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Building on transparency literature, we theorize that information characteristics such as accessibility of raw data and data source provision influence citizens’ trust in public performance information. Next to the question of whether providing a data source matters, we argue that information provision from a non-government actor can compensate the information asymmetry between citizens and public sector organizations due to a stronger symmetric data exchange relationship. Integrating and elaborating these theoretical assumptions of principal-agent theory with bureaucratic reputation theory, the organization's reputation, rather than the stakeholder group the information provider is belonging to, may explain varying trust. We conduct eight online experiments in large-N data collections in Austria and Germany, and find that data accessibility and source provision increase trust in performance information. Whereas citizens have more trust in government-provided data compared to data provided by other citizens, source reputation matters dominantly for building trust in performance information.

Although absenteeism is a key concern in most western societies, research on reducing absenteeism in public sector organizations is scarce, particularly regarding the impact of organizational relationships. By building on the concept of workplace social capital (WSC) and using a large longitudinal cohort of Danish municipal employees, this study shows that three types of WSC (bridging, direct-leader-linking, and top-level-linking WSC) reduce absenteeism, while there is no significant effect of bonding WSC. Our empirical results further suggest that the relationships with the immediate leader and the top management (direct-leader-linking and top-level-linking WSC) are most important for employees’ absenteeism.

Vor bald zehn Jahren wurde für den deutschen öffentlichen Sektor ein multicultural turn konstatiert.1 Bedienstete des öffentlichen Dienstes sollen, so das erklärte Ziel, in ihrer Personalstruktur die Bevölkerung abbilden. Das Versprechen einer solchen „repräsentativen Bürokratie“ liegt nicht nur in einer diskriminierungsfreien Praxis, sondern auch im effektiveren Verwaltungsvollzug, da Bedürfnisse und Belange aller gesellschaftlichen Gruppen besser adressiert werden sollen. Die derzeitige Personalstruktur des öffentlichen Dienstes ist jedoch noch weit entfernt von jeglicher Repräsentativität, nicht zuletzt aufgrund des Ausbleibens eines klaren Bekenntnisses hin zu Repräsentativität und ein darauf aufbauendes, konsistentes System der Förderung unterrepräsentierter Gruppen. Ausgehend von den hier vorliegenden Befragungsdaten (n = 1.003) kann gezeigt werden, dass die deutsche Bevölkerung eine repräsentative Bürokratie klar befürwortet. Gleichzeitig wird jedoch ein Spannungsverhältnis deutlich, welches sich durch die Forderung der Neutralitätswahrung im öffentlichen Dienst und dem Verfolgen des Leistungsprinzips in der Personalauswahl auftut.

Civil courage refers to the behavior where people actively intervene to protect a victim in a concrete situation of injustice despite the risk of becoming a victim themselves. To act with civil courage, one requires competencies that relate to prosocial values as well as the physical and social ability to act. In this context, this brief reports the opinions of 2,046 respondents—representatives of Germany with respect to age, gender, and region—on what, according to them, are the best contexts for learning civil courage. “At home and/or from family” as well as “through volunteering” are considered the most suitable contexts to learn civil courage. In contrast, television, social media, and the internet are considered the least supportive contexts.

This study investigates the impacts of negative and positive signals on public-serving organizations’ reputations. We draw on sociocognitive perspectives to test how organizations’ breaches of stakeholders’ trust are repairable over time as well as the moderating effect of organizational mission valence on this forgiveness process. Multilevel data from two slope-shift experiments (n = 304; n = 582) show that mission valence, or individuals’ affinity with an organization’s mission, intensifies the effects of both negative and positive signals in organizations’ reputation building processes. Negative signals have stronger negative effects on intentions to support the organization for individuals with high mission valence. However, the effect of successive positive signals is also stronger for individuals with high mission valence, suggesting greater forgiveness following a stronger breach of trust among these stakeholders.

Over the past decade, practitioners and scholars have intensified the discussions around people’s expectations from their jobs and how public and private organizations can succeed in the war for talent. In this context, it has become obvious that people not only seek high salaries and career opportunities but also meaningfulness in their daily tasks. Although many public service jobs offer opportunities to help others (prosocial impact) or contribute to society (societal impact), employees tend to become accustomed to these positive aspects or forget about them. This article tests whether a microintervention that emphasizes employees’ prosocial or societal impact can positively affect their well-being, intention to stay in the job, and willingness to recommend their respective jobs to others. The combined results of three preregistered experiments reveal that microinterventions can indeed have these effects, particularly if they focus on creating awareness about the jobs’ societal impact.

