With the rapid expansion of the state- led philanthropy sector over the past decade, charitable GONGOs have become salient players in China’s third sector. These organizations have acted as “transmission belts” between the state and society by placing government demands in the first priority and posed no challenges to the political hierarchy. However, several events occurring after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake implied that charitable GONGOs began to secure an independent identity in pursuit of their own interests. I argue that traditional analytical frameworks to address state-society relations in China, namely civil society and corporatist approach, cannot fully explain this new phenomenon. Thus I propose a two- level institutional change model to explore why and how charitable GONGOs began to pursue an independent identity. At the societal level, three institutional sources are identified which are driving charitable GONGOs to detach themselves from the government: functional, legitimization and political pressure. At the organizational level, I argue that charitable GONGOs will adopt divergent strategies to pursue autonomy, and propose three interrelated propositions to explain their choices. The research methods used in this thesis include macro-historical analysis and the case study. In regard to the former, I review the laws, regulations, policies, past significant events and statistical data related to the philanthropy sector to explore how the change of general social context exerts impact on charitable GONGOs. I then use the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation and China Charity Federation as cases to analyze why and how charitable GONGOs have devised divergent strategies to secure organizational autonomy. This study discloses that with the notable change in the economic, social and political environment; charitable GONGOs are encountering three institutional pressures to separate themselves from the government. First, functional pressure derived from the rise of new donors and private foundations. Second, the past malpractices of charitable GONGOs, including the administrative fundraising campaign, the “black box” in operation and corruption, which have severely undermined public trust and generates legitimization pressure. In addition, they have also faced political pressure to transform. The case studies find that two typical strategies are adopted by charitable GONGOs to pursue organizational autonomy. One strategy is to initiate a “de-bureaucratization” reform to transform from semi-governmental organizations to true NGOs, while the other is to pursue symbolic independence without a substantial shift of their close relationship to the government. In addition, institutional entrepreneurs holding a positive attitude towards their autonomy played a pivotal role on the different strategic choices, and the feedback effect reinforced the choices made at critical junctures. Given that only a few charitable GONGOs have changed into autonomous NGOs to date, it is still too early to say that a civil society is taking shape in top-down manner. Nevertheless, we should not overlook that there is increasingly visible tension between the publics’ expectation and the inert political system. If the reformist elites and leaders of the party-state reach a consensus on the relations between the government and social organizations, the future of civil society in China will become a little brighter. / published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

China, as an authoritarian state, exerts tight control over society. Grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China emerged in the context of top-down restrictions and lack of bottom-up social support. However, over the years, they have developed into a visible social force in various areas, such as environmental protection and women‘s rights protection. The policy environment has also become more favorable for NGOs. This research aims to investigate how this process happened. How did grassroots NGOs in China gradually gain legitimacy in the face of a hostile government and among an uninformed public? Adapting legitimacy studies in organizational theory to NGO studies, I developed a four-stage model to illustrate the legitimation process of Chinese grassroots NGOs involving embeddedness, diffusion, transition and validation. Using two in-depth case studies, the legitimation process and the dynamics between the state, NGOs and society are explored. I contend that grassroots NGOs initially embed themselves in existing institutions to attain a basic level of legitimacy, after which they diffuse their values and images through various channels to attain greater legitimacy. After a stage of transition, the legitimacy of grassroots NGOs is enhanced and they move into a stage of validation. In each stage, different types of legitimacy are attained through different sources. The interaction between the different dimensions of legitimacy reflects the dynamics between the state, NGOs and society. / published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

To understand what makes organizations alike, neo-institutional scholars explore institutional demands and argue that organizations become isomorphic because specific legitimacy demands in their institutional environments require organizations to comply with given rules and norms. But, what if the institutional demands in the given environment conflict with one another? In response to this question, extant literature recognizes the existence of conflicting institutional demands and studies organizational responses to such demands. However, prior studies on conflicting demands tend to explore organizations with a single identity in a specific field. In extension, this study pays attention to organizations that possess conflicting identities across different sectors. Applying an ethnographic approach, this study takes an in-depth look at government-run non-governmental organization (GONGO) and addresses three research questions: first, how does an organization with conflicting identities come into being? Second, what conflicting demands does such organization encounter? Third, how does such an organization respond to those demands? This study collects data through three months of fieldwork in two GONGOs located in Beijing and Guiyang. The findings illustrate three types of institutional contexts where