Organizational Founding Research Articles

Founding New Nonprofit Organizations

In this study, the authors explore how the dynamics associated with the founding of new nonprofit organizations, the characteristics of the founders, and the developmental life cycles of nonprofit organizations contribute to the seemingly fragmented landscape of the nonprofit sector. Based on data collected from interviews with 31 nonprofit organizations, we find that new nonprofits are being created by passionate, entrepreneurial individuals who hope to make a difference in the community. Although these organizations are typically small, with few staff members and small budgets, the extent to which they rely on volunteers and are connected to the broader community varies considerably. Moreover, many founders had little experience volunteering or working in the sector. The findings from this study have important implications for the professional development of nonprofit staff, leaders, and volunteers, and they shed new light on how we think about and describe the founders of nonprofit organizations.

Building Environmentalism: The Founding of Environmental Movement Organizations in the United States, 1900–2000

Between the 19th and the mid-20th century, the environmental movement transformed American culture, forcing a rethinking of the “Manifest Destiny” ideology that had long dominated political thinking toward an understanding of the need to protect and restore the balance between humans and nature. In 1900, there were only a few environmental movement organizations (EMOs), but by 2000, there were over 6,000 national and regional EMOs and over 20,000 local EMOs. What drove this phenomenal growth of EMOs? We examine a 100-year time series of EMO founding, showing that, in addition to the “legitimation-and-competition” effects of organizational density, EMO founding is facilitated by the discourse-creative activities of critical communities, objective threats in terms of air pollution, foundation giving, and powerful political allies in the presidency and Congress. Environmental discourses also legitimized and competed against one another, favoring “early risers” and preservationist discourse. Environmental mobilization needs to be understood in terms of the creation of new discursive frames that identify environmental problems, as well as objective environmental threats, resources, and political opportunities.

A Theory of Nascent Entrepreneurship and Organization

In this paper, we develop a theory and model of organizational founding and the emergence of collective beliefs and strategies. We explicate how collective beliefs, resulting in the formation of new organizations, emerge via three social mechanisms: sorting or matching, interaction, and selection. We specifically highlight how value homophily, social processes, and threshold effects contribute to the actualization (or not) of entrepreneurial beliefs and ideas. Our theory and model highlight not only the emergence of collective beliefs but also the socially interdependent nature of belief realization, choice, and strategy in nascent organizations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From the Cam to the Cephissus: The Fitzwilliam Museum and students of the British School at Athens

The Fitzwilliam Museum holds material brought back to England by some of the early nineteenth-century travellers to Greece, including Edward Daniel Clarke and William Martin Leake. However, it was not until the later nineteenth century, with the founding of such organizations as the British School at Athens and the Cyprus Exploration Fund, that the Museum's collections started to be enriched through material excavated or otherwise acquired in Greece by archaeologists and other students. This article maps the impact of the emerging discipline of archaeology on the Fitzwilliam's collections in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also demonstrates how the Museum profited from the close connections between students, archaeologists and museum officers of the period.

Isaac Edward Kiev: Early Leader in American Judaica Librarianship

Isaac Edward Kiev (1905–1975), former Chief Librarian of New York’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, spent a lifetime facilitating Jewish research. This article, based on the author’s Master’s thesis on Kiev, focuses on his contributions to the founding of Jewish book and library organizations during the American post-war era, including the Association of Jewish Libraries, Jewish Book Council of America, Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc., and numerous Jewish book foundations in the United States and Israel. In addition to providing insight into the creation of these associations, the article illustrates the parallel development of the fields of Judaica librarianship and Jewish Studies in academia. Kiev’s legacy continues into the twenty-first century through his lasting influence on his profession as well as the I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection at the George Washington University.

