiple expectations and interests within the IFD framework and how this might lead to mission drift. The authors draw upon existing theories on the organizational challenges of innovation partnerships and supplement these with new empirically based propositions on the risk of mission drift.FindingsThis study identifies a core tension between partnership complexity and the degree of formalization. Depending on how these dimensions are combined in relation to particular goals, the partnership mission is likely to become narrower or more unpredictable than intended. Thus, the authors theorize the significance of partnership composition and requisite formalization for a given innovation purpose.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the theoretical understanding of mission drift in innovation partnerships by opening the organizational black box of partnerships. The findings underscore the value of explorative case studies for specifying the contingencies of organizational design and governance mechanisms for different innovation goals.

New public management (NPM), with its hands-on, private sector-style performance measurement, output control, parsimonious use of resources, disaggregation of public sector units and greater competition in the public sector, has significantly affected charitable and non profit organisations delivering community services (Hood, 1991; Dunleavy, 1994; George & Wilding, 2002). The literature indicates that nonprofit organisations under NPM believe they are doing more for less: while administration is increasing, core costs are not being met; their dependence on government funding comes at the expense of other funding strategies; and there are concerns about proportionality and power asymmetries in the relationship (Kerr & Savelsberg, 2001; Powell & Dowling, 2006; Smith & Lipsky, 1993; McGregorLowndes & Tumour, 2003; Lyons & Dalton, 2011; Smith, 2002, p. 1 75; Morris, 1999, 2000a). Government agencies arc under increased pressure to do more with less, demonstrate value for money, measure social outcomes, not merely outputs and minimise political risk (Grant, 2008; McGregor-Lowndes, 2008). Government-community service organisation relationships are often viewed as 'uneasy alliances' characterised by the pressures that come with the parties' differing roles and expectations, and the pressures of funding and security (Productivity Commission, 2010, p. 308; McGregor-Lowndcs, 2008, p. 45; Morris, 2000a). Significant community services are now delivered to citizens through such relationships, often to the most disadvantaged in the community, and it is important for this to be achieved with equity, efficiently and effectively. On one level, the welfare state was seen as a 'risk management system' for the poor, with the state mitigating the risks of sickness, job loss and old age (Giddens, 1999), with the subsequent neoliberalist outlook shifting this risk back to households (Hacker, 2006). At the core of this risk shift are written contracts. Vincent-Jones ( 1 999, 2006) has mapped how NPM is characterised by the use of written contracts for all manner of relations; e.g., regulation of dealings between government agencies, between individual citizens and the state, and the creation of quasi-markets of service providers and infrastructure partners. We take this lens of contracts to examine where risk falls in relation to the outsourcing of community services. First we examine the concept of risk. We consider how risk might be managed and apportioned between governments and community service organisations (CSOs) in grant agreements, which are quasi-market transactions at best. This is informed by insights from the law and economics literature. Then, standard grant agreements covering several years in two jurisdictions-Australia and the United Kingdom-are analysed, to establish the risk allocation between government and CSOs. This is placed in the context of the reform agenda in both jurisdictions. In Australia this context is the nonprofit reforms built around the creation of a national charities regulator and red tape reduction. In the United Kingdom, the backdrop is the Third Way agenda with its compacts, succeeded by Big Society in a climate of austerity. These 'case studies' inform a discussion about who is best placed to bear and manage the risks of community service provision on behalf of government. We conclude by identifying the lessons to be learned from our analysis and possible pathways for further scholarship.

The widespread contracting out to British charities of welfare services previously furnished by the state has resulted in many charities operating in fields well outside those specified by their original missions. Challenges connected with charity mission drift have received a great deal of (mainly negative and critical) attention in the nonprofit practitioner literature in recent years, yet no academic research has been completed into exactly how charities respond managerially and operationally to government‐induced mission drift. This empirical study attempted to fill this important gap in knowledge about charity management through in‐depth case studies of three charities known to have experienced substantial mission drift during the last decade, focusing on the styles and types of approach the organizations had adopted in their dealings with government funding agencies. It emerged that the three charities accepted mission drift as a fact of life. Rather than simply supplying contract services to government bodies, the charities were highly proactive in seeking to initiate, direct, control, and assume overall strategic responsibility for state‐funded activities.

