This thesis investigates the neutrality and formality of accounting as a form of intervention in situations of conflict faced by Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs). In this thesis, neutrality and formality of accounting are limited to evaluation devices and formats used by donors to assess NGOs, specifically the Logical Framework (LF). Technical attributes and views were desirable for making sense of evaluator experiences in development projects in the 1960s. Responding to this, contractors under the United States International Development Agency (USAID) combined scientific and management approaches and created the LF (Chapter 2). Many development agencies since then have required NGOs to use an LF within project proposals and as a basis to monitor and evaluate project performance. At the same time, the neutrality and formality of the LF have been widely criticised in development circles. This thesis found, however, that in situations where conflict is prevalent, neutrality and formality play a role in shaping, informing and structuring conflict. To understand ways in which conflict and technicality intersect, this thesis is based on a case study of a grassroots NGO in Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya. This thesis identifies and discusses conflict between donors and the NGO, conflict as part of society and conflict between actors within an NGO project. Contrary to previous literature in accounting, neutrality and formality in Sarvodaya were found to be a malleable resource for mobilisation in conflict situations. Neutrality and formality of evaluation devices, mainly the LF, were used in Sarvodaya as a way to strategize around sources of conflict between external donors and internal NGO accounts in the late 1980s (Chapter 4). Later, after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the LF was used to work on projects focused on reconciliation and reconstruction. Neutrality and formality of the LF helped to transform social conflicts into manageable projects in Sarvodaya (Chapter 5). Lastly, this thesis proposes a framing of ‘sights’ – plain sight, oversight and foresight - to explore the ways in which neutrality and formality provide a visual methodology for staff to make sense of their daily work, accountability and visions of the future (Chapter 6).

This thesis primarily comprises a review and analysis of evidence relating to the formation and early development of Henry Gardner's Trust for the Blind. This analysis is set within the context of Victorian philanthropy in general and charities for the blind in particular. Among the topics investigated are the differences between 'endowed' and 'voluntary' charities, developing attitudes to the 'problem of the blind', the relative position of the blind compared with other classes of the 'disabled' and the gradually declining numbers of the blind. The personal motivations of those most closely involved with the formation and management of Gardner's Trust are examined, together with the objectives that could reasonably have been set for the charity and whether they were achieved. An estimate is made of the importance of the support afforded by the trust to the existing colleges for the blind at Norwood and Worcester and where the trust was less prepared to be supportive. The relationships between the trust and other organisations, such as the Charity Organisation Society, are also reviewed. The impact on the charity of external factors such as changes in legislation affecting the blind and the economic environment is evaluated, along with the related topic of the investment strategy adopted by the trustees. Within the disparate universe of charities for the blind, a brief history of the Phoenix Home for Blind Women, later the Cecilia Charity for the Blind, is provided as a comparative case study. The main findings are that, after a period of great success and influence, the importance of the charity declined as a result of social, political and economic events, especially increasing State intervention and the ravages of inflation. Successive trustees failed to recognise the need to supplement the original endowment and reappraise the trust's objectives.

