Preparing Leaders of Nonprofit Organizations

Contemporary Perspectives

William A Brown, Matthew Hale, William A Brown, Matthew Hale

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000595819
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Thema: Affari pubblici e amministrazione

There are more than 1.8 million nonprofits in the United States and at least 3 times that many internationally. Workers in these nonprofits and civil society organizations increasingly look to academic programs to provide leadership and management training. This edited volume is designed to provide new and experienced faculty and program administrators with a broader conception of how the nonprofit leaders of the future are and could be educated. The chapters are written by experienced nonprofit program leaders who provide guidance on all aspects of building and more importantly maintaining a successful nonprofit program. Many of the chapters are written by former leaders of the nonprofit Academic Centers Council (NACC), a recognized international leader in nonprofit management curricular development, while others are written by successful founders and administrators of nonprofit programs both in the US and internationally. All chapters are however grounded in the experience of the authors, supplemented with research on best practices and focusing on future trends in the field. Preparing Leaders of nonprofit Organizations examines key issues and challenges in the fi eld from multiple perspectives, some of which are curricular and intellectual while others are related to program administration and oversight. The text explores core concepts, distils distinctive features of new or emerging academic programs, and identifies ways program leadership might ensure those features are reflected in their programs regardless of where these are housed within a university. The book is an essential resource for faculty and administrators who work with or are seeking to develop a nonprofit education program. It is also a useful guide for graduate students seeking a career in the nonprofit academy.

1Institutionalization Interrupted The Evolution of the Field of Nonprofit Studies

Peter C. Weber

DOI: 10.4324/9781003294061-2

Introduction

Since the early 1980s, the field of nonprofit studies has grown rapidly. It evolved from individual scholars and a few pioneering academic research centers to a growing network of academic departments, centers, and programs devoted to philanthropy, nonprofit sector, and civil society. A cohesive knowledge base developed around a range of theoretical frameworks and thematic areas, which Ma and Konrath (2018) recently quantitatively reviewed. Likewise, graduate and undergraduate academic programs are offered at institutions of higher learning of different size, location, and programmatic orientation (Mirabella, Hoffman, Teo, & McDonald, 2019; Weber & Brunt, 2020). In this context, academic centers continue to serve as connectors between academic degree programs and nonprofit professionals (Prentice & Brudney, 2018).

The field emerged in part as a response to the demands of practice. Policy challenges as well as increasing need for professionalization originated in the 1969 Tax Reform Act and were accelerated by the Reagan Administration’s policies (Abramson & McCarthy, 2012; O’Neill, 2005). External funders explicitly supported nonprofit management education within the broader framework of initiatives building the capacity of the US nonprofit sector (Heidrich & Long, n.d.; Poscio, 2003). Demand for professionalization of nonprofit management and access to external funding created the context for academic entrepreneurs to develop the academic centers that are credited with starting the field (Larson & Barnes, 2001).

The development of nonprofit studies aligns with the more general process underlying the growth of scientific/intellectual movements (SIMs), as discussed in Frickel and Gross (2005) and Hambrick and Chen (2008). SIMs are “collective efforts to pursue research programs or projects for thought in the face of resistance from others in the scientific or intellectual community” (Frickel & Gross, 2005, p. 206) and the interplay of differentiation, mobilization, and legitimacy building typically characterizes their development (Hambrick & Chen, 2008). Drawing on these models, this chapter argues that nonprofit studies as an area of scholarly inquiry morphed from a broad, polycentric interest in philanthropy, voluntary action, and associational life to a narrower focus on the nonprofit sector. Studies in adjacent disciplines continue but are not fully integrated in the official “field.” The chapter describes the field’s evolution and identifies forces that both supported and hindered this institutionalization process.

The chapter is organized as follows. The next section lays out the conceptual framework guiding the analysis. It defines emerging academic fields, setting an ideal trajectory that serves to analyze the development of nonprofit studies. The following section contextualizes the emergence of a loose network of scholars interested in philanthropy and nonprofit sector and the emergence of increasingly interconnected support structures as part of the nonprofit sector’s reaction to policy challenges. The chapter then identifies key forces contributing to the field’s establishment in the academy. The analysis of these forces, however, also highlights major challenges facing the field, which may prevent its full institutionalization as an independent academic discipline. As a result, the case of nonprofit studies may be one of an institutionalization interrupted, as nonprofit studies gained academic credibility as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry in various established disciplines without fully establishing its own autonomy as an academic discipline.

The Institutionalization of Academic Disciplines

Academic fields are difficult to define, not least because of differences between disciplines. Biglan (1973) argues that paradigm clarity, degree of application, and concern with life systems influence boundaries with adjacent fields of knowledge, indicating the challenge of establishing clear boundaries for fields with an amorphous subject of inquiry. The emergence of new academic fields involves a combination of cognitive and structural drivers in an ideal transition from paradigm development and talent cultivation to academic institutionalization (Clark, 1973). The institutionalization of a discipline ensures its reproduction and survival (Krishnan, 2009, pp. 9–10), as it creates the spaces within which faculty members socialize and perform their teaching, research, and service responsibilities.

