An Analysis Of A Non-profit Organization Strategic Alliance Through The Architecture-Routine-Culture Theory

In recent decades, the founding of non-profit organizations (NPOs) has been booming. NPOs often ally to express their common ground and attitude, and adopt actions in accordance, to meet the needs of the beneficiaries after a critical incident, or to follow up some important agenda with a major impact on the society. This dissertation is an empirical case study confirming the Architecture-Routine-Culture Theory (hereafter the ARC theory), developed by professors Garth Saloner, Andrea Shepard, and Joel Podolny of Stanford University in2001, by using the Taiwan Service Alliance for512Wenchuan Earthquake (hereafter TSA), organized by Taiwanese NPOs after the earthquake in2008that devastated Sichuan Province of the People’s Republic of China, as the case for analysis. This author discusses and confirms the feasibility to apply the ARC theory to the case of an NPO strategic alliance, especially considering and providing analytic framework of the organizational design and solutions to such an alliance. He reaches the results that the ARC theory is able to help consider and provide organizational and effectiveness improvement solutions not only to enterprises, but also to NPOs. The TSA, an NPO strategic alliance, was successfully founded and is operating by choosing carefully and regulating seriously its components, comprising both horizontal and functional-complementary partners, adopting an organizational mode that is highly-autonomous and horizontal, with an efficient decision-making task force, a stand-alone administrative and logistic-support sector, a speedy and direct information-sharing platform, many comprehensive and sufficient connections and communications among the alliance stakeholders, a participatory decision-making process, and a coordinated leadership that shares power and honor to resolve coordinating and mobilization issues among the partners. As for routine reasons, the working partners of the TSA already have relatively similar mission statements and points of value in advance, with consensus previously aggregated by long-term cooperation; and they organize fully-authorized, well-discussed and jointly-decided routine activities, with mutual trust and respect among their components, with different expertise and creativity, so as to facilitate their routine functions of the TSA. Taking the cultural aspect into consideration, the TSA components do have understanding and respect to the local cultures; their perception differences and obstacles between themselves toward the cultures have been intermediated through forming common mission statements and visions. The TSA also made a difference to and has influence on the cultures, with elements of which handled by re-thinking and balancing between persistence and compromises, remarkably done by mutual trust between strategic alliance partners as a key factor. By analyzing the organizational design of this NPO strategic alliance with the ARC theory, this author not only is able to put together and analyze the key factors of a successful NPO strategic alliance, but also builds, in his related conclusions, the key mechanisms of architecture, routine and culture. The academic circles can further understand and discuss the dynamic links and mutual influences among the three mechanisms. Last but not least, this author finds that the other key factor of a successful NPO strategic alliance is the role of its integrators. Since the contemporary theoretic descriptions about strategic alliances, especially those for an NPO strategic alliance, have yet to cover the field of the organization design of such alliances, the dissertation has an important academic value of fulfilling such theoretic vacancies.