Nonprofit Governance: Concepts, Visions, and Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

I am distributing this call for papers to those of you who are interested in contributing to deepening and widening foundational knowledge relating to nonprofits and other so called intermediate organizations.

While in the practice-oriented discipline of management the concept of nonprofit governance is still being used to describe best practices for dealing with boards, a strand of scholarly literature has developed over time that approaches the topic from a theoretical/institutional perspective. It focuses on the contractual arrangements that provide either (material) incentives to managerial agents for investing into achievement of organizational goals from within, or (immaterial) incentives to stakeholders for investing into achievement of such goals from without a particular organization. Although both the principal-agent and the stakeholder models focus on governance on the level of a particular organization, the latter approach has raised the awareness that organizations in general, and nonprofits in particular, are embedded in a larger societal environment and therefore should not be treated as insulated silos. In this context, Administrative Science is soliciting articles for publication in a Special Issue that improve our understanding of how nonprofits are governed at the organizational level (knowledge deepening) and/or extend the analysis to include the role these organizations play in governing society at large (knowledge widening). Especially the latter category of articles requires that the term “nonprofit” be used in the wider sense to include a broad array of so-called intermediate organizations. They all form part of the collaborative system of actors that has emerged in democracies in many parts of the world to advance public problem solving by decentralizing government and pluralizing the state.

Prof. Dr  Antonin Wagner
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Administrative Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

References

Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad management theories are destroying good management practice, Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4(1), 75-91.

Glaser, E.L. (2003). The governance of not-for-profit organizations. University of Chicago Press.

Miller-Millesen (2003). Understanding the behavior of nonprofit boards of directors: a theory-based approach. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterl,y 32(4), 521-554.

Ostrower, F., & Stone, M. M. (2006). Governance: Research trends, gaps, and future prospects. In W. Powell & R. Steinberg (Eds.), Nonprofit sector: A research handbook (pp. 612-628). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Pestoff, V., & Brandsen, P. (2010). Public governance and the third sector: Opportunities for co-operation and innovation? Emerging perspectives on the theory and practice of public governance (pp. 223-236). New York: Routledge.

Rosenau, J. N., & Czempiel, E.-O. (Eds.) (1992). Governance without government: Order and change in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stone, M. M., & Ostrower, F. (2007). Acting in the public interest? Another look at research on nonprofit governance. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 36(3), 416-438.

Wagner, A. (2014). Good Governance: A radical and normative approach to nonprofit management. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 25(3), 797-817.

Young, D. (2011). The prospective role of economic stakeholders in the governance of nonprofit organizations. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 22, 797-817.