This research examines to what extent and why nonprofit accountability mechanisms are adopted in human service organizations located in southwestern Pennsylvania. Its focus is twofold: 1) to assess the extent to which nonprofit leaders are familiar with and use the nonprofit accountability mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature and through nonprofit sector leadership organizationsto assess nonprofits accountability competency and 2) to explore the motivations or incentives for instituting or resisting the practices.
One hundred and fifty-six nonprofit human service executives in southwestern Pennsylvania participated in a mailed survey, and 20 of those respondents agreed to a follow-up personal interview. Results indicate that local nonprofits are more likely to adopt legal and financial accountability mechanisms, such as filing the IRS Form 990 and having a board approved operating budget, and less likely to adopt normative best practices, such as program evaluation, ethics codes and executive compensation policies. Further, study results examined through a dual lens of institutional and resource dependence theories, support the hypotheses that organizations are more motivated to adopt accountability mechanisms with greater degrees of organizational interconnectedness, external dependence on pressuring constituents, social legitimacy achieved, economic gain and legal coercion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-10282009-203453 |
| Date | 25 November 2009 |
| Creators | Watt Geer, Bobbi |
| Contributors | John Camillus, Louise Comfort, Kevin Kearns, Ph.D., Paul Nelson, Jill K. Maher |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-10282009-203453/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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