Leadership is present in wide variety of human interactions from organisational hierarchy to online charitable fundraising. Consequently, the subject has been studied in a multitude of fields from biology to history. In behavioural economics, the existence of leadership has been tested experimentally as a potential solution to social dilemmas with varying success. However, the majority of previous experimental studies have examined only one form of leadership where leadership where only one group member can exhibit it. In psychological research, there is an evolving interest in the concept of shared leadership, where leadership is shared among multiple group members. Likewise, Derek Sivers (2010) emphasised the importance of a first follower, who is a person who acts directly after the leader and makes the leader's actions more credible. This thesis tests the impact of first followership on solving social dilemmas and examines further the topic of shared leadership. Chapter 2 studies whether the introduction of a first follower increases total investment in a linear public good game both theoretically and experimentally. Four investment sequences are considered including two new additions to the literature: the First Follower game and the Two Leader game. The already established Leader game and Sequential game are implemented as control treatments. The First Follower game has three investment stages; in the first stage, a leader invests, in the second stage a first follower invests and the rest of the group simultaneously invest in the third stage. The Two Leader game has only two investment stages; in the first stage, two leaders simultaneously invest in the first stage and then the rest of the group simultaneously invest in the second stage. The four investment sequences are ranked according to their expected total investment. No one investment sequence is always found to be superior, and thus the ranking is dependent on the strategic behaviour of early movers, namely leaders and first followers. In the experiment, the First Follower game had the highest total invested in the public good and Two Leader, the second highest. These results suggest that shared leadership or first followership may be superior to a one leader structure. Specifically, in the First Follower game, leaders set a better example by investing significantly more than leaders in other treatments, and first followers exhibit higher levels of reciprocity than later followers. All investment sequences were imposed exogenously to create a simple initial testing ground for introducing the first follower. Chapter 3 expands on the endogenous leadership literature by comparing the efficiency of a game with two investment stages, a two-day treatment to a game with three investment stages, a three-day treatment. Using a novel experimental design, each group member chooses what investment stage they would like to invest during. Therefore, the number of group members investing on day one, equivalent to leaders, is unrestricted, hence one can also explore how many group members are willing to lead. Willingness to lead is greater in both treatments than observed in previous studies. Nevertheless, the proportion of leaders is significantly higher in the three-day treatment, this result leads to significantly higher total investment in the three-day treatment. Leader investment and total investment in these treatments, where there is endogeneity over the timing of investment choices is compared to the treatments from Chapter 2 where timing is exogenously imposed. Endogenous leaders are found not to invest significantly more than exogenous leaders, and similarly there is no significant difference in total investment. Nevertheless, the treatments with three investment stages, namely three-day and First Follower, have the highest levels of leader investment and overall total investment. Chapter 4 extends the design of Corazzini, Cotton and Valbonesi (2015) to consider a real-time environment; this adjustment makes the game more akin to real world crowdfunding and competitive lobbying (Austen-Smith and Wright, 1992). Like Chapter 3, individuals choose when they would like to invest rather than a set exogenous investment sequence imposed on them as in Chapter 2. Two treatments are executed, a multiple public good treatment with four identical threshold public goods and another with only one threshold public good. It is hypothesised that the real-time environment increase efficiency in reaching a threshold in the presence of multiple threshold public goods. The experimental evidence implies otherwise; the multiple public good treatment leads to significantly lower levels of efficiency stemming from the inefficiency caused by group members investing in multiple projects when only one project can be fully funded.

This thesis examines the discourse of intra-national charitable giving in the UK. I combine a rhetorical discourse analysis of Children in Need (CiN), a popular charity telethon for ‘disadvantaged’ British children, with that of six focus groups carried out with people who have different relationships with charities (student volunteers, a local Amnesty International group, bereavement counselling volunteers, non-charity related office workers, employees of different charities, and academics). Although the focus group discussions all included some consideration of CiN and its methods, they were primarily concerned with broader issues to do with disadvantage, fairness and, where relevant, charitable giving more generally. Boltanski’s (1999) seminal idea of ‘the politics of pity’ holds that relationships between those who suffer and those who observe their suffering are radically altered by distance. Seeing suffering people face-to-face is not the same as seeing them via the mass media because of the actions that are or are not possible in relation to them. This idea has been utilised in numerous studies of international charity, but so far no one has applied it to situations in which the viewed are in the same country as the viewers. I argue that the sort of (social, perceived) distance that may exist between citizens who live in the same country has similar consequences for their relationship as actual physical distance has. Indeed, representing others as if they were distant means that charity comes to be seen as the only way to relieve suffering, even though in this instance there are, in fact, many other available options. The central tension I highlight in the CiN data is that, on the one hand, British beneficiaries of charitable aid are represented as socially distant from the rest of the population, which makes the mediation that CiN offers seem necessary, while on the other hand their experiential closeness is constantly being highlighted by appealing to a particular (nostalgic) ideal of Britishness. This tension is also reflected in the focus group data: although the recipients of intra-national charitable giving are typically talked about as members of the speakers’ own in-group, there is also a lot of scepticism regarding the truthfulness and reliability of the spectacle of suffering that is presented on television screens and that does not always match up with people’s own experiences.

