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Zugl.: München, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study investigated how civil society organizations (CSOs) adapted to shifts in their external environment that threatened their survival. Specifically, the study considered how CSOs in Turkey were responding to growing authoritarianism and citizens’ demands for a voice and openness. Moreover, the study sought to explain why organizational responses varied across organizations operating in the same field and the challenges CSO leaders confronted as they implemented changes in response to this environment. These pressures, both authoritarian regimes and citizens’ demands for a voice in these organizations, reflect the democratic crisis in many countries and the overall distrust in institutions. In this respect, considering the consequences of both of these pressures for the legitimacy of CSOs simultaneously is both timely and necessary. This study blended theoretical insights from neo-institutional theory and resource dependency theory as well as strategic management literature and civil society literature to fill this theoretical gap. I argue that competing external pressures created conflicting logics by providing different stipulations about how CSOs had to be managed and that CSOs developed differentiated strategies by adopting some features of each logic. I grouped these responses into two main categories: survival and mission-related responses. I demonstrated that competing institutional logics pass through the organizational field and then they are filtered by the following organizational attributes: organizational form, stance toward government, risk tolerance and organizational capacity. Tensions and paradoxical situations resulting from selected practices created various management challenges for CSO leaders. These findings offer new perspectives to the literature on civil society under authoritarian regimes by pointing out the link between outside threats confronting CSOs and significant organizational management issues, thus illustrating how political regimes constrain CSOs’ capacity to contribute to democratic processes and perform internal democracy through soft and hard repression tools. / 2022-12-01

This dissertation examines the association between independent governance structure and various measures of good governance. The evaluation draws on observations of a dataset of 101 Texas public charities, in particular the organization's self-disclosed governance-related activities as reflected in the transparency, monitoring, and strategic tools available to the public. The study reveals that two measures of good governance are associated with an identified independent governance structure at the organizational level. In managing the governance of the organization, the study finds evidence that less emphasis is placed on the constituted strategic direction clauses listed in the articles of incorporation of the organization. The research suggests that each of the fiduciary stewardship concerns need to be addressed by the legal governing body in order to fulfill good governance as an outcome quality measure.

No description available.

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of five individuals who shifted their work and career from the business world to the nonprofit service sector. Through in-depth personal accounts, I show how the research participants made sense of "work" and "career" as they moved through, and after they completed the transition out of the business setting; and the degree to which their subjective experiences in the nonprofit work environment transformed their prior perspectives on "work life" and "career" that had been shaped by their experiences in the business world. According to the literature of subjective career development (how people shape their personal identity through their work over a lifetime) and transformative learning (how people change their worldview perspective to accommodate significant changes in their life circumstances), people who shift from business careers to nonprofit jobs are likely to be confounded by certain realities in the nonprofit world that cannot be readily understood or explained through past experience in the business workplace. The real-life personal stories of five such career shifters manifest clear differences in the "discourse of work and career" across the two sectors, resulting in an apparent disorienting paradox between the profit-driven "business mindset" (where the fundamental motivation is survival of the enterprise and objective personal advancement) and the mission-driven "nonprofit worldview" (where the fundamental motivation is service for a better world and subjective personal meaning-making). An analysis of these paradoxes of discourse suggests that the mission-driven nonprofit discourse ("we work for a better world") offers a valuable and constructive counterpoint to the more dominant enterprise-driven business discourse ("we work to sustain the company") that pervades the organizational landscape of our society. The implications of these findings as reviewed in the last chapter are significant for policy, practice and research in both nonprofit management and business organizational development. The work concludes with the suggestion that the nonprofit mindset opens the possibility for re-orienting one's "career" to a life-long process of self-actualization, where one works to find meaning and purpose through making a difference toward improving quality of life for a better world.

This dissertation attempts to answer how social and economic mechanisms operate in individual, community and state levels to impact volunteering. Both social processes and economic factors significantly impact the amount of volunteering. However, researchers have a tendency to explain volunteering only by one of these factors. As both theories are equally important in explaining volunteerism, the development of a coherent theory is necessary to combine economic and social theories. This dissertation suggested that, when evaluated together, the influences of the economic factors on volunteering diminish as individuals get more connected with the other members of the society. The three-level analysis of the volunteering largely supports the primary hypothesis of the dissertation that economic concerns for volunteering are crowded out when individuals or the society is highly connected. This finding can help practitioners design better strategies to enhance volunteering such as creating opportunities for the members of the society to interact with each other.

Organizational capacity is a concept that has garnered increased attention from the public and nonprofit management literature in recent years. Capacity, broadly defined as the ability of an organization to fulfill its goals, has been of particular focus of scholars interested in understanding the variables that impact organizational performance. Despite the increased focus on organizational capacity in the literature, the concept remains vague. Given the fuzziness of the concept of capacity, there is much opportunity to contribute to the field's knowledge and measurement of the concept. This dissertation adds depth to the capacity literature in public and nonprofit management by identifying, describing and measuring the different dimensions of capacity relevant to local social service delivery organizations. Utilizing a two-phase sequential mixed method design including both interview and survey data, the findings suggest that organizational capacity consists of a number organizational resources and capabilities that impact the functioning of the internal organization as well as its relationships with other relevant organizations and external stakeholders. In particular, six dimensions of capacity were identified: human resource, financial resource, information technology, knowledge, stakeholder commitment, and collaborative. The survey results indicate that the six dimensions are connected to the theoretical construct of organizational capacity. However, results from the discriminant validity tests of the six subscales are mixed. This finding implies that these dimensions represent broad constructs that impact the other dimensions directly. This finding also highlights the challenge of defining and measuring discreetly the specific dimensions of capacity. Future research should examine these discrepancies in order to further disentangle capacity as a theoretical construct. / Ph. D.

Consumer Operated Service Providers (COSPs) are programs that are directed and administratively controlled by mental health consumers for their peers. As such, many mental health consumers have been placed in the position of serving on a COSP and often with unclear descriptions and no training. As a result, there is often a disconnect between the will of the board and the vision of the executive director, leading to tension and the possibility of failed mission. Using servant leadership as the guide, the goal of this case study was to explore the experiences of executive directors who operate Consumer Operated Service Providers (COSPs) in Texas that specialize in mental health recovery support services to better understand how they work with mental health consumers serving as their governing board members. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 7 executive directors of COSPs in Texas. Interview data were inductively coded, then subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Findings revealed that the concept of servant leadership is commonly used to empower board members and create healthy working relationships between boards and executive directors, particularly around the area of motivating board members to engage with the organization. It was also revealed that the existence of COSPs, in conjunction with traditional governing boards, provides a good balance and perspective relative to strategic planning activities and fundraising. Positive social change implications include recommendations to executives of COSPs to more adequately mobilize and train consumer board members in order to achieve organizational goals that often include consumer focused care and treatment for a wide range of mental health issues.