Alisa Moldavanova

Two Narratives of Intergenerational Sustainability: A Framework for Sustainable Thinking

This article recognizes that institutional survival alone is an important, but ultimately insufficient, goal for public and non-profit organizations. Instead, the article approaches organizational sustainability as a two-level concept that includes both institutional survival, as a baseline for sustainability, and intergenerational or longer term sustainability, understood as the ability of public institutions to persist and fulfill their purpose in the long run. The article is based on the findings of research conducted on a variety of public and non-profit cultural organizations, including museums, music and performing arts, and literature. However, the case of museums is used to illustrate two narratives of intergenerational sustainability: institutional resilience and institutional distinctiveness. The article notes that these narratives co-exist, although at times they contradict each other. It is the task of museum managers to reconcile the tensions embedded in these narratives via sustainable management practices. The broader implication of the study is that truly long-term sustainability, which secures the rights of future generations, requires sustainable stewardship today, and organizational sustainability should be viewed not as an outcome but rather as a process and an ethic.

Sustainability, Intergenerational Social Equity, and the Socially Responsible Organization

Drawing on perspectives from several academic traditions, we argue that sustainability is best understood as intergenerational social equity. When viewed thusly, it is possible to determine what socially responsible organizations look like in practice. After reviewing historic claims and evidence of sustainability, we turn to modern applications of institutionally based sustainability. We then describe sustainability in the framework of an intergenerational social equity model, claiming that the legacies of social and cultural institutions are evidence of sustainability in action. We conclude with a discussion of what it means for an organization to be socially responsible given our understanding of sustainability.

Understanding the puzzle of organizational sustainability: toward a conceptual framework of organizational social connectedness and sustainability

ABSTRACT Much scholarship on organizational sustainability has focused on organizational survival and strategies aimed at financial independence. However, there is increasing awareness that organizational social connectedness may be equally important for longer-term organizational sustainability. This article bridges theories of organizational survival, social connectedness, and sustainability research, with sustainable management practices from the field of the US culture nonprofits to investigate the questions: What are the antecedents of organizational social connectedness? What role does social connectedness play for the sustainability of organizations? Our analysis results in a conceptual framework of the relationship between the social connectedness and sustainability of cultural nonprofits.

Associations and Social Capital

Associations provide institutionalized opportunities for social exchange and the strengthening of pro-social attitudes and social skills. Social capital – such as trust, norms, and networks – is a by-product of associational involvement. In trustful relationships transaction costs are decreased for all participants because fewer resources are required for compliance. In this way, social capital provides an attractive solution to the collective-good dilemma. The causal relation between associational involvement and social capital is mainly explained by learning processes. Positive effects are especially expected from bridging social capital based on involvement in heterogeneous networks that reinforce tolerance, openness, and outer-directedness. Bonding social capital in homogenous networks strengthens feelings of exclusivity and inner-directedness. Increasingly, attention is drawn to feasible dark sides of and to modes of negative social capital.

Overview of the Nonprofit Sector in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the fifteen newly independent states have followed a range of sociopolitical trajectories— landing a smaller minority on the path toward democracy in the European Union (EU), while leaving the majority in a variation of hybrid regimes. Understandably, civil society/ nonprofit sector (nps) developments in these independent countries have likewise taken different turns along those trajectories, showcasing varied levels and kinds of nonprofit institutionalization, civic engagement, and citizens’ collective influence on their states. Importantly, however, while hundreds of thousands of voluntary organizations of different kinds have emerged in the postSoviet region since 1991, contrary to popular expectations and despite significant Western aid efforts, this development has not resulted in the achievement of healthy and robust civil society/ nps, nor any sweeping democratization in the region. What impact did the last quarter century have on civil society in these diverse countries with their common totalitarian past? And why did the seeming growth in the quantity of formal nonprofit organizations (npo s) not bring about the much anticipated qualitative democratic and civil society/ nps outcomes? We endeavored to answer these questions by turning to scholars native to this region, which we term here as Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (eerca) to emphasize our volume’s contemporary focus and the great contextual diversity present in this region.

