The Effect of Gender on the Motivation of Members of Generation Y College Students to Volunteer

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) serve a unique purpose, filling gaps left by governments and for-profits. NPOs have the potential to do a lot of good in their communities. However, these organizations are often resource-constrained, both financially and in terms of human capital. Furthermore, NPOs are often judged on the ratio of administration costs to program costs. For these reasons, personnel in small NPOs are often diverted from the organization’s mission to administrative functions. Outsourcing, as research has shown in for-profits, offers the opportunity to refocus human capital to the mission cost effectively. However, there is little research on outsourcing for small NPOs. This study focuses on small NPOs in regard to outsourcing administrative functions. The study found that small NPOs often use staff time and board resources on administrative functions to keep costs down and may not understand the benefits of outsourcing.     

Interpersonal relations in China: Expatriates’ perspective on the development and use of guanxi

The literature on social networks identifies relationship building through guanxi as an effective way for Western organizations to reduce their liability of foreignness in China. Even though it is individuals rather than organizations who build these relationships, the focus in previous literature has been on organizational outcomes, and only a handful of studies have attempted to explain how expatriates perceive guanxi relations are built and maintained. To help address this issue, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 36 Western expatriates working in China. Our findings suggest that guanxi is perceived to be an informal process that is used to build trust between individuals, which in turn can reduce the uncertainty around contract enforcement in China. We also find that the process for building guanxi between parties is initiated by the individual whose organization has less market power. Finally, the findings suggest that firms should be cautious if they elect to use agents as intermediaries to help connect to, and build relations with buyers and sellers.     

The Training of Jobseekers by Non‐profit Organizations: An Analysis Based on Data from the Upper Normandy Region of France

There is now an extensive academic literature on non‐profit organizations (NPOs). The hypothesis that these organizations are different from for‐profit organizations (FPOs) is one that is frequently adopted. Nevertheless, a number of recent studies have suggested that many factors may cause NPOs to lose their specificity. The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of these variables empirically with regard to the continuing training sector. Our results lead us to conclude that, while some of these variables do indeed have an impact on the behavior of NPOs, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that they do behave differently from FPOs.     

Improving Fundraising Efficiency in Small and Medium Sized Non-profit Organizations Using Online Solutions

ABSTRACT

Although Switzerland enjoys a mature e-commerce sector and online marketing with widespread use of social media, large Swiss nonprofit organizations (NPOs) still adopt mainly off-line marketing and mass marketing strategies to support their fund-raising efforts. Mass marketing techniques are expensive and require a large financial investment, which Swiss small and medium-sized organizations cannot afford. The high cost of adopting these conventional fund-raising strategies greatly affects small NPOs, who lack funds to run their social and humanitarian projects. If instead NPOs focused on more cost-efficient marketing strategies, they could improve the sustainability of their fund-raising campaigns. Taking an explorative approach, this study first surveys Swiss donors to understand and quantify their behaviors. Second, it conducts qualitative interviews with NPOs to provide insights into their fund-raising strategies. Finally, it concludes with a set of practical suggestions for small and medium-sized NPOs to build specific capabilities to collect online donations more efficiently.     

Volunteer Brand Equity? Exploring the Adoption of Employee Brand Equity (EBE) Dimensions to Understand Volunteers’ Contributions to Build Nonprofit Organizations’ Brands

ABSTRACT

Given the importance of volunteers as key assets of formal volunteering organizations, this paper explores the adoption and adequacy of Employee Brand Equity (EBE) models to understand volunteers’ contributions to Nonprofit Organization (NPO) brand equity. Methodologically this research embraces a mixed-methods approach by combining data from exploratory interviews with experts from the NPO context and from a survey to 227 Portuguese volunteers from 28 formal volunteering organizations. This paper adds to the literature by applying for the first time EBE dimensions to the context of formal volunteering institutions. Hence, it provides a first step to the development of a Volunteer Brand Equity Model, by characterizing each dimension and validating its importance in the context of NPOs. From a practitioners’ viewpoint, this paper calls attention to the importance of embracing internal marketing strategies to attract and retain volunteers in a sustainable way and provides a practical tool for Volunteer Brand Equity analysis in NPOs.     