The institutionalization question is a crucial one for an emerging discipline, as it speaks to its long-term sustainability within the ever-shifting context of higher education and its scientific autonomy. At the core, SIMs advance a coherent scientific program, share intellectual practices, and are intrinsically political because of their inherent contentiousness (Frickel & Gross, 2005, pp. 206–207). New fields need to differentiate themselves from existing fields while avoiding being perceived as a threat, mobilize resources by taking advantage of political opportunities, shared interests, and social infrastructures, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of members, allies, and resource providers (Hambrick & Chen, 2008, pp. 35–38). This interplay of differentiation, mobilization, and legitimacy drives the institutionalization process.

Drawing on Frickel and Gross (2005) and Hambrick and Chen (2008), four broad “theoretical propositions” for the development of SIMs are particularly relevant in the development of nonprofit studies. These four propositions characterize the differentiation, mobilization, and legitimacy of nonprofit studies, highlighting the emergence of six forces driving the field’s institutionalization (drivers).

1. 1.SIMs emerge when they can claim external relevance with a focus that is both socially important and corrects practices in existing scientific fields or areas of practice. The context section shows how nonprofit studies reacted to the need for a professionalized nonprofit sector in the context of government devolution of social programming responsibilities.
2. 2.SIMs are successful when structural conditions not only provide access to key resources but also sustain the field’s reproduction. External funders (third driver) and the first nonprofit academic centers (second driver) provided the emerging field with opportunities for employment, intellectual prestige, and organizational resources in the 1980s and 1990s.
3. 3.The emergence of SIMs depends on access to micro-mobilization contexts. Against the background of a growing internationalization (sixth driver), scholarly associations and conferences (first driver), as well as academic programs (fifth driver) provide opportunities for socializing, creating shared interests and values, and developing alternative forums to those of related disciplines such as public administration, business, and social work.
4. 4.The legitimization of SIMs depends on their ability to develop a clear intellectual identity, which underlies “a collective identity, its historical origins, and its relationship to various competitor movements” (Frickel & Gross, 2005, p. 222). The development of a knowledge base and research paradigms, the growth in number and prestige of academic journals and publication venues (fourth driver), and the emergence of accreditation programs testify to efforts to legitimize the new field within, and in relation to more established academic disciplines.

This evolutionary perspective distinguishes between full institutionalization and academic credibility. Scholarly communities may aspire to fully institutionalize into separate fields of knowledge with their own identity and disciplinary boundaries, thus independent of adjacent academic fields. Conversely, academic credibility views the recognition of a set of ideas and body of work as a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry as the outcome of this evolutionary process, fully integrating into traditional disciplines (Larson & Long, 2000). The tension between full institutionalization and an arguable more limited focus on academic credibility underlies the evolution of nonprofit studies, raising normative questions around the ideal outcome of this evolutionary process.

The following section contextualizes the emergence of nonprofit studies. It highlights the slow progression from a loosely connected network of individual scholars to a field with an established presence in academia. It shows how the field emerged in reactions to policy changes and practical needs and integrates macro trends with human agency by recognizing the role of academic entrepreneurs in founding scholarly associations, academic centers and programs, and journals. The remaining of the chapter discusses six key drivers of the field of nonprofit studies.

Context

Two commentaries published in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ) in 1999 exemplify conflicting conceptualizations of the field. In open debate, Stanley Katz and Peter Dobkin Hall present two contrasting views on the origins of the “serious study” of philanthropy. Hall (1999) identifies the field’s multipolarity, pointing to various research foci dating back to the early 20th century and contributing to the vibrancy of the study of philanthropy, voluntary action, and associational life. While a source of innovation, this porosity complicates the establishment of clear disciplinary boundaries. By contrast, Katz (1999) anchors the field’s origins to the structural conditions of the 1960s and 1970s. The “invention of the nonprofit sector” provides the context for a more linear history, substantiating claims for disciplinary autonomy. As a coherent sector with clear sectorial boundaries, the nonprofit sector provides scholars with a clearly delimitated subject of inquiry and, by emphasizing the nonprofit sector’s distinctiveness, legitimizes a distinct “nonprofit” management next to the established academic areas of management of public and private entities.

The study of philanthropy and nonprofit organizations originates in the broad interest, shared across multiple scholarly communities for forms of social and human action that would later be captured by concepts such as philanthropy, charity, and nonprofit organizations. Before the 1960s, research in the field lacked the unifying power of a research paradigm, which could connect a dispersed set of scholarly inqui...