In unstable economic situations, transforming nonprofit organisations into social enterprises is crucial for achieving their social missions under the condition of financial sustainability. Pen and Liang (VOLUNTAS Int J Volunt Nonprofit Org 30(3):460–474, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-018-00071-7) indicated that the originality aspect of social entrepreneurial creativity, cognitive empathy, and bonding social capital had positive effects on the social entrepreneurial intention (SEI) of nonprofit organisation workers, whereas the stockholder perspective of social responsibility and affective empathy negatively influenced SEI. However, their study did not address the work-related capacities of nonprofit organisation employees, which are critical to the success of this transformation. Therefore, we tested the effects of prior experience with social problems and work self-efficacy on SEI. The results reveal that the planning and communication aspects of work self-efficacy and prior experience with social problems had significant effects on SEI. Moreover, work self-efficacy mediated the relationship between prior experience with social problems and SEI. The results expand the research framework for this inquiry line and have practical implications for nonprofit organisation transformation.

This paper describes an exploratory study aiming to investigate the existence of distinct groups of social enterprises according to organisational identity dimensions. A taxonomy was developed with a two-step cluster analysis based on the importance attached to both social and market identity by 111 social enterprises acting in Portugal. ANOVA and Chi-square analyses were employed to investigate differences between groups. The taxonomy provides a parsimonious description of four groups of social enterprises and suggests the existence of a trade-off between the involvement and participation of clients/beneficiaries and the geographical scope. The combination of high levels of social identity and market identity is associated with more satisfactory levels of social and financial performance. However, giving prevalence to the social or the market identity seems to lead to lower levels of financial and social performance, respectively.

This paper explores the link between nonprofit financial support and the service quality of city park systems. Specifically, this research constructs a longitudinal dataset and utilizes the fixed effects model to empirically investigate the relationship between nonprofit financial support for major US city parks and service quality. The findings show that the level of nonprofit financial support to city parks has a positive relationship with two major indicators of city park service quality: the size of parkland and the public access to parks. However, a small statistically significant relationship is found for the number of playgrounds in parks and the level of nonprofit financial support. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of government–nonprofit relationships which heavily emphasize the resource flow from park-supporting charities to governments. It also improves our empirical knowledge of the general associations between public service provision and nonprofit organizations in urban areas.

Market orientation has been presented as an important predictor of business performance, and it is presumed to contribute to long-term success in both profit-oriented and non-profit enterprises. Similarly, entrepreneurial orientation is a concept that has been widely applied to business firms but has not been empirically tested in social enterprises. Moreover, the literature does not present a widely accepted and tested conceptual model relating entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and performance, in the realm of social enterprises. In order to fill this gap, this research assesses how these strategic orientations affect social and economic performance in the setting of social enterprises. Structural equation modeling was used as a means to analyze the hypothesized relationships. After testing the model on a sample of 805 Portuguese social enterprises, the findings show that both social entrepreneurship and market orientations significantly impact social performance. The results also indicate that market orientation mediates the effect of social entrepreneurship orientation on the performance of social enterprises.

Positioned at the crossroads of the market, public policies and civil society, social enterprises are private organizations that achieve social goals and, in an entrepreneurial way, respond to collective needs. By considering the micro-foundation of value generation as emerging from the assessment of three Italian social cooperatives’ business models, the aim of this paper is to understand the contribution, and the approach adopted by work integration social enterprises to the creation of public value. Our findings suggest that the approach adopted in order to generate value, changes according to several contextual factors. We identified, in particular, three models (the cooperative-driven, the people-driven, and the market-driven model) that are characterized by different relationship with the cooperative system, a differentiated tension toward commercial activities and specific catalysts for value creation.

Voluntary sector and non-profit studies require theoretical frameworks facilitating better understandings of what occurs on the ground. Following Lipsky’s (Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public service, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980) formulation of street-level bureaucracies, scholars have emphasized workplace hierarchies, reproducing dichotomous ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ conceptualizations of practice which can obscure the full complexity of practitioners’ workplace relationships. In this paper, we offer a thematic model of (collective) action that centres the ‘division of labour’ across, and relations between, professional niches that are differentiated by their ‘helping’ orientations, workplace tasks, and responsibilities to service users rather than their organizational status or salaries. We mobilize qualitative research undertaken in the penal voluntary sectors of Canada and England to highlight the mutually constitutive efforts of frontline and management work with criminalized service users. Drawing on and extending Alinsky’s ‘river dilemma’, we conceptualize practice in the (penal) voluntary sector as organized according to the differing choices practitioners make about whom to ‘help’ and how to intervene, which have consequences for social policy, service delivery, and advocacy work.