The theoretical foundations of nonprofit competition: a resource-advantage theory approach

Competition in the nonprofit sector has dramatically intensified in the past two decades because of (1) the increased number of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), (2) the decline and diffusion of governmental support, and (3) the entry of for-profit companies into markets that traditionally have been the domain of nonprofits. In an attempt to enhance the understanding of nonprofit competition, the authors apply resource-advantage (R-A) theory, a dynamic theory of competition adapted from the for-profit business literature, to commercial nonprofits and explain how commercial nonprofits can leverage their various resources to successfully compete and deliver social value. Contributing to the understanding of nonprofit competition and the challenge that NPOs face in balancing mission and money, this paper provides a foundation for a theory of nonprofit competition that can guide future research in the area and help NPO managers as they maneuver in today’s increasingly competitive environment.     

"When doing good is just the start to being good": a possible tool to improve the organizational effectiveness of non-profit health care organizations

Health care is an area where many non-profit organizations do good work, relieving governments and for-profit providers of workload. They contribute often specific knowledge and competence or provide better access to patients through their cultural and ethnic affiliations. Non-profit organizations, NPOs, are often dependent on one or more significant donors, sometimes governments, sometimes for-profit health providers and mostly private/corporate donors with an interest in specific medical areas, such as Alzheimers, or in unique communities, such as the Laotian neighborhoods in Southern California. In the media, high profile scandals involving financial irresponsibility have caused shock waves around the world. Concerns among some donors over the lack of a transparent performance measurement of non-profit entities have increased with the greater call for transparency and good governance in the corporate world. Not all the scandals have been in the commercial sector; some Not for Profit Organizations (NPOs) have been identified as having less than credible governance structures (Thomson, 2003). The watchdog organization SustainAbility reported that accountability and transparency are issues on which several NPOs are found wanting (Anon., 2003) and the New York Times reports that until recently NPOs were thought to be exempt from traditional oversight; their do-good nature and the commitment of their participants were thought to be sufficient to produce positive results (Christensen, 2004).     

加强营销创新构建和谐社会

本文认为从社会学的角度来理解、构建和谐社会的重要内容之一就是要实现政治领域、经济领域和社会领域三大社会部门的良性运行和协调发展,而市场营销有助于政府部门完成行政目标,实现地区和谐发展;有助于营利组织创造更多社会财富,获得可持续的和谐发展;有助于非营利组织提升服务水平,取得壮大与和谐发展。文章提出,面对构建和谐社会的发展环境,我们需要创新营销理念,丰富构建和谐社会的文化,创新营销组织,完善构建和谐社会的主体,创新营销技术,提升构建和谐社会的手段。通过与时俱进地推进这些方面的创新,充分发挥营销在构建和谐社会中的积极作用。     

基于社会企业理念的无边界组织雇佣关系冲突管理研究

21世纪外部环境极具变化性和不可预测性,组织为了获取竞争优势和提高竞争力,对传统的官僚组织结构进行了变革,无边界组织应运而生。无边界组织对雇佣关系提出了挑战,传统企业的雇佣关系模式被彻底打破,雇佣关系不断趋于市场化。雇佣关系的改变带来了许多冲突,组织如何协调与雇员之间的雇佣关系已成为制约组织柔性的重要因素。该研究认为社会企业理念的建立成为无边界组织和谐雇佣关系的关键,围绕社会企业理念构建企业和社会可持续发展成为无边界组织雇佣关系冲突管理策略。     

Together and Apart: Exploring Structure of the Corporate–NPO Relationship

Financially significant relationships between corporations and non-profit organizations (NPOs) have increased in recent years. NPOs offer access to interests and ideologies that are lacking within most for-profit organizations. These partnerships form a unique bridge between for-profit and non-profit goals and offer significant potential to produce innovative ways of “doing business by doing good.” Exploration of the structural implications of these relationships, however, has been limited. The potential for ideological imbalance in these relationships, particularly for the NPO, has been poorly described. We explore the structure of Corporate–NPO relationships from the NPO's perspective under high pressure conditions such as large relational investments or negative pressure from stakeholders. Using data collected from 20 NPOs in Australia, we identified the use by NPOs of both formal and informal governance mechanisms within their partnerships. These mechanisms acted to align and defend important goals of the NPO. They allowed the NPO and their corporate partners to be simultaneously “together and apart.” Our study offers important insight toward the study of cross-sector relationships and the role of governance mechanisms.     