conflicting demands can arise. This classification is based on two variables, which are the complexity of an organization’s identities, and the multiplicity of fields where dominant actors occur. The S-S, M-S and M-M types are therefore identified in this framework. Beyond this, the nature and features of conflicting demands faced by GONGOs are also explored in these types. Additionally, this study introduces inter-organizational power dynamics between dominant actors into its analysis of organizational responses. Given the inter-organizational politics, GONGOs develop four strategies to cope with conflicting demands. These strategies include dilatoriness, negotiation, replacement, and exploitation. The conditions under which particular strategy is more likely to be adopted are also discussed. In sum, this study hopes to shed light on conflicting institutional demands encountered by organizations with conflicting identities and draw attention to inter-organizational politics in institutional environments. Empirically, this study hopes to better understand the special organization creature—GONGOs—and its implications on globalization in China. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Law / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

What is civil society? This term is no longer new to Hong Kong people in the past 10 years. Nowadays we learn about the conflicts between the HKSARG and civil society groups from time to time given the increasingly weak governance under Hong Kong’s political landscape. A new type of nonprofits (NGOs) formed after 2000 in Hong Kong is closely related to the development of civil society. This paper attempts to argue that the state-nonprofit relationship in Hong Kong can be classified as statist-corporatist, a term used by Lee (2005a) with reference to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s Social Origins Theory (2000). The “statist” character refers to the authoritarianism undertaken by the government to grip the control of nonprofits in order to consolidate its ruling; on the other hand, the “corporatist” character is displayed by its consistently generous support to social welfare through funding the non-government service providers. This paper further argues that with the rise of civil society, the non-profit regime also displays a “liberal” character, a term used in Lee and Liu (2011), which has been taking shape in the past 10 years. Under the liberal regime, there is a sizeable civil society comprising smaller individual nonprofits with state financing only one of the possible funding sources. Then, how are the NGOs or civil society groups performing under the liberal regime with respect to their relationship with the state? The majority of these nonprofits work on policy advocacy to fight against the government. The current study will use the case of Hong Kong Unison, an influential nonprofit serving ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how a self-funded NGO, deficient in financial support from the government, carries out advocacy works to call for policy change to suit the need of ethnic residents in the areas of education, employment, and race discrimination. It is found that its size, composition and financing are evident to the features of a liberal regime. Furthermore, with reference to Lee and Liu’s (2011) paper on factors influencing network formation among Hong Kong nonprofits, the present study seeks to explore how this policy advocacy NGO makes use of networking as an effective strategy to form alliance with like-minded parties, given its limited resources. The interactions with different parties such as politicians, government officials, private donors, ethnic minority community, human rights groups, and the media have been discussed. What is civil society? This term is no longer new to Hong Kong people in the past 10 years. Nowadays we learn about the conflicts between the HKSARG and civil society groups from time to time given the increasingly weak governance under Hong Kong’s political landscape. A new type of nonprofits (NGOs) formed after 2000 in Hong Kong is closely related to the development of civil society. This paper attempts to argue that the state-nonprofit relationship in Hong Kong can be classified as statist-corporatist, a term used by Lee (2005a) with reference to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s Social Origins Theory (2000). The “statist” character refers to the authoritarianism undertaken by the government to grip the control of nonprofits in order to consolidate its ruling; on the other hand, the “corporatist” character is displayed by its consistently generous support to social welfare through funding the non-government service providers. This paper further argues that with the rise of civil society, the non-profit regime also displays a “liberal” character, a term used in Lee and Liu (2011), which has been taking shape in the past 10 years. Under the liberal regime, there is a sizeable civil society comprising smaller individual nonprofits with state financing only one of the possible funding sources. Then, how are the NGOs or civil society groups performing under the liberal regime with respect to their relationship with the state? The majority of these nonprofits work on policy advocacy to fight against the government. The current study will use the case of Hong Kong Unison, an influential nonprofit serving ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how a self-funded NGO, deficient in financial support from the government, carries out advocacy works to call for policy change to suit the need of ethnic residents in the areas of education, employment, and race discrimination. It is found that its size, composition and financing are evident to the features of a liberal regime. Furthermore, with reference to Lee and Liu’s (2011) paper on factors influencing network formation among Hong Kong nonprofits, the present study seeks to explore how this policy advocacy NGO makes use of networking as an effective strategy to form alliance with like-minded parties, given its limited resources. The interactions with different parties such as politicians, government officials, private donors, ethnic minority community, human rights groups, and the media have been discussed. The present study has certain limitations. However, it is meaningful as it provides insights into the state-nonprofit relationship as the society evolves. It argues that the tension between the government and policy advocacy NGOs cannot be resolved if Hong Kong is not to run democratisation as promised by the Beijing Central Government1. Recommendations are made to call for further research on the development of policy advocacy NGOs following the establishment of the Fourth Term Government of the HKSAR on 1 July 2012. / published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

