Convergence Or Differentiation - The Perspective Of The Field-based Non-profit Organizations

Since reforming and opening up in China, non-profit organizations have developed three decades so far. In the 21st century, particularly promoted by Wenchuan earthquake, role and influence of non-profit organizations are increasingly recognized by our government and society. On the one hand, a more relaxed, favorable environment is created for non-profit organizations; on the other hand, non-profit organizations have come into a new phase of model innovation, institutional development and capacity building. There are both crisis and hope, opportunity and a challenge in this period of our non-profit organizations. In this paper, combining the strategic choice theory, resources dependency theory and the new institutionalism theory, from the dynamic perspective of the life cycle of organizational field (institutional environment), we try to explore the internal mechanism of the differentiation or convergence between the organizations in the same organizational field but in different stages of organizational field. Through a combination of different theoretical perspective, we try to examine and modify the western sociological theories to explain local case. Furthermore, by cases comparison, we hope to provide a useful reference and inspiration for local non-profit organizations, especially non-profit organizations with grassroots background on developmental strategies and approaches.In this paper, qualitative research methods are used. We selected three NPOs providing rehabilitation and training for autism and the organizational field they are in to study. We found that in the initial stage of the organizational field, the survival and developmental approaches of organizations depend on the founder's personal background and resources, and thus the differentiation between the organizations is obvious; In the developmental stage of organizational field, organizations began to go beyond the individual level through restructuring or influencing the external environment, to minimize risks of dependence on the external environment. For the external institutional power, there appear the same structural arrangements in organizations because of different specific arrangements, the impact of the organizations also vary. Therefore, there is differentiation mainly between organizations in this stage and shows the convergence gradually. According to the new institutionalism theory, with growth of institutional strength in the organizational field, we can predict the trend of convergence between the organizations will be more apparent.Overall, for the NPOs providing public services, whether the organizations can develop healthily or not depends on its service quality and legitimacy. When there is no consistent standard to measure the service quality, the organizational legitimacy has become critical resources for organizational development. In the different stages of the organizational field, the requirements of organizational legitimacy is different, therefore, only these organizations who made more quickly and accurately response to legitimacy required by the external environment can get approval from the external environment. Thus, they can get other necessary resources to develop.