Social Alliance and Employee Voluntary Activities: A Resource-Based Perspective

The corporate social responsibility literature devotes relatively little attention to the strategic role played by employee voluntary activities (EVAs) in social alliances. Using the resource-based perspective of the organization to frame the data collection and the analyses, this article investigates: (1) the role of EVAs in the development of corporate and non-profit organizations (NPOs) competitive assets and (2) the management approaches to how both parties can develop their own resources by combining them with the shared resources with the purpose of enhancing its competitive advantage in its own sector. The database is composed of 70 specifically designed interviews with managers of UK-based firms and NPOs. The analyses suggest, among other things, that the majority of corporate and non-profit managers find that EVAs generate substantial tangible and intangible benefits for their respective organisations, creating genuine synergies. We also find evidence of a general preference for the management approaches of such programmes in both types of organisation.     

Business–Community Partnerships: The Case for Community Organization Capacity Building

Globalization processes have resulted in greater complexity, interdependence and limited resources. Consequently, no one sector can effectively respond to today's business or wider challenges and opportunities. Non-government organizations and corporations are increasingly engaging each other in recognition that shareholder and societal value are intrinsically linked. For both sectors, these partnerships can create an enabling environment to address social issues and can generate social capital. Located in the Australian context, this paper explores the dimensions of community organization capacity building as an aspect of business-community organization partnerships. An Australian case study is used to demonstrate the benefits to business, community organizations and ultimately the communities in which the corporation is embedded and which are serviced by the community organization.     

黑龙江省城乡收入差距影响因素的实证分析

农民增收缓慢、城乡收入差距不断扩大已经成为制约黑龙江省当前社会经济可持续发展的重要因素。合理解决城乡收入过大的问题,大力推动城乡统筹发展,对于全面实现建设小康社会的奋斗目标具有十分重要的战略意义。从黑龙江省城乡收入差距现状入手,采用统计资料,通过建立多元线性回归模型,对影响黑龙江省城乡居民收入差距的因素进行了实证分析,找出了影响城乡收入的关键因素,根据关键因素提出了黑龙江省缩小城乡收入差距的对策。     

Positioning Southwest Airlines through employee branding

As the field of employee branding has begun to unfold, more and more executives have become interested in how this process can help them achieve a competitive advantage for their organizations. This article explains how employee branding works and how it can be utilized to position the organization in the minds of customers, employees, and other stakeholders. A contextual analysis of its use as a source of sustainable competitive advantage at Southwest Airlines is presented. Finally, key success factors are identified for those who wish to make employee branding a strategic focus within their organizations.     

Online Media,Market Orientation,and Financial Performance in Nonprofits

The combination of social, political, and economic changes causing simultaneously decreasing funding and increasing demand for services is driving nonprofit managers to engage in proactive marketing in a for-profit model, including the use of online media. This research extends the MARKOR model of market orientation to examine the relationship between market orientation practices, as reflected in the utilization of online media, and their effects on the financial viability of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The Wayback Machine website (http://waybackmachine.org) provided a unique ability to track site content over time, for comparison with each organization's financial indicators at corresponding points in time. The results of this study confirm the positive relationship between higher market orientation via online media presence and improved financial viability for the sampled group of NPOs. This study provides a simple, actionable, and free measure that NPOs can use to assess their current and planned online media.     

Towards a theory of Sustainable Communication in Risk Society: Relating issues of sustainability to marketing communications