Non-formal education (NFE) is increasingly put forward by scholars and policy makers as a way to meet globally changing educational needs. However, a clear insight into how this sector can and should be governed is missing. Therefore, this article proposes a framework to help classify NFE governance challenges depending on the learning goals and content of various NFE programs, organizations, and networks. This framework serves to help practitioners identify public governance challenges depending on particular NFE contexts. For researchers, it provides an overview to explore, identify, and test the impact of factors that influence NFE practices and its effectiveness.

Public trust in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) is the extent that stakeholders consider nonprofit organizations reliable and truthful to what they do and communicate. Concretely, this means that stakeholders believe that nonprofits’ acts conform to their goals, including that these nonprofit organizations do not produce profit for personal and/or private gains (Hansmann, 1987). The public aspect of public trust in nonprofit organizations focuses on the aggregated trust perceptions – or shared cognition – from several relevant stakeholder groups, like beneficiaries, donors, funders, volunteers, employees, and collaboration partners, such as government agencies, businesses, and other nonprofit organizations. Hence, individual stakeholders can trust NPOs to a different extent, depending on various factors, such as their concrete stakeholder role towards the organization, earlier experiences, personal needs and preferences, and access to information about the nonprofit organization (Becker et al., 2020). The aggregated concept of public trust in nonprofits is the extent to which these individual trust perceptions are shared within larger stakeholder groups.

Over the past 20 years, as the study of transparency has evolved into a burgeoning multidisciplinary field, nonprofit scholars have developed an impressive body of research on the antecedents and outcomes of the transparency of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). From both theoretical and practical purposes, it is necessary to develop an overall picture of such antecedents and outcomes, to allow scholars and NPOs to understand why, when, and how transparency should be implemented. Current studies provide a fragmented view, focused on specific elements of NPO transparency; with a systematic literature review of 76 articles, this article offers both an integrative framework of the antecedents and outcomes of NPO transparency and an agenda for research, based on a critical analysis of the integrative framework. Four relevant research orientations emerge: (1) direction of NPO transparency, (2) distinguishing actual from perceived transparency, (3) the dark side of NPO transparency, and (4) NPO transparency contingency factors. Research along these four orientations could add nuance to existing knowledge of transparency and provide key insights with regard to why, when, and how transparency works.

Nonprofit organizations highly depend on the public’s trust for legitimacy and support, to ultimately further their missions. Despite its high importance, little is known about the trust-building processes of the general public. In this study, we develop and test a multilevel study design to provide deeper insights into the public’s trust in nonprofit organizations and its relevant determinants. We used a comprehensive data set of 4,072 dyads, with survey data from 1,686 individuals and organizational data related to 102 German NPOs to investigate the different trust-building components: (1) individual public trust evaluation in NPO, (2) individual (trustor) context, and (3) organizational (trustee) context. The results of the analysis reveal unexpected differences in the importance of the different components for explaining the public’s trust in nonprofit organizations. Results show that the individual context is as relevant as the individual public trust evaluation, but the organizational context is far less important.

There is a broad academic discussion about the impact of funding grants from a foundation or a government department on individual support intentions toward the nonprofit organization receiving the grant. However, the role of the grant provider's reputation has frequently been overlooked. In this study, we experimentally tested whether there is a reputation spillover effect of a grant-providing organization. Based on a real-life example, we asked citizens to rate their willingness to donate to a nonprofit organization, and we experimentally manipulated the available information on funding sources. We test this for both a government department and a foundation as a grant provider. Our results suggest that not the act of receiving a grant, but the citizens' awareness about the funding organization—at least in the case of a foundation—has an impact on support intentions. In contrast, for a prominent government department as a grant provider, we did not find support for a reputation spillover effect.

Aktuelle technologische Entwicklungen (z.B. künstliche Intelligenz) führen immer wieder zu Debatten, wie diese sinnvoll für die öffentliche Verwaltung genutzt werden können. Die Verwaltung selbst und entsprechende Expertinnen und Experten diskutieren mögliche positive Wirkungen auch in Bezug auf Werte, wie Effizienz, Transparenz oder Fairness. Diese Studie untersucht, ob Bürgerinnen und Bürger von der Anwendung dieser Technologien in der öffentlichen Verwaltung ebensolche Wirkungen ebenso erwarten. Dabei wird auch analysiert, ob eine andere Erwartungshaltung als bei gewinnorientierten Unternehmen besteht. Die Befragungsergebnisse (N=1.577) zeigen, dass weder negative noch positive Erwartungen in Bezug auf Wirkungen dieser Technologien bestehen, das gilt für öffentliche wie für die privatwirtschaftliche Leistungserbringung. Es wird diskutiert, ob die Ergebnisse in der bisher mangelnden Anwendung der untersuchten Technologien begründet liegen oder aus einer unzureichenden Kommunikation mit und Einbindung von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern in entsprechende Planungs- und Implementationsprozesse resultieren.

In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat das Streben nach Effizienz und Effektivität des Managements viele öffentliche und zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen verändert. Viele öffentliche Organisationen – wie z.B. die deutschen öffentlichen Universitäten im oben beschriebenen Fall – haben sich im Zuge der New Public Management Reformen als eigenständige Einheiten neu organisiert. Eine solche Umstrukturierung hat die Chance erhöht, dass kontextspezifische Management- und Führungspraktiken eingeführt werden. So können die öffentlichen Universitäten nun beispielsweise freier über die Verwendung der Mittel entscheiden. Die Umstrukturierung hat jedoch auch die Notwendigkeit erhöht, dass die Organisationen ihre Leistungen managen und darüber berichten, um somit langfristig ihre Reputation gegenüber externen Stakeholdern aufzubauen. Dies können sie erreichen, indem sie das richtige Maß an Transparenz wahren und ihren Stakeholdern gegenüber Rechenschaft ablegen. Öffentliche Universitäten bemühen sich nun mehr um ihr Image, z.B. indem sie Hochglanzbroschüren drucken und ihre Jubiläen feiern. Gleichzeitig wird von ihnen mehr Transparenz bezüglich ihrer Prozesse und Wirkungsbereiche erwartet. Wenn zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen für den Staat die Erbringung öffentlicher Leistungen übernehmen, dann geschieht dies zunehmend auf Basis von Leistungsverträgen mit komplexen Leistungs- und Zielvereinbarungen. Infolgedessen ist bei zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen die Notwendigkeit gestiegen, ihre Leistung, ihre Reputation, ihre Transparenz und ihre Rechenschaftspflicht gegenüber staatlichen Akteuren zu verwalten und zu steuern. Auch die Erwartungen privater Geldgeber/innen sind gestiegen, weil Skandale im Zusammenhang mit dem Missbrauch von Spendengeldern Spender/innen sensibilisiert haben (in Österreich z.B. der berüchtigteWorld Vision Skandal von 1998, der schließlich zur Einführung des österreichischen Spendengütesiegels führte). Aktuelle Trends in Richtung Venture Philanthropy und Impact Investment haben die Anforderungen privater Geldgeber/innen in Hinblick auf die Rechenschaftslegung von NPOs weiter erhöht.

Which work-related COVID-19 changes are here to stay? We were able integrate a 9-item scale in the eleventh wave (12 June 2020 – 17 June 2020) of the large-scale data collection process of the Austrian Corona Panel Project . The items for the construct that we analyzed focused on whether respondents were in favor or against particular COVID-related changes in the work environment. Respondents are in general in favor to keep particular COVID-related changes in the working context, such as more flexibility with respect to home office, working hours, and part-time work. Respondent are also in favor for less bureaucratic procedures for sickness leave, and less business trips and outside appointment. However, this should not come with more employer control, nor with increasingly fading boundaries between personal and professional life contexts. These results mainly show the overall challenges for the future of work, where more autonomy and flexibility is desired, but not at the cost of losing a clear delineation between professional and personal contexts. Moreover, women are for several aspects more in favor to keep COVID-related changes, such as keeping distance in the work environment, less business trips, and flexibility with respect to part-time work and home-office. Younger respondents (under 45) are also in favor of less business trips and external appointments, however not as much as respondents above 45. Except for the reduction of business trips and external appointments, no significant differences are reported between employees of the private and the public sectors. This suggest how challenges are similar across these sectors, and both public and private organizations can learn from each other to shape new attractive work environments.

Zielsetzung und Design: Die Umfrage (482 in Österreich lebende Personen) erhebt in Form von zwei offenen Fragen die Wahrnehmung von persönlichen und gesellschaftlichen Nachteilen in der Zeit des COVID-19 bedingten Shutdowns. Die Daten werden im Hinblick auf Inhalt und Häufigkeit für die Gesamtgruppe sowie geschichtet nach Alter und Geschlecht analysiert. Zielsetzung ist, die direkten sozialen, wirtschaftlichen, ökologischen und politischen Folgen der Krise bzw. der zur Bewältigung gesetzten Maßnahmen zu identifizieren, und für die wissenschaftliche und politische Auseinandersetzung mit Krisensituationen aufzubereiten. Erkenntnisse: Die Ergebnisse zeigen ein gewisses Auseinanderfallen der wahrgenommenen individuellen Nachtteile und der gesellschaftlichen Nachteile: Während als die drei wichtigsten persönlichen Nachteile das Social Distancing, der Alltag in der neuen Situation und die eingeschränkte (Bewegungs)freiheit genannt werden, wird auf gesell-schaftlicher Ebene primär der wirtschaftliche Nachteil, Social Distancing und der Bereich Politik | Medien | Gesellschaft genannt.

In the context of the INSERT project, we have been developing a clinical single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) insert for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, in order to perform simultaneous SPECT/MRI of the human brain. This system will consist of 20 CsI:Tl scintillation detectors, 5-cm wide and 10-cm long, with a 72-channel silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) readout per detector, and a multimini slit-slat (MSS) collimator set up in a stationary partial ring. Additionally the system has a custom-built transmit/receive MR coil to ensure compatibility with the SPECT system. Due to the novel design of the system/collimator, existing geometric calibration methods are not suitable. Therefore we propose a novel and practical calibration procedure that consists of a set of specific independent measurements to determine the geometric parameters of the collimator. This procedure was developed utilizing a prototype system that consists of a reduced-size single detector with a 36-channel SiPM-based readout and a single MSS collimator module. Validation was performed by reconstructing different imaging phantoms, using a rotating stage to simulate a tomographic acquisition. Regarding uniformity, the coefficient of variation (COV) for the cylinder phantom reconstructed with correct calibration parameters is 6.7%, whereas the COV using incorrect parameters is 9.4%. The quality of the phantom reconstructions provide evidence of the applicability of the proposed method to the calibration of the prototype system. This procedure can be easily adapted for the final INSERT system.

The work of volunteers is indispensable for the well functioning of healthcare organizations, and for maintaining the quality of care in times of austerity. As feelings of intrinsic motivation stimulate volunteer well-being and their long-term engagement, we study how team inclusion relates to volunteers’ intrinsic motivation during their activities. We hypothesize that volunteers’ perceptions of inclusion are positively related to intrinsic motivation, via the satisfaction of their basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. To test our hypothesis, we conducted a daily-diary study, obtaining a final sample of 43 volunteers and 204 completed diaries. Multilevel path analyses showed that team inclusion was positively related to volunteers’ intrinsic motivation during their activities. Subsequent mediation analyses revealed that competence and relatedness need satisfaction mediated this relationship. Thus, when volunteers feel part of the team with which they complete their activities, they experience intrinsic motivation because feeling included stimulates their feelings of being competent and being related to others.

This study explores which governance practices nonprofit leaders consider necessary to avoid organizational crises. Further, it explores whether these leadership mental models of crisis resistance depend on the organizational context. This helps determine whether practical learning points are organization specific or can be applied broadly. With a multilevel sample of 304 leaders from 44 Belgian nongovernmental development organizations, an exploratory path analysis reveals that nonprofit leaders consider continuous improvement, as a governance practice, particularly relevant for effective organizational crisis resistance. A multilevel analysis also shows that variations in leadership mental models cannot be explained by the organizational variables used in this study (organizational size, leadership group size, operational activities, and languages in the leadership group). This article concludes with a discussion of consequences for further research.

Even though the emergence of reputation is a long and cumulative process, each stakeholder immediately has impressions of an organization. To understand how early impressions of nascent sustainable...

This paper examines the role of entrepreneurial networks in the context of women’s entrepreneurship in poverty. Using multi-method research design, we focus on the relationships between the interna...

In this outline we give an overview of the main background of our DFG-funded project, and the main research questions we focus on. The overall objective is to bring a substantial contribution to the literature on reputation building, and in particular in the field of organizations that have a social goal.

This article is the synopsis to my cumulative Habilitation dissertation in the field of Management (Submitted and defended at the Faculty of business, economic and social sciences of the University of Hamburg; Department of Social Economics). This Habilitation dissertation combines eleven published articles for which the overall content relates to three interrelated concepts: leadership, performance, and reputation. Therefore, in this synopsis, I shortly introduce these concepts, and I clarify the academic contributions made by this Habilitation for these three concepts. Moreover, I explain how the public and nonprofit sectors form the unique setting to study these three management concepts. Studying these concepts in the nonprofit and public context has at least two major advantages.

Because shared mental models are critical for consistent, accurate decision making, this study seeks to explain the extent to which mental models are shared on the basis of team cognition theory and social constructionism. This study thus provides new insights into how the social dynamics among nonprofit leaders can explain mental models on nonprofit effectiveness. Specifically, team member exchange (TMX) quality should relate to agreement within leadership teams. Building on recent multilevel team research, this study regards the relationship theoretically as a separate actor and partner effect, which better reveals the underlying social processes. A multilevel data sample of 402 leaders from 44 nonprofit organizations provides support for the hypotheses, offering insights into the multilevel, emergent nature of team behavior and shared mental models. Practical recommendations focus on the central role of CEOs and board chairs, and on the need for a stronger consensus assessment in nonprofit performance evaluations.

Directors on boards of nonprofit organizations can have additional director positions in other nonprofit organizations. When several of these interlocking directors exist for a group of nonprofit organizations, a board network is formed. We investigate to what extent similarity between organizations in terms of size, funding structure and operational activities relates to the presence of shared board members between organizations. For a network of 610 organizations we test and confirm that board networks are not formed at random, but that similarity of organizational characteristics explains interlocking behaviour, and that clusters of similar organizations exist within the overall nonprofit sector. Given this observation we propose three areas for further research. In particular we discuss opportunities regarding potential effects of network clustering, the causal direction of the relationship found, and the complementarity of the board network to other social networks in the nonprofit sector. Untersuchung des Verhaltens Vernetzter Gremien Zwischen Nonprofit-Organisationen Aufsichtsratsmitglieder von Nonprofit-Organisationen konnen zusatzlich Aufsichtsratsmandate in anderen Nonprofit-Organisationen wahrnehmen. Wenn mehrere dieser vernetzten Aufsichtsratsmitglieder fur eine Gruppe von Nonprofit-Organisationen existieren, entsteht ein Gremiennetzwerk. Wir untersuchen, in welchem Umfang sich Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den Nonprofit-Organisationen in Bezug auf Grose, Finanzierungsstruktur und operative Tatigkeiten auf die Anwesenheit von gemeinsamen Aufsichtsratsmitgliedern zwischen Organisationen beziehen. Fur ein Netzwerk von 610 Organisationen testen und bestatigen wir, dass Gremiennetzwerke nicht zufallig gebildet werden, aber dass Gemeinsamkeiten der organisationalen Merkmale vernetztes Verhalten erklaren und dass Gruppen („clusters“) ahnlicher Organisationen im gesamten Nonprofit-Sektor existieren. Angesichts dieser Beobachtung schlagen wir drei weitere Forschungsbereiche vor. Insbesondere diskutieren wir Chancen in Bezug auf mogliche Effekte des Netzwerk-Clustering, die kausale Richtung der gefundenen Beziehung sowie die Komplementaritat des Gremiennetzwerkes zu anderen sozialen Netzwerken im Nonprofit-Sektor. Encuesta sobre los miembros de los consejos de administracion en el seno de las organizaciones sin fines lucrativos Los miembros de los consejos de administracion de las organizaciones sin fines lucrativos pueden pertenecer a varios consejos. Ello da lugar a una red de consejos. Los autores examinan en que medida la similitud entre las organizaciones en terminos de dimension, de estructura financiera y de actividades operativas esta ligada a la presencia de miembros de consejos compartidos entre las organizaciones. En un conjunto de 610 organizaciones, los autores comprueban y confirman que las redes de consejos no estan formadas al azar, sino que las organizaciones de una red tienen rasgos comunes y que estos grupos suelen existir en el ambito del sector no lucrativo. A partir de estas observaciones, los autores proponen tres lineas de investigacion: los efectos potenciales de la formacion de estas redes, la causalidad de su relacion y la complementariedad de las mismas con otras redes sociales en el sector no lucrativo. Une enquete sur les membres communs des conseils d'administration d'organisations sans but lucratif Les membres de conseils d'administration d'organisations sans but lucratif peuvent sieger dans plusieurs conseils. Cela donne naissance a des reseaux de conseils. Les auteurs examinent ces reseaux en termes de dimension, ressources financieres et activites operationnelles sur un echantillon de 610 organisations belges. La formation des reseaux s'avere non aleatoire; les organisations dans un reseau se ressemblent, et plusieurs reseaux sont en place. Sur base de ces observations, les auteurs proposent trois pistes de recherches possibles: analyser les effets de l'existence des reseaux, la direction de causalite de ces effets, et la complementarite de ces reseaux avec d'autres reseaux sociaux dans le secteur sans but lucratif.

Ziel dieses Beitrages ist es, „Autonomie“ als eine Vorbedingung fur Entrepreneurship zu setzen. Unter dem Begriff Autonomie wird verstanden, wie frei Organisationen ihre strategischen, taktischen und operationalen Moglichkeiten wahlen, entwickeln und verfolgen konnen, ohne dabei von internen (interne Autonomie) oder externen (externe Autonomie) Einschrankungen betroffen zu sein. Interne Einschrankungen hangen mit internen Strukturen und mit der Verfugbarkeit von Ressourcen zusammen. Externe Einschrankungen hingegen werden hauptsachlich durch Umwelteinflusse bestimmt, also beispielsweise externe Stakeholder oder Gesetze.

In this correspondence I postulate a complementary consideration to an article recently published in Nonprofit Management & Leadership: “Factors Attracting Individuals to Nonprofit Management over Public and Private Sector Management” (LeRoux and Feeney 2013). The aim of this correspondence is to provide avenues for further research based on an evaluation of the authors’ analysis and their embedded assumptions on causality and interdependency of the variables used. I perform an extended empirical analysis of the same data as used in LeRoux and Feeney (2013) in which inherent assumptions are adjusted based on available literature. Results show that their conclusions need nuancing, and that further research could focus on (1) a clearer distinction between antecedents and effects of sector of employment, and (2) the different relationships across sectors between work-related variables, such as job satisfaction, job flexibility, or job clarity.

This article explores the relationships between municipality features and volunteering by older adults. In the literature, strong evidence exists of the influence of place on older people’s health. However, the question how neighborhoods and municipalities promote or hinder volunteer participation remains under-explored. Data for the research are derived from the Belgian Aging Studies. We estimate logistic multilevel models for older individuals’ engagement in volunteering across 141 municipalities in Belgium ( N = 67,144). Analysis shows that neighborhood connectedness, neighborhood satisfaction, home ownership, and presence of services predict voluntary engagement at older ages. The findings support that perceptions and quality of social resources that relate to neighborhoods may be important factors to explain volunteering among older adults. Moreover, the findings suggest that volunteering in later life must be considered within a broader framework.

We assess how age relates to the degree of balance in volunteers’ psychological contracts (PCs). Research on PCs treating age as a substantive variable remains scarce in the literature. Nonetheless, this seems important in light of the increasing age-diversity in the voluntary workforce, as several theories suggest that younger and older individuals may prefer different degrees of balance in their PC. Moreover, previous studies have empirically shown that age influences how people respond to other aspects of the PC, such as breach and fulfilment. We hypothesize that volunteers perceive different levels of PC imbalance depending upon their age. More specifically, we argue that older volunteers tend to perceive organization underobligation, whereas younger volunteers tend to perceive organization overobligation. In addition, we hypothesize that age moderates the effects of PC imbalance on the intention to stop volunteering in an organization. We use polynomial regressions and response surface analysis to examine survey data of 401 volunteers. Our results support our hypotheses, thus emphasizing the importance of including individual differences, such as age, in future research on PC balance.

In this paper we aim to explore the relationship between volunteer motives and task preferences in order to provide volunteer managers with better insight in how tasks can be assigned to keep youth volunteers satisfied. Earlier seminal contributions have either taken a pure functional approach – where various types of motives are supposed to be at the base of any type of volunteer work – or a differentiated approach, where particular motives relate to specific task preferences. However, empirical results reported in the literature do not justify the preference of one approach above the other. To investigate whether one of the approaches is superior, or whether a combination of both is more appropriate, we perform a canonical correlation analysis for a set of functional motives and a set of task preferences (N = 2158). Five distinct relationships (canonical variate pairs) of motives and preferences are found. Results show that a ‘functional basis’ exists where all motives relate to a basic set of tasks. Additionally, a more differentiated approach towards volunteer motives and task preferences has to be taken, as we find four other relationships where specific motives are satisfied by assigning particular sets of tasks.

For 47 countries, a cross-country comparison is made with respect to parent participation in the production of education. The availability of national resources is used to explain in a multi-level regression analysis the level of participation in three types of parent participation: (1) ‘voluntary tasks’, (2) ‘governance and funding’, and (3) ‘child/parent feedback’. Furthermore, a comparison is made across countries between public and private schools, to better understand how the unique public nature accounts for different participation decisions. Results indicate that the type of school structure (private vs. public) in combination with national available resources have contrasting effects on parent participation: available resources at country-level crowd-out participation in public schools, but crowd-in participation in private schools.

With an experimental design the impacts of information about privacy dangers and of the personal information that has to be shared are tested for a participation application for mobile devices. Our results confirm the privacy paradox for the context of citizen participation, meaning that people have overall high concerns about privacy in digital transactions, but that this is not observable in their concrete decisions.

We apply Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation to a smart city context, focusing in particular on the ‘Smart London’ case. With this exploratory case study we contribute by setting out a replicable step-by-step approach to assess a smart city plan vis-à-vis citizen participation. Furthermore, this study investigates the link between the smart city ambitions of London and the concrete citizen participation levels of several projects within their smart city strategy. From the qualitative coding and classification we formulate a first proposition for further scientific elaboration on the relationship between the potential levels of citizen participation in a smart city project and the way stakeholders are represented in the project.

In this article we test whether reasons to quit volunteering can be structured as the commonly used six functional motives to volunteer of Clary et al. (1998). We conjecture that owing to volunteer involvement in an organization, additional contextual factors influence the choice to stop volunteering for that organization. Based on a literature review and a qualitative exploratory analysis, we present items respectively measuring motives to volunteer among active volunteers and reasons to quit among former volunteers in the context of the Scouts and Guides Organization in Flanders (Belgium). We test content-wise symmetry based on expert-rater agreement, while structural symmetry is tested based on factor analyses. Results show that no symmetry can be found. However, additional contextual factors clearly determine the decision to leave an organization. We theorize on how these individual, interpersonal and organizational factors are continuously traded off by volunteers during their involvement in a particular organization.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact that individual raters have on maturity assessments of organizations in the particular context of business process management (BPM). The hypotheses tested relate to the extent of the impact of individuals on maturity score variances and with the enforcing effect of organizational size on the disagreement among employees within organizations. Eight multilevel random-effects analyses for eight separate maturity dimensions clarify the intra-class correlation (agreement) within organizations. The analyses are based on a data set with a strictly hierarchical two-level data structure of employees (1755) nested within organizations (61). Results show that variance within organizations is significantly larger than zero and is even more important than variance between organizations. We conclude that a large individual background effect exists when rating an organization’s business process maturity. In addition, we find that the larger the organizations are, the more disagreement within organizations is visible. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study deals with stereotypical associations about public servants and some more specific professions such as firefighter, nurse, police officer, politician, social entrepreneur and volunteer. A mixed-method analysis is done on association data (7,470 associations by 415 respondents for 12 professions). Despite the fact that the strongest associations made for public servants are rather positive (caring, helpful, and dedicated), as an overall category it has a less positive connotation compared to some specific professions that typically occur in the public sector. In contrast the public servant stereotype is more positive that the salesman and politician stereotypes. Avenues for further research and practical implications focus on increasing attractiveness of public professions.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on the results of research into the precedence of the maturity factors, or key turning points in business process maturity (BPM) implementation efforts. A key turning point is a component of BPM that stabilizes within an organization and leads to the next maturity level.Design/methodology/approachSeveral years of data from over 1,000 companies in the USA, Europe, China, and Brazil that have completed a BPM assessment are analyzed to identify which components of BPM stabilize, when and in what order. Different analysis methods are employed in order to identify global commonalities and differences.FindingsThe paper identifies key turning points from several different perspectives using several different approaches and develops some conclusions common to all methods used in this research.Research limitations/implicationsThe relationship between the components (dependencies) is only suggested but not statistically analyzed. Several data sets are also on the low end of sample size for the methods used and some parts of the research used ad hoc selection of companies of arbitrarily distributed companies into different groups.Practical implicationsThe results can be useful for leaders and teams that are attempting the journey to process maturity. The guide‐posts, milestones, and measures can help answer the question “Where am I on this journey and what is next?”Originality/valueA plethora of maturity models has emerged that claim to guide an organization through the process of building levels of maturity that lead to competitive advantage. To date, there has been a lack of quantitative studies documenting these road‐maps. The paper provides global, quantitative evidence of the critical maturity components associated at each level of maturity.

In this literature review, we take advantage of analyzing nonprofit leadership teams rather than its components, such as the board, the executive management or specific committees. Within this perspective, we define the concept of ‘nonprofit leadership alignment’. We combine different bodies of literature which we structure under three headings: (1) functional alignment, (2) motivational alignment, and (3) practices alignment. For each of them we indicate important avenues for further research. Finally, we provide three methodological paths that could be used to investigate the avenues proposed.

Processes are the core of organisations. Business ProcessManagement (BPM) argues organisations can gain competitive advantage byimproving and innovating their processes through a holistic process-oriented view. An organisation can be more or less process-oriented depending on theirexperience in applying process thinking for better results. The aim of this paperis to define a framework for identifying characteristics of Business ProcessOrientation and to provide a valid tool for measuring the degree of BusinessProcess Orientation (BPO) of an organisation based on empirical research in 30international organisations. A holistic view on integrated process managementand change is taken as a starting point.

New therapeutics are developed by a heterogeneous set of actors including universities, innovative SMEs and large pharmaceutical concerns. In this paper, we distinguish between private and public o...

We explore the relatedness between different types of governance coalitions and the level of organizational governance quality. We propose two dimensions of influence to classify nonprofit governan...

Building on the literature based assumption that specialization in nonprofit leadership teams positively influences governance practices and effectiveness, we test to what extent demographic divers...

We refine previous research on the factors influencing volunteer commitment and use the distinction between global and local organizational commitment among volunteers. Based on literature we hypot...

Volunteers form an indispensable asset for non-profit organizations (NPOs) (Grube & Piliavin, 2000). In 2009, volunteers generated an estimated economic value of 169 billion dollar in the United States (Independent Sector, 2010), while providing many crucial services to society (Wilson, 2000). Yet, NPO managers request more scientific-based volunteer management tools (Musick & Wilson, 2008). An interesting concept for designing such tools is the psychological contract (PC) (Farmer & Fedor, 1999), describing perceived mutual obligations between two parties (Rousseau & Tijoriwala, 1998)--such as a volunteer and an NPO. We study how volunteers adjust their work effort in reaction to breach or fulfillment of these perceived obligations. Our study distinguishes itself from previous studies in a number of ways. First, we focus on the ideological PC type, entailing perceived obligations relating to the values, mission or principles of the organization (Thompson & Bunderson, 2003), whereas many previous studies focused on breach of transactional or relational obligations. The ideological PC applies well to volunteers given the value-driven nature of volunteerism (Pearce, 1993). Moreover, studying how ideological PC breach and fulfillment relate to outcomes appears promising as Thompson and Bunderson (2003) suggest they elicit different reactions than other PC types. Second, we investigate the effects of breach and fulfillment on work effort. This outcome variable is relevant to NPO managers who want to optimize their volunteers' effort, yet it received little empirical attention to date in PC studies. Third, following Lambert, Edwards, & Cable (2003), we use polynomial regression and response surface analysis to counter issues surrounding traditional methods for measuring breach and fulfillment (see Edwards & Parry, 1993 for an overview). Because we use polynomial regressions, we are able to describe differences in work effort when both promised and delivered inducements are low compared to when both are high (the line of congruence) and describe differences in work effort in case of over-fulfillment (receiving more than promised) compared to under-fulfillment (receiving less than promised) (the line of incongruence) (Edwards & Parry, 1993). Considering two norms underlying social exchange, reciprocity and altruism, we suggest a U-shaped relationship with work effort along the line of congruence (H1). In other words, volunteers will exert more effort if they perceive that promised and delivered ideological inducements are either both high (due to reciprocity) or both low (due to altruism). Along the line of incongruence, we formulate distinct hypotheses for under- and over-fulfillment of perceived ideological obligations. In the case of under-fulfillment, we distinguish two opposing hypotheses. The first, based on empirical research on PC breach with paid employees (Lambert et al., 2003), predicts that work effort will drop as delivered inducements decrease relative to promised inducements (H2a). The second, based onideological PC theory (Thompson & Bunderson, 2003), predicts that work effort will increase as delivered inducements decrease relative to promised inducements, because the individual will engage in corrective behavior (H2b). In the case of over-fulfillment, Lambert's et al. (2003) stated that the effect on the outcome depends on the type of inducement being exchanged. Considering ideological PCs, we believe receiving excess inducements does not impede satisfying other needs. Thus, we propose a positive effect of over-fulfillment on work effort (H3).

A nonprofit “governance quality index” was developed to enable verification and falsification of contemporary theoretical insights on social service organizations. Indicators were generated based on an extensive qualitative exploration. For the quantitative validation, a data set was composed of 526 respondents from 52 organizations. Five subdimensions of governance quality are introduced and are recommended to be used as separate scales, rather than combined into a single score on governance quality. Furthermore, the recommendation is made to rely on multiple raters per organization to assess governance quality or related concepts, given the substantial within-organization variance found.

Although today’s nonprofit organizations make a strong appeal to volunteers, they often have difficulties with attracting and retaining these free labor forces. In this sense, studying the motivation of volunteers and its effects proves useful. In the present article, we investigate the relationship between volunteers’ motivation and their self-reported work effort, while relying on the Self-Determination Theory. The results indicate a positive link between volunteers’ autonomous motivation and work effort. Moreover, this relationship holds for each person in our sample, irrespective of the organization in which she/he is volunteering. Implications for future research, as well as the practical impact of these findings, are discussed.

There is a growing interest in applying the psychological contract concept to the relationship between volunteers and nonprofit organizations. However, previous studies overlook certain elements of volunteers’ psychological contracts as they build on theory established with reference to paid employees. We argue that the inclusion of a value-based psychological contract type, next to transactional and relational types, enables a more thorough understanding of perceived mutual obligations between volunteers and nonprofit organizations. We use the critical incidents technique to map volunteers’ perceived (un)fulfilled obligations and find that volunteers perceive both fulfilled and unfulfilled value-based obligations. Moreover, we describe specific terms related to the mission and values of the organization reported by volunteers. We conclude that future psychological contract research needs to take this value-based dimension into account, especially in volunteerism.

We assess how age relates to the degree of balance in volunteers' psychological contracts (PCs). Research on PCs treating age as a substantive variable remains scarce in the literature. Nonetheless, this seems important in light of the increasing age-diversity in the voluntary workforce, as several theories suggest that younger and older individuals may prefer different degrees of balance in their PC. Moreover, previous studies have empirically shown that age in?uences how people respond to other aspects of the PC, such as breach and ful?llment. We hypothesize that volunteers perceive di?erent levels of PC imbalance depending upon their age. More speci?cally, we argue that older volunteers tend to perceive organization under-obligation while younger volunteers tend to perceive organization over-obligation. In addition, we hypothesize that age moderates the e?ects of PC imbalance on the intention to stop volunteering in an organization. We use polynomial regressions and response surface analysis to examine survey-data of 401 volunteers. Our results support our hypotheses, thus emphasizing the importance of including individual di?erences, such as age, in future research on PC balance.