Why is there no cannery in 'Cannery Row'? Exploring a behavioral simulation model of population extinction

Available ecological models of organizations do not provide satisfactory explanation for population extinction. In this article, we search for a minimal set of assumptions needed to expand the range of dynamic behaviors of the ecological model of density dependence to admit extinction while preserving its original insight. The revised version of the model builds on two core assumptions. The first is that organizational populations are linked to their environments through feedback processes of resource generation and consumption. As a consequence, the carrying capacity for an organizational population changes systematically with its density. The second assumption is that organizational vital rates respond with delay to changes in the level of available resources. As a consequence, organizational founding and mortality rates are affected by expectations that decision makers form about the future state of their environment. Using computer simulation, we test these assumptions and show that the relative speed at which processes of resource regeneration and consumption happen, and the speed at which expectations about future levels of resources are revised jointly determine a wide range of evolutionary trajectories that admit population extinction as one distinct possibility. The model is validated using multivariate sensitivity analysis techniques. We discuss the implications of our findings in the broader context of the current debate on the implications of selective sampling in the study of organizational populations. Copyright 2012 The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Cheating the Fates: Organizational Foundings in the Wake of Demise

On the basis of a qualitative, induction-driven study of six cases, we developed a process model of how former members of defunct organizations found new organizations to sustain valued elements of...

String and Music Education Associations on Long Island, New York, 1950–1960

Introduction String education was a neglected area of music education in the mid-twentieth century. This resulted in the founding of many important organizations to promote string education. One of the most influential, the American String Teachers Association (ASTA), developed at a Music Educators National Conference (MENC) annual meeting in 1945 in Cleveland, Ohio. (1) In 1948, at the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) conference, over a hundred string teachers were present for ASTA's formal inauguration. (2) Traugott Rohner, founder of The Instrumentalist magazine, voiced his concern about the need for an orchestra organization in the Music Educators Journal, as he believed school orchestra directors were ignored. (3) In 1959, eighty-eight school directors of the 133 ASTA chartered members united to develop the National School Orchestra Association (NSOA). ASTA and NSOA operated independently but often held spring conferences in conjunction with MENC. Also in 1959, the American Federation of Musicians sponsored the first International String Congress in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to encourage the professional lives of young musicians in the United States and Canada. (4) These organizations would soon be of major importance to string education and help solidify string teaching in America. in the 1950s Thousands of young service men, recently returned from World War II, were ready to start new lives with new homes and jobs in the 1950s. American industry began to expand, jobs were created, and the baby boom was underway. In 1952, the World War II general Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president. President Eisenhower stated that America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world. (5) During Eisenhower's administration (1952-60), the nation experienced multiple changes. Segregation ended (1954), the highway interstate system was created (1956), and grew from a nation of forty-eight states to fifty (1959). In the music world, rock and roll was in its infancy: the voices of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Johnny Cash were still heard on the radio. (6) In the music education field, several important events occurred during this decade. MENC established the Child's Bill of Rights in Music in 1950, to ensure that every child had the right to learn music. In 1953, the Journal of Research in Music Education published its first volume, and the International Society for Music Education had its first postwar meeting in Brussels, Belgium. MENC celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at their annual conference in 1957 and adopted the Golden Anniversary Resolution, which was intended to support music education in a postwar world and look toward the future. These events demonstrated the importance of music education in American lives. The future of American string education began to strengthen during the 1950s. The formation of ASTA strengthened string teachers' knowledge through workshops and annual conferences that provided networking opportunities. The ability to share knowledge about string education in the Music Educators Journal and the establishment of a national orchestra association could not have occurred at a better time. The formation of national string organizations also led to the formation of regional, state, and local groups that supported string education. Research Purpose and Questions The purpose of this study is to examine the history of music and string education associations on Long Island, New York, from 1950 to 1960. Through the use of artifacts, websites, and interviews with two former Long Island string educators, answers were sought for the following research questions: What organizations existed to support string education during the 1950s, and how did the economy on Long Island in that decade affect string education? This study explores the evolution and progress of five associations in New York State and on Long Island and how each was affected by the population boom of the postwar suburban era. …

The Founding of Environmental Justice Organizations Across U.S. Counties during the 1990s and 2000s: Civil Rights and Environmental Cross-Movement Effects