There has recently been much discussion about a preferred ecological outcome for late capitalism to work toward, that is sustainable consumption. Related to this is a fundamental question, can business in Western industrial society (some now use the label risk society) be transformed into ecologically sustainable organizations? If we optimistically assume the answer to this question to be 'yes' how would these organizations communicate with the world in which they operate? This paper reports the author's application of a social constructionist approach to 'green' communicative acts and those responsible for them in an attempt to start answering such questions. In a qualitative empirical study of an environmental and social justice communications consultancy the social world of the people involved is explored as they interact with and communicative the issues with which they are concerned in risk society. A main research theme attempted to relate three issues of ecocentrism to what is known as marketing communications. In this respect the author has concentrated on a leading edge agency and four of its clients in the fields of animal, personal health and planet preservation. In the analysis the author lays the foundations for a new theory, Sustainable Communication, which can account for communicative acts, in any eco-discourse (Harris, 1996), that have issues of sustainability as their focal point. This process is then problematized for the reader in relation to capitalist organizations and the final discussion proposes that others, interested in this theoretical area, play with this notion of Sustainable Communication to help in its future development. In this respect the author proposes a fruitful allegiance between Critical Macromarketing and Sustainable Communication. Throughout the paper, especially in the section on 'building blocks', the author chooses to illustrate key points for the reader by drawing on data from the study.     

复杂组织目标体系的构成与权重：理论分析和实证检验

文章结合复杂组织和内外部环境特征，通过理论分析和实证检验，构建了以持续发展为导向的复杂组织目标体系的五维度模型，并在此基础上运用GANP法确定了各级目标的权重。研究结果发现：以持续发展为导向的复杂组织目标体系分为表达性目标和应对性目标，前者包含盈利性、创新性和福利性目标，后者包含合作性和合法性目标；五个主维度目标相互联系、相互影响，体现了复杂组织持续发展所需的物质基础、智力基础和内外部关系基础。研究还发现：以内部导向为主的表达性目标和以外部导向为主的应对性目标对复杂组织持续发展的重要作用几乎相同；主维度目标的核心子目标分别是净利润、技术创新、员工效用、组织声誉和组织合法性，不断地发现和创造新需求、创新技术、积累人力资本、提高组织声誉和获得组织合规合法性是复杂组织持续发展的动力源泉。文章解决了复杂组织目标模糊、难以量化和价值错配等问题，为复杂条件下的组织战略管理从理论和实践两方面提供了新的思路和借鉴。     

Asian Entrepreneurship in the International Business World

This review will focus on the role of Asian entrepreneurship in the international business world. As we are now considered to be in the Asian century, it is important to see how business grows, develops, and changes based on entrepreneurship. Asian entrepreneurship is unique to the geographic area but also encompasses people, business, and government that has a focus on Asia and is part of the global community. The continuing rapid evolution of Asian economies over the next decade will require a focus on entrepreneurship as it incorporates technology and innovation change. More countries in Asia need to focus on entrepreneurship as a way to achieve global best practice and to make breakthroughs in science and technology. A focus on the role of entrepreneurship in Asia in order to meet social and sustainable needs is a particular key concern of many governments and trade organizations around the world. This article will focus on the book Asian Entrepreneurship as a key reference for understanding and improving the social, environmental, and economic conditions for international business. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The individualistic ethic and the design of organizations

The self-psychology theories used as motivational tools in work organizations during the past 20 years have collided with a confluence of societal changes. The individual has been enticed by more freedom in the work organization and an increasing array of life choices in a pluralistic society. At the same time, the economic environment has become hostile, threatening to limit the individual's choices. The confluence of expanding social choice and contracting economic resources has made it difficult for many individuals to make life choices that may lead to personal self-fulfillment. As a result, employees may most need and most appreciate order and predictability from their work organizations at the very time when more flexible work organization structures are most needed for the wave of new products and production technologies that need to be explored and developed. Hope for a resolution to this dilemma may be found in strengthening society's more durable social institutions, such as the family, organized religion, and the local community. If individuals can find the stability their lives need in these institutions, they may respond better to change, challenge, and freedom in the work organization.Charles Boyd is Associate Professor of Management at Southwest Missouri State University. His primary field of teaching and research is strategic management.A condensed version of this article was presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the Midwest Academy of Management at the University of Illinois.     

Trust and customer willingness to provide information in database-driven relationship marketing

As organizations continue to embrace the concept of building customer relationships as a way of creating a competitive advantage, they seek to understand what makes a customer relationship successful. This article reports the results of a survey of consumers that explores one construct—trust in the organization—and its role in customers’ perception of their relationship with an organization. In addition, trust in the organization and its influence on customers’ willingness to provide the information necessary to help build a strong relationship is examined. The findings provide some support for the role of trust in building relationships, as well as identifying which factors are important in building that trust.