This study describes the development and initial utilizations of a scale measuring public trust in charities in the UK. It improves on past empirical studies of public trust in charities by regarding the concept as a multidimensional construct. The scale is developed first from a conceptual model consisting of five dimensions. Using data from 490 respondents, item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and internal consistency analysis are undertaken, of which results yield a three-factor principal components model of public trust in charities. Confirmatory factor analysis, construct validity analysis, and criterion-related validity analysis, based on another sample of 253 respondents, confirm the validity of the model with a slight modification. The initial five-factor model of trust in charities derived from literature, which include perceived competence, perceived benevolence, perceived integrity, value similarity, and willingness to be vulnerable, is rejected in favor of a three-factor principal components model. Of the three separate domains of public trust in charities, “perceived integrity” reflects the importance of morality in charity work; “perceived competence” reflects the necessity of charities’ capability to uphold and further public interests; and “value similarity” emphasizes the alignment of values between charities and individuals. Scale utilization demonstrates that this multidimensional tool will allow the U.K. charitable sector to better understand public trust and perceptions, to discern the manifestations of public trust, as well as to be responsive to trends in trust and perceptions. It can be used to predict pro-charity behaviors, which is helpful to strategically plan and target fundraising techniques. The measure will also remedy drawbacks of current measurement of charity performance. Overall, the multidimensional scale is accurate, more straightforward, more in-depth, and is able to provide more useful information than current crude measurements of public trust in charities. The study has important implications for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers as it provides a new, robust measure of a feature that is essential to the charitable sector’s welfare.

The primary objective of this thesis is to develop a conceptual model which will help to understand individuals’ monetary donations to Charitable Organisations (COs) in Saudi Arabia. Although individuals are one of the main funding sources for many COs, research in this area is limited. Most of the previous studies have been conducted in Western countries and they have principally investigated the relationship between individuals’ demographic characteristics and their monetary donation behaviour. The present study fills the gap in the literature by conducting a substantive research on Muslim donors’ behaviour. This study examines Saudi individuals’ intentions and the extent to which these intentions are related to individuals’ self-reported donation to COs. It also investigates the role of individuals’ trust in the COs, as well as their behavioural differences with regards to the level of their religiosity and demographic characteristics (e.g. income, age and gender). Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used to rigorously test the validity of the measurement models in order to examine the comprehensive set of hypothesised interrelationships among the variables and their comparative effects on individuals’ intentions and self-reported monetary donation to COs. The data were collected through drop off questionnaires. A survey was administered to a convenience sample of respondents and 221 completed questionnaires were received. Firstly, the empirical results show that behavioural intention to donate to COs translate over time into self-reported behaviour. Secondly, they show that attitudes toward helping others and attitudes toward giving monetary donation to COs have a significant effect on behavioural intention. Thirdly, moral responsibility and social norms have a significant impact on behavioural intention. Fourthly, perceived behavioural control has a significant impact on behavioural intentions but not on self-reported behaviour. Fifthly, trust in COs has a significant impact on both behavioural intention and self-reported behaviour. Sixthly, an individual’s perceptions of the ability, integrity, and benevolence of COs are direct antecedents of his or her trust in the COs, making trust a multi-dimensional construct. Seventhly, an individual’s trust disposition has a direct impact on his or her behavioural intention. And finally, Saudi individuals do not differ in their monetary donation behaviour on the basis of their religiosity and most of the demographic characteristics. The main theoretical implication of the study is that while the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behaviour are useful in explaining Saudi individuals’ monetary donation behaviour to COs, extending the theory to include the combined effect of new variables and moderators increases our understating of the underlying phenomenon. An individual’s monetary donation behaviour is still a complex, elusive, yet extremely important phenomenon. The model proposed and validated in this thesis advances the theory and research on monetary donations to COs and provides a comprehensive understanding of donors’ behaviour for practitioners in charitable and not-for-profit organisations.

In the context of shifting public expenditure and related cuts to public services, the Voluntary Sector (VS) has been given a prominent role in the organisation of social care. Government reform agendas in the UK try to thrive on public support for 'empowerment of local communities', more 'voice and choice' for service users, and a discourse of 'partnership' with the VS for implementing policies that imply an increasingly competitive commissioning of sensitive services. This research traces the neocommunitarian turn in neoliberal discourse and develops a critique of the imposed pseudo-marketisation of social care by examining everyday experiences of labour. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in London's VS. In relation to reports in the sector on the loss of funding for women-only projects and services, it examines the transformation of working conditions and the strategies applied in dealing with the outcomes of reform. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 31 women working for 19 different women's organisations. Additional interviews were conducted with union representatives and officers working for local infrastructure organisations and commissioning bodies in two inner London boroughs, in which the outcomes of commissioning practices for the workforce in the VS were further explored. It is argued that neocommunitarian neoliberalism results in insecure work environments and the institutionalisation of volunteering, which will exacerbate the ongoing crisis of care. While employment in the women's sector has always been precarious – as being short-term, insecure, poorly remunerated and supported by high amounts of volunteering – women reported on a loss of control over the quality and direction of work as well as the imposition of inadequate workloads. This makes it increasingly difficult to endure and resist precarity in social care. It creates harmful work environments and implies a loss of needs-adequate service provision, both traced to intensify existing inequalities along the lines of class, gender and race.

