| The government increasingly stimulates the vitality of non-profit organizations and promotes their participation in various fields.Besides,the interaction between government and non-profit organizations has also been institutionalized.Even so,it is common for the government to guide and promote non-profit organizations to participate in specific events through relation resources of officials.Under the growing institutionalized government-nonprofits relations,why does relational mobilization still exist and can play a role?The existing studies focused on the government’s relational mobilization to the public and have analyzed the social basis and essential characteristics of relational mobilization.However,existing studies neglect the research on the government’s relational mobilization of non-profit organizations and the explanation of why relational mobilization occurs is insufficient.This paper focuses on the relational mobilization of the government to non-profit organizations,and extends the research perspective to the official individuals and analyzes the role of relation resources in the government’s mobilization of non-profit organizations.This problem includes two aspects: one is how government officials provide relation resources;The second is how relation resources play a role in the government’s mobilization of non-profit organizations.This research first constructs an analytical framework based on relation resources theory,social relationship theory and social exchange theory;Then select 7 cases according to the "most similar" and "most different" principles,and obtain data through in-depth interviews and non-participatory observation;Then it focuses on the case description and mechanism explanation of the role of relation resources;The last part is the conclusion and discussion.This study draws the following conclusions:The formation of relational mobilization is based on the relation resources provided by officials.The lack of institutionalized mobilization constitutes the realistic motivation for government officials to provide relation resources.The imprecision and fuzziness of institutionalized mobilization lead to low mobilization efficiency and high supervision risk.The government chooses to achieve accurate mobilization through the relation resources of government officials;The provision of relation resources by government officials is driven not only by voluntary factors such as work enthusiasm,sense of social responsibility and altruism,but also by stressful factors such as political performance,local government competition and response to public demand,but also by the autonomy of executives in China’s policy implementation;China’s "relationbased society" provides the overall background for government officials to use relation resources.In the "relation-based society",relation is not only the normative criterion of individual behaviors,but also a resource used for social exchange in a local network.The relation resources can be divided into two dimensions: horizontal relation resources and vertical relation resources.The mechanism of horizontal relation resources includes three elements: emotional care,responsibility and debt,and reciprocity.Emotional care is a trigger.The heads of non-profit organizations respond to mobilization based on emotional care,which makes government officials have unfulfilled responsibilities to them,which will be transformed into reciprocity in the future.The mechanism of vertical relation resources includes three elements: resource allocation power,promotion capital of government officials,risk and benefit protection.The power of resource allocation is the basis.The heads of non-profit organizations respond positively to mobilization based on resource dependence.The resources provided by non-profit organizations can help government officials complete their duties and accumulate promotion capital,and government officials are expected to provide risk and benefit protection for nonprofit organizations.The theoretical contributions of this study are as follows: First,focusing on nonprofit organizations as the object of government’s relational mobilization,this paper analyzes the reason for the existence of relational mobilization in the context of the institutionalized government-nonprofits relations.It is a realistic strategy that the government uses relation resources of officials to obtain non-profit organization’resources under the balance of efficiency and risk,and is rooted in China’s profound social and cultural background.The second is to expand the existing research from the social and institutional perspectives to the micro perspective,and analyze the role of the relation resources in the government’s mobilization of non-profit organizations.This provides a micro perspective for understanding the government’s relational mobilization.The paper analyzes the situation,content dimension and mechanism of relation resources,which provides Chinese experience for the research of relation resources.At the same time,the paper puts forward the significance and limitations of reasonably treating relation resources in the context of a certain ambiguity of the public and private boundaries,which is a certain universal problem worth in-depth discussion.The practical contributions of this study are as follows: The research shows that although China’s government-nonprofits relations are increasingly institutionalized,the informal relations rooted in social culture still plays an important role in the construction of government-nonprofits relations,which provides a new dimension for understanding the current government-nonprofits relations,and also inspires us to attach importance to the value of relation resources in social governance,In specific situations,relation resources can be flexibly used to serve the governance objectives,but at the same time,the government needs to be alert to the risks of relation resources. |
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