This research expands upon organizational ecology theory to examine variations in founding of organizations in the formalized sector of the environmental justice movement across U.S. counties for two time periods (1990—1999 and 2000—2008). Cross-movement effects are examined to determine if founding is more or less likely to occur in counties where related civil rights and environmental organizations are located. Consistent with the notion of agglomeration effects, we hypothesize that during the 1990s the relationship among civil rights density, environmental density, and environmental justice founding is positive and suggests cooperative efforts. That is, environmental justice organizations should form in counties where civil rights organizations and environmental organizations exist. Because the focus of environmental justice organizations may have expanded over time and created a more competitive atmosphere, cross-movement relationships that were positive across counties during the 1990s are hypothesized to turn negative across counties during the 2000s. Multivariate analysis suggests mixed support for these hypotheses. Specifically, civil rights density is positively associated with environmental justice founding during the 1990s and negatively associated with environmental justice founding during the 2000s—suggesting potential cooperative and then competitive effects across counties over time. However, the correlations between environmental density and environmental justice founding, while positive and statistically significant during the 1990s, are not statistically significant during the 2000s. Thus, in the case of organizations in the formalized sector of the environmental and environmental justice movements it appears that there is a trend toward competitive effects even as those effects have yet to materialize.

Ecological Threat and the Founding of U.S. National Environmental Movement Organizations, 1962–1998

This study examines the role of “ecological threat” in shaping the U.S. environmental movement. Statistical analysis combines founding data on 772 national environmental movement organizations with ecological data on air pollution levels and amphibian and bird populations. We examine these data longitudinally, from 1962 through 1998. Net of other social, economic, and political factors suggested by social movement theory, we find evidence of segmented effects in the expected directions: Declines in wildlife populations are associated with the foundings of wildlife and wilderness protection organizations while increases in air pollution are associated with the foundings of organizations focused on ecosystem well-being and public health. These findings help refine long-held assumptions about the relationship between ecological degradation and environmental activism, and demonstrate the broader utility of the threat concept for strengthening theories of social movement mobilization.

Supporter networks and network growth: a contingency model of organizational emergence

Despite the belief that networks are essential to entrepreneurial success, very few studies consider the role of networks in the founding of new organizations. In response, we test the direct and interactive effects of the characteristics of nascent entrepreneurs’ supporter networks and network growth on organizational emergence. We find that (1) the governance and content of the supporter network, along with network growth, are important in predicting organizational emergence, and (2) the structure and content of the supporter network may inform the need for network growth. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for academics and practitioners.

NATO's Dilemma

On the 60th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's founding, Afghanistan provides a unique opportunity for the alliance to prove its strength beyond Europe and combat global security threats from terrorism and instability.2

Getting There: Exploring the Role of Expectations and Preproduction Delays in Processes of Organizational Founding

Because of preproduction delays, environmental conditions at founding cannot explain organization-building decisions taken earlier. As a consequence, environmental conditions at founding cannot explain organizational founding. Future levels of resource availability may be estimated, but not directly observed by potential entrepreneurs at the time at which they decide to enter preproduction. In this paper, we take these considerations as our starting point to build a dynamic feedback model of organization founding. According to the model, organizational founding is driven by expectations that entrepreneurs form about future levels of resources and, only indirectly, by current levels of population density. We explore the behavior of the model under a variety of experimental conditions. We show that the qualitative behavior of the model is consistent with studies that have linked the duration of preproduction stage with fluctuations in density during population maturity. Our simulation analyses sustains three main conclusions. First, historical trajectories of organizational populations that are consistent with empirical observations may be produced by mechanisms that are not directly dependent on density. Second, alternative hypotheses about how expectations are formed produce qualitatively different historical trajectories of density. Third, fluctuations in numbers of organizations are linked to specific aspects of individual organization-building decisions.

Individual foundings and organizational foundings: their effect on employment growth in The Netherlands

This study addresses the question of whether different types of new firm formation have different impacts on regional employment generation. It is shown that new establishments of existing firms, i.e., organizational foundings, have a mainly short-term positive effect. In contrast, genuinely new firms, i.e., individual foundings, have a longer-lasting effect. Individual foundings are based on the recognition of business opportunities and spur a process of creative destruction spanning a few years. Organizational foundings can be seen as capitalizations of scale economies. They have an immediate effect, but appear to be less relevant for structural change in a regional economy.