Sociopolitical sources of creative cultural capital in U.S. counties

ABSTRACT This article examines the social, political, and demographic sources of variation in creative cultural capital in over 3,100 U.S. counties. The analysis presented here focuses on institutionalized forms of creative activity, as reflected by employment in museums, libraries, and the visual and performing arts sectors. Study results indicate that community-level variables account for a statistically significant portion of variation in creative cultural capital. Cultural industries are likely to thrive in communities that rely on different forms of social and religious capital and the presence of certain types of political culture legacy. Mean education level tends to increase creative cultural capital, whereas income inequality and Internet connectivity tend to depress it. These effects, however, vary by metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural geographical settings. Clearly, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to the goal of enhancing creative cultural capital at the local community level.

Review of the spirit of public administration

The Spirit of Public Administration by H. George Frederickson is a classic book on administrative ethics, which has become part of the public administration cannon and whose arguments retained thei...

Social Institutions and Sustainability: A Transdisciplinary Research Agenda

Despite being a buzzword across many academic disciplines for decades, sustainability evokes a variety of discourses and perspectives that rarely engage with each other in meaningful ways. In this Symposium of Critical Sociology, we attempt to create an opportunity for transdisciplinary dialogue among scholars from fields as diverse as Anthropology, Communication, Political Science, Business Management, and Sociology. Uniting the works included here is an interrogation of how social institutions shape sustainability (and vice versa). Even as we write this introductory essay, relief efforts—such as they are—are underway in Puerto Rico, ravaged by the catastrophic Hurricane Maria, leaving 3.4 million Americans destitute and without power for four to six months. Criticism rages on, about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of institutional authorities in these relief efforts, just as it did when the horrors of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck. Meanwhile, residents in Flint, MI, are still reluctant to drink tap-water in their homes, loath to trust state and federal actors that the water is now safe from lead contamination or Legionnaires’ disease, despite being so close to the pristine Great Lakes. These, of course, are not the only instances where natural and social forces collide to create turmoil—one merely has to type in “environmental disasters” in Google to get a much longer (although, by no means exhaustive) list—but they are useful reminders of how social institutions are vital to the goal of sustainability. Nor, we argue, should theorizing on sustainability be restrained to the environmental realm alone; rather, in line with interpretations of sustainability as longevity, resilience, and innovation, we contend that a transdisciplinary sustainability perspective allows us to examine a myriad socioeconomic, political, and cultural context, ranging from schools to businesses to nonprofits to government agendas. Accordingly, we hope that the reader will find our focus on social institutions and sustainability intriguing and thought-provoking, stimulating new research ideas and connections.

Conducive Meso- and Micro-Contexts Influencing Volunteering

This chapter reviews how interpersonal influences, institutional influences, the volunteer experience, life events, and practical considerations affect starting or stopping formal volunteering. Interpersonal exchanges and relationships affect volunteering by providing an opportunity for people to be asked to volunteer, by providing an incentive to volunteer for organizations that benefit a friend or family member, by providing emotional and practical support for volunteering, and by socializing people into the volunteer role. Institutions directly influence volunteering by actively sponsoring or facilitating participants’ volunteering, socializing people to volunteer, and providing individuals with the skills and resources necessary for volunteering.

Conducive Motivations and Psychological Influences on Volunteering

For over 60 years, research has shown that formal volunteering (FV) is influenced significantly by psychological factors and variables, which many scholars see as the results of individual genetics, socialization into one’s culture and social roles, and idiosyncratic personal experiences. Such predictors are sometimes referred to as dynamic variables. This chapter reviews research from various nations mainly on such motivational factors as personality traits, values, general and specific attitudes, habits, intentions, and goals/values as influences on FV. Less research is available on other, potentially relevant, psychological factors, such as affects-emotions, intellectual capacities, cognitions– information–perceptions, and the self, let alone on serious pain as a factor affecting volunteering. Yet some, often much, empirical evidence and also relevant theory support the necessity of studying such psychological factors, as well as motivations in understanding FV, partially validating the recent S-Theory of Smith (2014b, 2015a, 2017b). Smith’s (1994) Active-Effective Character (A-EC) Model, now re-named as the Active-Prosocial Character (A-PC) Model, is also supported.