Critical Applications of Heterogeneity Theories to Power in Nonprofit Human Services Organizations

The field of nonprofit studies often assumes that efforts of actors in the nonprofit landscape are beneficial, especially when considering nonprofit human service organizations. However, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons for scholars to adopt a more critical lens when examining these organizations. Taking nonprofit human services organizations as a common setting, the article uses a critical lens to apply classic, “mainstream” theories of the role of heterogeneity in nonprofit sector formation and illuminate risks often neglected in nonprofit human services research. In this way, the article demonstrates that classic social science theories of heterogeneity already offer us the tools we need to critically question dominant assumptions about nonprofit human services provision and challenges the reader to consider why we so rarely use these well-known theoretical frameworks in a critical manner. The article concludes by inviting scholars to utilize additional critical theoretical perspectives in future studies of nonprofit human services.

Organizational culture, diversity, and employees’ health in social/human services: A systematic review

Leadership and organizational culture significantly impact employees' work performance and job satisfaction, but less is known about employee health and well-being within a diverse work environment. This study systematically reviewed 23 studies published between 2007-2019 that addressed organizational culture, diversity/workplace, and employee health within North American social/human services organizations. Results highlighted three themes: 1) Organizational Culture within Social/Human Services, 2) Diversity and Workplace, and 3) Employee Health at the Intersection of Organizational Culture and Diversity. Conclusions emphasize the need for organizations to adjust to changing workforce demographics and promote an equitable workplace culture.

 A Multi-paradigmatic Interdisciplinary Framework for Human Service Systems

Increasingly, human service systems are complicated by interprofessional spaces, quickening technological change, and social uncertainty. New guides built on existing research, practice, and interdisciplinary knowledge can lead practitioners through these complexities. Targeted toward an interdisciplinary audience, this article introduces four mechanisms to navigate the practical realities of human services organizations. The first, paradigms of organizational analysis, centers on embedded assumptions within human services organizations and their implications. The second, an organizational health paradigm, focuses on organizational health and functioning. The third, an ethical paradigm, incorporates interdisciplinary ethics across various disciplines. The final integrates these mechanisms along four practical pillars of human services systems: policy, organizations, community, and planning/evaluation that incorporate context, focus, and application of organizational practice activities. This framework aims to reduce analytical complexity, comprehensively guide practitioners in understanding contemporary human services systems, and apply these integrated dimensions across policy, organization, community, and planning/evaluation in human services settings.

The Perils of Privatization: Bringing the Business Model into Human Services

During the last three decades in both the United States and Europe, neoliberal policies, especially privatization, have restructured services in ways that dramatically affect the capacity of human services workers and agencies to serve all clients. Privatization means not only transforming public programs such as Social Security, but also managerialism—the incorporation of business principles, methods, and goals into public and nonprofit human services organizations. Few researchers have looked at the impact of market-based managerialism (focused on productivity, accountability, efficiency, and standardization) on social work’s mission and the effectiveness of human services workers and organizations. Using an anonymous survey of 3,000 New York City human services workers, authors examined the impact of managerialist practices including performance measures, quantifiable short-term outcomes, and routinized practices on frontline workers and service provision. A troubling trend emerged. Workers in agencies with a high commitment to managerialism found it considerably more difficult to adhere to social work’s mission and fundamental values. This conflict between the “logic of the market” and the “logic of social work” subsided dramatically in agencies with a low commitment to managerialism, indicating that even in today’s competitive environment, agencies can protect the social work mission.

Creating in the Crucibles of Nature's Fury

This paper examines foundings of human services organizations after natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, and tsunamis and explains why only some communities bounce back by founding appropriate collective-goods organizations. Using natural disasters in California counties from 1990 to 2010 as shocks that exogenously impose a need for collective goods over and above the level endogenous to the community, this paper shows that a geographic community’s local organizing capacity rests on the richness of its repertoire of voluntary organizing models as reflected in the diversity of its voluntary associations. Such diversity is even more critical when the type of natural disaster is more unexpected or complex (e.g., both a wildfire and an earthquake) in an area, and the organizational challenges posed are thus more novel for the community. Associational diversity has positive effects on both the numbers and aggregate size of foundings of local (non-branch, secular) human services organizations, and the effects are generalizable to other endogenous demand conditions such aspoverty. Results also show how different kinds of variety can have opposing effects onorganizing capacity as observed after a disaster, with associational diversity having a positive effect, political diversity having a negative effect, and racial diversity having no significant effect, net of other factors. The paper concludes with a call for treating community resilience as a matter of enhancing local organizing capacity over centralized planning efforts when the environment is rapidly changing.

Economic Effects on Million Dollar Giving

This study investigates the impact of economic conditions on the number of charitable gifts of 1 million dollars or more within the United States using the Million Dollar List (MDL) data set. We investigate key donor types—individuals, corporations, and foundations—using quarterly data. Results indicate that individual donors are significantly responsive to underlying economic conditions, foundation giving tends to be countercyclical, and corporate giving is less closely linked with aggregate macroeconomic conditions. We also find that economic conditions vary in their influence on million dollar giving to subsectors, and gifts to public benefit and human services organizations increase significantly during periods of recession, holding other factors constant. In contrast, million dollar giving to arts and education organizations is significantly associated with favorable economic conditions, holding other factors constant. Findings have direct implications for philanthropists, fundraisers, and policy makers as they seek to understand how economic conditions affect large gifts.

Volunteers as Boundary Workers: Negotiating Tensions Between Volunteerism and Professionalism in Nonprofit Organizations

This article employs a boundary work framework to analyze how volunteers from two nonprofit human services organizations navigated the tensions between volunteerism and professionalism. Based on interview data and analysis of organizational documents, the study found that volunteers at the first organization, fundraisers for child health promotion and parent education, dichotomized volunteerism and professionalism as incompatible social systems with divergent objectives, practices, and tools. Volunteers at the second organization, which provides emergency ambulance services, engaged in constant boundary crossing, oscillating between a volunteer and professional approach to tasks and relationships depending on the context. In both cases, paid staff and members of the public affected participants’ ability to engage in boundary work. The study offers insights for nonprofit organizations wishing to professionalize their volunteer workforce by specifying how volunteer job types, organizational structure, and interactional partners’ feedback impact volunteers’ ability to engage in boundary crossing, passing, and boundary spanning.