The social entrepreneurship literature increasingly acknowledges that the board of directors is of major importance in dealing with the multiple goal pursuit of social enterprises. Using a team production perspective, we study the relationship between stakeholder knowledge in the board and the engagement of the board in counseling and decision-making (i.e., board service performance) and subsequent organizational performance. The results of our study, using a sample of Flemish social enterprises, reveal that board stakeholder knowledge is positively related to board service performance. This relationship is moderated by board behavioral integration, which is strengthening the relationship in case of high stakeholder knowledge. Finally, while board service performance is positively related to social performance and, specifically, the social goal of hiring disadvantaged people, it is not significantly related to financial performance.

Social enterprises pursue a dual mission: on the one hand, they strive for social purpose, while on the other, they try to achieve economic stability despite scarce resources. To achieve the dual mission, social enterprises avail themselves of both for-profit and non-profit institutional logics. Due to this combination of multiple institutional logics, such enterprises can be classified as hybrid organizations. This study focuses on these organizations and investigates tensions between social enterprises and various stakeholder groups caused by the use of commercial logics within the social sector. In particular, we examine the perception of commercial versus social welfare logics by various stakeholder groups, and investigate the effects on organizational communication. Our study is centered on social franchise enterprises. We use an exploratory qualitative research approach based on semi-structured interviews with 21 social franchisors and social franchisees of seven social franchise enterprises. Our main results suggest that the use of commercial logics in the social sector tends to decrease the legitimacy of social franchise enterprises in the eyes of internal stakeholders, the general public, and various (but not all) external stakeholder groups. Many stakeholders of social franchise enterprises show a strong aversion to commercial logics, and particularly to commercial terminology. Overall, we conclude that social franchise enterprises very consciously apply commercial and social welfare logics and use alternative terminology where necessary to retain legitimacy and prevent tensions.

Nonprofit scholars have long considered stakeholder targeting communication (STC), an important mechanism of organizational accountability to meet stakeholders’ diverse interests and needs. However, research has yet to systematically examine the antecedents and outcomes of organizations’ STC to advance a more comprehensive understanding of how organizations manage accountability demands in the digital era. To address this gap, this study proposes a conceptual framework to explain how organizations’ STC on social media (SM) is shaped by STC via non-SM channels and their external communication capacity and the resulting STC outcomes in the SM domain. Survey data from 156 humanitarian relief and development organizations on four continents showed that using non-SM channels to engage various groups of stakeholders helped build organizations’ external communication capacity, which in turn helped improve their engagement in STC on SM. STC on SM further contributed to organizations’ success in information dissemination, community building, and action mobilization outcomes on SM.

The proposition that restricted revenues inhibit nonprofit service delivery by reducing their financial discretion has accumulated in the academic literature but has not been empirically tested. Using a sample of arts and culture nonprofits in the USA, this study examines whether the proposition is upheld through a resource dependence lens. The results suggest that restricted revenues limit nonprofits’ efforts to seek other sources of revenue, which leads to a decrease in nonprofit service delivery. The results also suggest that this indirect effect holds and is even more pronounced in donative and performing arts nonprofits. Restricted revenues, however, do not curb nonprofits’ administrative expenses, and an increase in administrative expenses does not lead to an increase in nonprofit service delivery. The prevailing notion that restricted revenues force nonprofits to shift their cost structures away from administrative expenses may need to be reconsidered. Overall, this study partially supports the proposition that financial discretion plays a role in explaining the negative relationship between restricted revenues and nonprofit service delivery.

This paper examines whether three sets of factors—humanitarianism, the South Korean government’s official aid, and concerns regarding performance—affect South Korean CSOs’ decisions regarding aid recipients and the amount of aid to them. The statistical results of these two-stage analyses show that South Korean CSOs take into consideration different sets of factors at each stage of their aid allocation decisions. While humanitarianism and ODA allocation are consistently important at both stages of South Korean CSOs’ aid allocation decisions, performance concerns for aid effectiveness and efficiency (language and religion) matter especially at the second stage. Governance level of a developing country has a positive relationship with aid allocation decisions, while the direction of influence changes when only recipient countries are included in the regression analysis. These findings suggest that concerns regarding accountability and autonomy of CSOs in the context of their growing engagement in development cooperation may be unwarranted.

This study examines the impact of external environment on social enterprises’ revenues strategies. Using a national survey of 1250 social enterprises in Canada, this study tests whether institutional constraints and market competition affect commercialization and revenue diversification of social enterprises. The results suggest that social enterprises’ revenue strategies are associated with both institutional constraints and market competition. With institutional constraints, for-profit and cooperative social enterprises rely more on commercial revenues and have a less diverse revenue structure than their nonprofit counterparts. In addition, social enterprises with parent organizations tend to be more commercialized. With market competition, specialist social enterprises providing social services have a more concentrated revenue structure than generalist social enterprises, while specialist social enterprises providing culture services rely less on commercial revenues and have a more diverse revenue structure than generalist social enterprises. The findings offer implications for social enterprises to rethink financial flexibility and autonomy.