The dynamics of rapid industrial growth: evidence from Sweden's information technology industry, 1990-2004

Sweden's information technology (IT) industry expanded through an inflow of new entrants during the 1990s. Its evolution was analyzed using ecological models of organizational founding and disbanding. Controlling for the effects of economic conditions, this study analyzed the effects of density dependence, age, imprinting, rate dependence, and the origin of new entrants on the industry. The results indicate that the inflow was comprised of start-ups that proved to be relatively short-lived. In contrast, new entrants that originated as part of incumbent firms that were diversifying in IT stabilized the industry by depressing its disbanding rate and facilitating the entry of new firms. In explaining the dynamics of the industry, the analysis supports the established models of density dependence, age dependence, imprinting, and organizational origin. Copyright 2009 The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Passionate competitors: the foundation of competitive ballroom dancing in South Africa (1920s-1930s)

By the turn of the nineteenth century ballroom dancing had become a popular social pastime in Europe, North-America and South Africa. The years leading up to the First World War saw a number of South African social dancers, like their Western counterparts, striving to perfect the steps of these imported, ballroom dance routines. Dancers danced partly out of a sheer passion for movement but, more importantly, to maintain and increase their social status within society. Various international and later local dancing organisations were formed to organise and control these dancing events. The creation of these formal bodies unavoidably forced ballroom dancing into a competitive phase that transformed it from a mere social past time to a highly competitive sporting activity.This article will focus on how the founding of prominent international ballroom dance organizations influenced the creation of the South African Dance Teachers Association (S.A.D.T.A.) and how both the British and South African organizations developed competitive ballroom dancing during the 1920s and 1930s. It will also consider the infrastructures required by these official organizations, the shortcomings as well as the determining impact that this had on South Africa’s ballroom dance history. As a result of a number of prerequisites, competitive ballroom dancing is not a sport for the masses, and its formalization in the first half of the twentieth century saw an increased segregation in the dancing halls based on race and class. However, the passion that the 1920 ballroom dancers had for competing laid a firm foundation for the development of dance as a sport in South Africa.

The Radical Next Door: The Los Angeles Catholic Worker during the Cold War

While some anti-war activist groups faded during the latter part of the cold war, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker organization continued its commitment to world peace through nonviolent resistance. This article explores the organization's founding, programs, and the variety of motives that led individuals to participate in lacw's causes. By linking the struggle against war with the struggle against poverty, and by relying on self-sacrifice as a primary strategy, this peace group remained viable while providing essential services to the poor, expanding its ideological focus and effectiveness, and shaping America's consciousness and conscience.

Becoming a founder: How founder role identity affects entrepreneurial transitions and persistence in founding

We develop a new theory that views organizational founding as involving a role transition. Through the construct of founder role identity, we delineate how identity centrality and complexity affect individuals' ability to exit a work role in order to undertake founding activities. We argue that individuals are challenged to adjust to the founder role requirements and incorporate the new role into an overall self-concept. We then delineate how configurations of founder role identities influence persistence, and the longer-term outcomes of dormancy and successful founding.

Organizational genesis in the nonprofit sector: an analysis of demand, supply, and community characteristics

Scholarly knowledge of organizational founding in the nonprofit sector has grown not from macro-level analyses but rather from the aggregation of in-depth and focused studies of particular geographical regions or service fields. Employing logistic regression techniques, this paper examines the formation of nonprofits in one key but overlooked site of the voluntary sector: workplace charity. Testing competing theories, the paper analyzes the effect of demand-side, supply-side, and community-level characteristics on the presence of rival federated fundraisers in the largest 123 MSAs in 2000. The results indicate that these nonprofit organizations are formed in large cities with a sizeable and stable nonprofit sector, regardless of ease of access to charitable contributions and the level of available funding.

Institutional Environments, Sociopolitical Processes, and Health Movement Organizations: The Growth of Self‐Help/Mutual‐Aid1

This study examines the relationship between sociopolitical processes and health social movement organization formation. Two central research questions are posed: How do self‐help/mutual‐aid institutional environments characterized by professional actors, the state, and social movements influence organizational formation, and do these influences grow stronger or weaker as the self‐help/mutual‐aid movement matures? Analyses comparing the impact of institutional factors such as physician hegemony and autonomy, professional affiliation, state spending, and political ties on self‐help/mutual‐aid founding rates reveal negative effects of professionals but positive effects of the state. These relationships tend to grow stronger as the movement matures. For example, declining professional authority increasingly eases organizational foundings during movement maturity as does the beneficial impact on formation of state expansion in health markets and political ties. Implications are discussed.