Engineering education is under the sway of wide-ranging dynamics and drifts that have bearing on how education is enacted in relation to the research and innovation obligations of universities. Academic, applied, and third mission drifts seem to configure higher education in new ways. The article sets out to critically explore how knowledge production is discursively enacted in the teaching-research-practice-nexus in engineering universities of applied science (UAS) in Denmark. This paradigmatic case study maps discursive positionings and discusses how these positionings aspire to transform engineering education in the light of the wide-ranging drifts in higher education. Based on 17 qualitative in-depth interviews with researchers, teachers, and managers, the article maps the discursive positions taken and not-taken in relation to the enactment of the teaching-research-practice-nexus. The exploration is guided by a theory-method-package inspired by situational analysis and interviewing methods developed in practice-based approaches as interview-to-the-double. The analysis identifies four discursive positions in the teaching-research-practice-nexus that enact knowledge production in engineering UAS differently. Furthermore, three unavailable discursive positions are identified. Interpretive flexibility makes different discursive enactments of knowledge production possible. The study concludes that (1) that the primary mission of UAS in Denmark is teaching; research and engagement with practice are subordinate missions; (2) that the applied and third mission drift has been effective in instituting alternative discursive enactments; (3) some positions are seemingly discursively illegitimate. The undisputability of the educational mission – and the applied and third mission drifts – seems to effectively outweigh academic drift in the Danish UAS.

The debate over how to finance the transition to renewable energy in the face of catastrophic climate change has put the issue of public banks back on the political agenda. In order to avoid the mistakes of the past, the article analyzes one of them, mission drift, the tendency to act outside the original mandate. This can result in the public bank no longer fulfilling its original public purpose. It can also lead to huge financial losses. German public banks are chosen for the case study because Germany has a large public banking sector that is suitable for analyzing the effects of different governance structures. Some of these banks suffer from mission drift. Mission creep is most pronounced among the Landesbanken, which have ventured into high-risk derivatives trading. Mission drift is discussed in the light of principal-agent theory, sociological new institutionalism, and hegemonic discourse theory. Placing mission drift in this larger framework precludes any simple panacea for keeping public banks true to their public purpose.

By now, the idea that marketization can induce nonprofit mission drift seems common knowledge. However, there is limited insight to what extent this argument holds across (a) different aspects of nonprofit marketization and (b) different organizational, sectoral, and welfare state contexts. Drawing on survey data collected among nonprofit executives across three different welfare state regimes, this study examines to what extent nonprofit marketization is related to a critical manifestation of mission drift: nonprofit creaming behavior. Best understood as nonprofits prioritizing more easy-to-serve clients over those with more complex needs, we find that nonprofit creaming behavior is (a) to different extents reported by one out of five nonprofits surveyed and (b) positively associated with resource competition and commercial venturing regardless of the organizational, sectoral, and/or welfare state context. Accordingly, our findings constitute a universal warning for nonprofit marketization adherents.

In 1997, welfare reform replaced the federal system of entitlement with a workfare system based on the values of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. Proponents of reform argue that if social services are needed, local nonprofit organizations (NPOs) such as food banks can provide them. But claims that local NPOs can expand programs in the wake of welfare cuts merit closer scrutiny. This paper investigates two questions. First, why is the nonprofit sector being touted as a replacement for the welfare state? Second, is there sufficient social capital—the willingness of people to donate their time and money in a community—for NPOs to expand social services with less state funding? The answer to the first question explains how the crisis of Fordism led to welfare spending cuts. In its place arose a more flexible “shadow state” comprised of NPOs. The rise of the “shadow state” signals a conscious effort to reduce government spending. It also means providing less assistance to the poor because the voluntary sector cannot match the capacity of the welfare state. In order to answer the second question, a survey was conducted of 2,580 NPOs in small towns in Illinois. Results reveal that NPOs are concerned about a lack of volunteers, local funding, and community support for the poor and unemployed. Furthermore, the survey shows that the spatial and institutional fragmentation of the nonprofit welfare system compromises the ability of NPOs to deliver social assistance. [Key words: voluntary sector, welfare reform, nonprofit organizations, crisis of Fordism.]