The civil society perspective and the corporatist perspective have thus far dominated studies on state-society relations in the Chinese context. While these paradigms are insightful, their unidirectional and rigid natures may no longer adequately describe the complex nature of evolving state-society relations in China. As such, Joel S. Migdal’s State-in-Society framework is adopted as the theoretical premise of this study. Allowing for more fluidity, the State-in-Society theory serves as an alternative approach towards examining interactions between the state and nonprofits and between the state and society. The concept of social control within the framework is examined in further detail. Descriptive multiple case study was used as a method of inquiry, followed by thematic analysis. Findings generally corroborate with the logic of social control, with compliance, participation and legitimacy being the incremental stages with which both nonprofits and the state seek to attain from each other and from the public. It was found that the state employ strategies including co-optation, procedural validation and hijacking scholarship to gain participation whereas moral reinforcement, rhetoric validation, and image consolidation are used to attain legitimacy. Ironically, nonprofits employ similar strategies in an attempt to change the state’s behaviour. Vilification and shaming are used to gain compliance, while resource appropriation and preemptive engagement are employed to attain participation. Moral reinforcement, image consolidation, individual credibility and persistence were found to be critical factors in bolstering organizational legitimacy. Furthermore, findings generally support the claim that nonprofits operating in rural areas enjoy greater autonomy than those active in urban areas. Even so, state-society relations is highly localized and therefore overgeneralization should be avoided. In addition to contributing to the discourse on state-society relations, this study seeks to identify the role of nongovernmental organizations in orphan care provision in China. Along with content analysis and field observations, 10 in-depth cases are presented to illustrate existing obstacles pertaining to orphan care provision. Identified barriers are subsequently compartmentalized into five main categories: knowledge level, policy level, cultural level, organizational level, and state-NGO relations. Given the distinct welfare system extant between rural and urban areas, findings indicate that orphans in rural areas are disproportionately disadvantaged compared to those residing in cities. This may be due to the relatively weak economic and human resources that often characterize rural China. One important observation is the growing tendency for local governments to regard nongovernmental organizations as critical service partners. However, the sustainability of this service model is questionable, especially when the state claims to carry primary responsibility over citizen welfare. The legal ambiguity concerning the registration and governance of nonprofits also jeopardizes future undertakings. Nevertheless, it is strategically and rationally sensible for local governments to ally with nonprofits insofar as there are deficiencies in the former’s capacity to deliver social services for disadvantaged children. This study concludes by discussing policy implications on China’s third sector and social development. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This qualitative study was designed to develop a deeper understanding of market orientation among NGOs in Hong Kong. Although there have been many academic studies of market orientation, its theory and practice as well as its relationship with performance, there has never previously been a systematic analysis of that theme in the context of NGOs, and in particular in the unique context of Hong Kong. Previous research has established that systematic maintenance of a market orientation correlates with better performance among business organizations. There have also been studies addressing how organizations can become more market oriented, its antecedents and consequences, as well as its relationship with leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation. But little scholarly work has considered market orientation in NGOs, a category of organizations that is growing in numbers and social significance. The managers of 5 quite different Hong Kong NGOs were interviewed, and the interview transcripts were analyzed to identify themes related to market orientation and its application in their organizations. Ten important antecedents to a market orientation were identified from the transcripts. These were distilled into 3 factors which together largely explained the varying degrees of market orientation in the organizations studied. Senior management factors, organizational and institutional factors, as well as structural and system factors were all found to predict an NGO's market orientation. One important finding is that an NGO's fund-raising model moderates in the relationship between the organization's market orientation and its antecedents. A model is proposed that explains what antecedents are important, how they relate to market orientation and why fund raising affects the relationship. For NGOs, market orientation is understood less as a rational-actor model aimed at achieving organizational efficiency and performance, but rather as an explanation of how to appear legitimate in the eyes of donors. There appears to be a big impact of resource dependency on how the NGOs pursue market orientation. While all of the NGOs studied considered themselves market-oriented, they in fact had varied interpretations of market orientation depending on their fund-raising models. The more centralized an NGO' s source of funds, the greater the likelihood that its interpretation of market orientation is adjusted for legitimization in the eyes of its donors.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration