Being Business-like and Still Serving Society? Investigating the Relationship between NPOs being Business-like and their Societal Roles

Description

NPOs are increasingly using business-like methods and funding sources, and expect this to help them better fulfill their societal roles. However, there are indications that when NPOs imitate businesses, they may focus on service delivery and neglect other societal roles such as community building, political advocacy, and promoting civic engagement. We examine this issue with survey data from Flemish NPO (N = 496). Overall, our results suggest that the critical tone underlying the effects of NPOs being business-like might be somewhat overdrawn, as we find that the extent to which business-like practices are present (a) is only weakly associated with the extent to which NPOs engage in particular societal roles (low adjusted R2), and (b) is mainly positively related to societal role uptake. We conclude by pointing to the particularities of the research context at hand, as well as suggest avenues for further research.

Period	21 Nov 2019 → 23 Nov 2019
Event title	ARNOVA
Event type	Unknown
Degree of Recognition	International