Florentine Maier

Nonprofit Organizations Becoming Business-Like A Systematic Review

By now, the becoming business-like of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) is a well-established global phenomenon that has received ever-growing attention from management and organization studies. However, the field remains hard to grasp in its entirety, as researchers use a multitude of similar, yet distinct, key concepts. The considerable range and complexity of these overlapping notions create major challenges: Scholars struggle to position their work in a larger context; it is not easy to build on previous findings and methodological developments; and research gaps are difficult to identify. The present article presents the first systematic literature review to confront those challenges by reviewing 599 relevant sources. In a first step, various key concepts are clarified. Second, the field is mapped according to three research foci: causes of NPOs becoming business-like, organizational structures and processes of becoming business-like, and effects of becoming business-like. From this, we draw conclusions and make suggestions for further research.

Intermediary Organisations and the Hegemonisation of Social Entrepreneurship: Fantasmatic Articulations, Constitutive Quiescences, and Moments of Indeterminacy

The rapid rise of alternative organisations such as social enterprises is largely due to the promotional activities of intermediary organisations. So far, little is known about the affective nature of such activities. The present article thus investigates how intermediary organisations make social entrepreneurship palatable for a broader audience by establishing it as an object of desire. Drawing on affect-oriented extensions of Laclau and Mouffe’s poststructuralist theory, hegemonisation is suggested as a way of understanding how social entrepreneurship is articulated through a complementary process of signification and affective investment. Specifically, by examining Austrian intermediaries, we show how social entrepreneurship is endowed with a sense of affective thrust that is based on three interlocking dynamics: the articulation of fantasies such as ‘inclusive exclusiveness’, ‘large-scale social change’ and ‘pragmatic solutions’; the repression of anxiety-provoking and contentious issues (constitutive quiescences); as well as the use of conceptually vague, floating signifiers (moments of indeterminacy). Demonstrating that the hegemonisation of social entrepreneurship involves articulating certain issues whilst, at the same time, omitting others, or rendering them elusive, the article invites a counter-hegemonic critique of social entrepreneurship, and, on a more general level, of alternative forms of organising, that embraces affect as a driving force of change, while simultaneously affirming the impossibility of harmony and wholeness.

They're Natural and Everywhere: How Evaluative Practices Permeate the Organization

How do evaluative practices become natural and ubiquitous in an organization? In this paper we integrate findings from previous empirical work on the adoption of evaluative practices in organizations with insights from institutional theory and social psychology research for advancing the understanding of possible states of evaluative practices within organizations and the processes through which organizations become permeated by evaluative practices. Our conceptual model suggests that once evaluative practices have gained a foothold in an organization, they tend to be applied to an increasing number of organizational problems and become taken for granted.

Managerialismus: Eine Herausforderung (nicht nur) für NPOs

Managerialismus - verstanden als eine Kombination von normativen Erwartungen, wie Organisationen mithilfe betriebswirtschaftlichen Wissens gestaltet werden sollen - betrifft Organisationen aller Sektoren: In gewinnorientierten Unternehmen sind Widerspruche zwischen managerialistischer Rationalitat und den Rationalitaten fachlicher Professionen, lebensweltlichen Wertvorstellungen, oder Anforderungen sozialer und okologischer Nachhaltigkeit nichts Ungewohnliches. In Nonprofit-Organisationen zeigen sich solche Widerspruche noch starker. Dies ist insbesondere seit den 1990er Jahren der Fall, als ein deutlicher Anstieg der Managerialisierung der Nonprofit-Praxis zu beobachten war, begleitet und auch befordert durch einen Anstieg der Forschung zu diesem Thema. Obwohl oder gerade weil das Phanomen lange Zeit definitorisch unscharf blieb, wurde es in der Diskussion zum Fluchtpunkt von Befurchtungen und Hoffnungen. Die Optimisten erwarten sich davon Effizienz- und Effektivitatsgewinne fur Nonprofit-Organisationen (NPOs), die Skeptiker befurchten deren Kolonialisierung durch eine enge okonomische Rationalitat. In Forschung und Praxis wird ein polarisiertes Bild gezeichnet. Dieser Beitrag fasst die bisherigen empirischen Befunde zusammen und versucht zu einer Versachlichung der Diskussion beizutragen. Theoretisch basiert unser Verstandnis von Managerialismus auf der Organisationstheorie Niklas Luhmanns (1988) und dem Konzept institutioneller Logiken (Friedland/Alford 1991).