Background Of Leaders,Business Relations And Rationalization Of Nonprofit Organizations

This dissertation pretends to explain the rationalization of Chinses nonprofits and its formalization processes.Both globalization and localization influence the Chinese nonprofit sector since its beginning and growth:on one hand,globalization brings all kinds of organizational identities and institutional schemas,provides "benchmarks"and "models" for Chinese nonprofits;on the other hand,the uniqueness of Chinese political and economic system,shapes the specific operation and development of these nonprofits.The above considerations are also suitable for the phenomena of rationalization.Managerialism,as one of the world-wide expansion logics,focusing on formality,transparency,standardization,efficiency,and accountability,is now reshaping the whole nonprofit sector,through strategy,personnel,finance and even orientation,which makes all nonprofits to be more "business-like".Following these issues,the dissertation tries to address this core research question:what is the role of cultural or institutional force(i.e.managerialism)during the processes of Chinese nonprofits' rationalization?Furthermore,we want to discuss three specific questions:First,at which level,what are the characters of rationalized nonprofits in China?Second,what are the associations between leaders' company experience,business relations of nonprofits and rationalization?And third,what are the constraints or contexts of the relations mentioned above,based on institutional logics perspective?Focusing on these research questions,this dissertation utilizes institutional logics perspective to develop a basic analytical framework as "institution and network",and applies it to four empirical studies.First,based on exploratory case study,we compare the institutional sources of the adoption of rationalized practices;second,we conduct a QCA study to explore whether the configurations of institutional factors and others will influence the rationalization of nonprofits;third,using data from interview and survey,we run some factor analysis and regression models,to test the previous arguments;in the end,several aspects of rationalization and their dynamics in different periods have been shown in a longitudinal confirmatory case study.The conclusions are as follows.The first study based on three cases in eastern coastal part of China,proves that the working experience of leaders and cross-sector interactions of nonprofits are related to rationalization:(1)as "innate" ties,the prior corporation experience of leaders,will influence the managerial practices and procedures of organizations substantially,by a way of imprinting;(2)as "acquired"relations,the interactions between nonprofits and firms or other rationalized professional groups,will contribute to the rationalization,through a "normative"mechanism;(3)the "innate" factors may lead to "acquired" factors,which means that business networking plays a mediation role between experience and rationalization.The second study uses 14 cases in Zhejiang Province to conduct a QCA analysis,and shows that:(1)enough corporation experience is the necessary condition of rationalization;(2)when there is no government support,company funds or with competition may leads to rationalization,even though they are all contributing conditions,and can replace each other;(3)corporation experience and management training are core conditions in one path contributes to rationalization,and both competition and government supports are substitutive contributing conditions.The third study tests all the predictions(6 hypotheses)of this dissertation.We first use focus groups and exploratory factor analysis to develop measurement scales of rationalization,business networking,uncertainty and institutional supports of nonprofits in China;and then we run regression models with least square method and Bootstrapping method,based on a sample size of 179 cases,the results turn to be:(1)corporation experience of leaders is positively related to rationalization;(2)Business networking of organizational managers is positively related to rationalization;(3)Business networking plays a mediation role between experience and rationalization;(4)institutional supports moderates the relationship between experience and rationalization;(5)the relationship between experience and business networking is moderated by management training of leaders;(6)the first stage of mediation role of business networking is moderated by management training of leaders.The fourth study analyzes one organization located in an eastern province of China,by tracing its growth in 13 years,and finds that experience,professional networking and other institutional carriers that lead to rationalization are not just exogenous,and can be formed or developed endogenously during the co-evolution of organization and environment.The main findings are:(1)the content of rationalization will transfer when the organization grows;(2)when the institutional environment tends to be more complex,the mechanisms lead to rationalization will increase;(3)the degree of coupling between rationalization and organizational function/operation will change during the co-evolution process.These results help us to discuss the theoretical contribution of this dissertation in institutional theory,study of nonprofits and social enterprises,and also point out the directions of future research;meanwhile,we also have some managerial implications for nonprofits in mission selecting,environmental strategy and personnel arrangement,and provide some possible policy suggestions.