Mark Lyons

The history of non-profit organisations in Australia as a test of some recent non-profit theory

Over the past two decades, a number of important theories of non-profit activity have been developed, mainly by economists. In part, these theories attempt to explain why non-profit organisations are formed and flourish in some fields of activity and not in others. This paper seeks to test the adequacy of these explanations by seeing if they can explain seven cases of the formation of important sets of non-profit organisations in Australia. To this end, it sketches a history of non-profit organisations in Australia over the past 200 years and explores in more detail seven important cases of non-profit formation and development. It finds that, while in most cases the economic theories provide part of an explanation, there is a good deal which they cannot explain. Adequate explanations of non-profit formation will need to draw on social as well as economic theory.

Researching Asia's Third Sector

Most Asian countries have a strong third sector and a rich tradition of philanthropy. The varied array of social, economic, political, and third sector variables across the many countries of the region make Asia an ideal site for testing and developing third sector theory. The research infrastructure needed to sustain such a venture is beginning to form. The five papers published in this issue of Voluntas indicate some of the product, and the variety, of this growing body of research.

Third Sector Organisation Governance: Introducing the Themes and the Chapters

In the World Bank ‘governance’ model, organisations that are neither part of the establishment nor created to distribute profi ts among the owners/members have vital roles to play in the economic, and political advancement of a country. These organisations are formed by people to offer a variety of services to themselves or to others or to advance a cause, but not to make money. They play a central role in public governance achieving and sustaining a prosperous economy and a just civil society. They are known variously as voluntary organisations, non-profi t organisations, Non-government organisations (NGOs), people’s organisations, community-based organisations, cooperatives and civil society organisations. Together they constitute a third sector, being separate from both government and business. While these third sector organisations’ (TSOs) importance in public governance is widely acknowledged, their sustainability is not guaranteed and depends to a large extent on the effectiveness and accountability of their own governance. The World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and many advocates of improved public governance in countries of the South pin a lot of hope on the capacity of civil society or the TSOs to hold governments accountable; for that to work, the former must model the attributes that are associated with good organisational governance. But what are such attributes? Is there a particular model of governance that if followed will ensure the virtues of transparency and accountability, as well as effective performance that the champions of civil society desire? Are TSOs similar to firms, so that models of good practice in the business world should be applied to them? And if governance implies a democratic rule, need the model of democracy followed be that of representative democracy—what of more participatory models? And if there is an ideal (or idealised) model of governance, is it widely followed, or widely ignored? This volume contains the first large-scale study of the practice of governance in third sector (or civil society) organisations in six countries in the most populous and the fastest growing region, Asia. The study entails current practices of TSO governance in the participating countries in order to document the variety of approaches adopted, to determine the

Three Models of Organisational Governance in Asia’s Third Sector

This chapter draws on data collected from 492 of the third sector organisations (TSOs) in our organisational survey to explore the extent and distribution of three particular models of governing TSOs. Our first model of interest is the corporate governance (CG) model. This model is strongly recommended for both corporations and TSOs in Northern countries, and is advocated strongly by Northern authorities as the most appropriate model for TSOs in the South as well. We are interested in the extent to which it has been adopted across the region. Our second model is what we might call the dominant driving force (DDF) model. In this model there is one figure, often the founder of the organisation, who dominates it. It thus stands in direct contrast to the CG model. By CG standards, it is a bad model of governance. Yet, Smillie and Hailey (2001) have identified it in several Asian TSOs that have achieved a high reputation both within their own country and externally. Our third interest is in TSOs that are democratically governed. These are of interest because if TSOs are to be encouraged as a way of building civil society and practising their members in democratic governance (DG) within an organisational setting, practices that might be carried over into the wider polity, then TSOs should be democratically governed. This DG model is also in complete contrast to the DDF model, but those that adopt a CG model may not be democratically governed and vice versa. Identifying the extent to which TSOs satisfy both CG and DG models is one of the tasks of this chapter. In the chapter that follows, we will specify certain organisational variables collected in our survey to describe each model and then identify organisations that fit that model. Each model will be explored in turn. We will first describe the distribution of TSOs fitting that model by country and by field of activity. In order to more extensively explore the characteristics of organisations that fit the model, we look at their distribution across a number of other variables, such as age, whether incorporated, major sources of revenue and so on. To test if any relationships between our models and particular variables are statistically significant, we undertook two statistical tests. We first use a univariate analysis to test the significance of particular variables. This relationship is expressed as a relative risk (or chance or likelihood) that given one variable (e.g. age), the other variable (organisations conforming to our model) will also be found. The risk may be positive or, if expressed as a number