This case study is designed to answer the question whether refugees can make a positive contribution to host countries, not simply as individual participants in economic activity, but by contributing to welfare. The thesis provides a detailed study of an NGO originally established to provide medical relief for refugees but which now provides basic health care for local people. Since 1995 this NGO has adopted a policy of providing the same basic care to refugees and to people in local Pakistani villages, thus making no distinction between refugees and the residents of a specific geographical area. The case study also shows that an NGO can be an appropriate and effective provider of primary health care (PHC) as promoted by the 1978 Declaration of Alma Ata. The thesis uses several approaches to demonstrate why this happened and how it was achieved. Firstly, it narrates the history over the twenty-year period 1980-2000 of an international health project originally started for a group of Afghan refugees, and its transformation in 1995 into an indigenous Pakistani NGO called “Frontier Primary Health Care (FPHC)”. Secondly, the study explores the theoretical utility and limitations of the PHC strategy generally. Thirdly, the thesis provides an analysis of the extent to which the underlying principles or “pillars” of PHC, that is, participation, inter-sectoral collaboration and equity have affected the process and outcomes of the project. Locating the case study in the Pakistani context provides evidence of the persistent difficulties and shortcomings of official government basic health care in Pakistan, particularly for rural poor people, showing that the field is open for other providers of health care, such as NGOs. The thesis goes on to discuss strengths and weaknesses of NGOs in general, and particularly as health care providers. In investigating characteristics of the NGO sector in Pakistan, the study pays special attention to the discrete health care system for Afghan refugees created in the early 1980s, including its introduction of Community Health Workers. In order to assess the impact of the NGO on people’s health, the study uses data from mother/child health and family planning programmes (as far as available) demonstrating that this NGO is a more effective provider than the other two agencies i.e. the Government of Pakistan and the Afghan Refugee Health Programme. Placing the NGO in this context also shows that it has a better understanding of the underlying “pillars” and has made more determined and effective efforts to implement them, especially in regard to community involvement. It is unusual for a project initially refugee-oriented to have matured sufficiently to be making a contribution, as a matter of formal policy, to basic welfare in the host country, itself a developing country. The study concludes that the significant factors in its success are continuity of leadership; boundaries of population, geography and administration; dependable income and material resources; rigorous supervision; support, but not takeover, by experienced consultants; capacity to use learning to adapt and move on; and sensitivity to local cultural norms. All these have enabled the project to survive and develop as an indigenous autonomous organisation beyond the twenty years covered by the case study. FPHC is still operational in 2004.

This thesis examines how transnational advocacy networks operate across local, national, regional and international arenas. It takes a close look at the nature of peasant resistance and civil society in Mali, and explores how these interact with campaign and advocacy activities of Northern-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The central argument of this thesis is that these encounters have strengthened an elite, while marginalising alternative perspectives. This has happened through the collision of actors’ diverse interests, through competition between distinct framings of debate, and through differences in modes of political participation which reflect the power dynamics of the political arenas in which actors are rooted. The thesis is informed by the results of qualitative fieldwork research, which was carried out, mainly in Mali, between 2006 and 2008. By identifying the nature of connections and disconnections between actors at multiple levels, the thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of transnational civil society action.

This research examines the sustainability of contemporary Korean social enterprise. The sustainability problem in Korea has been a critical issue to practitioners, scholars and government officials since the enactment of Social Enterprise Promotion Act in 2006. Stakeholders in Korea do not believe that social enterprise is sustainable enough, despite a large amount of public financial support. To explore this issue, first of all, this research develops a theoretical framework, a comprehensive approach on sustainability, drawing mainly on Giddens’ structuration theory. This approach presents two categories that influence sustainability: structural factors (the social economy, market type and public policy) and agency factors (social entrepreneur, staff, organization and finance). Second, based on the literature and the theoretical framework, thesis questions that aim to examine the term sustainability, the factors affecting sustainability and their effects, and public policy, are constructed. Third, to obtain research findings, both descriptive secondary analysis of data and case studies are used, and analysis of the case studies is presented with a narrative form. Finally, this research explains that, in Korea, sustainability is understood in three dimensions: profit, social mission, and continuity of business without public money. The thesis shows that stakeholders understand structural and agency factors influence organizational sustainability, while focus points are different according to people. Regarding policy, they believe that a public-led system has to be replaced by a private-led initiative, concentrating on cultivation of a better environment for social enterprise.