The Institutional Grammar: A Method for Coding Institutions and its Potential for Advancing Third Sector Research

Institutions—defined as strategies, norms and rules (Ostrom Understanding institutional diversity, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005)—are omnipresent in third sector contexts. In this paper, we present the Institutional Grammar (IG) as a theoretically informed approach to support institutional analysis in third sector research. More specifically, the IG coding syntax allows the researcher to systematically wade through rich text and (transcribed) spoken language to identify and dissect institutional statements into finer syntactical segments of interest to the researcher. It is a versatile method that can generate data for small- or large-N research projects and can be integrated with mixed-method research designs. After first introducing and describing the IG, we present a case study to illustrate how a IG-based syntactic analysis can be leveraged to inform third sector research. In the case, we ask: Do the rules embedded in regulatory text addressing the involuntary dissolution of charity organizations differ between bifurcated and unitary jurisdictions in the United States? Using IG’s ABDICO 2.0 syntax, we identify eleven “Activation Condition” (AC) categories that trigger action and assess variation among the 46 jurisdictions. We ultimately conclude that the rules do not differ between bifurcated and unitary jurisdictions, but that finding is not the primary concern. The case demonstrates IG as an important methodological advance that yields granular, structured analyses of rules, norms and strategies in third sector settings that may be difficult to identify with other methods. We then emphasize four areas of third sector research that could benefit from the addition of IG-based methods: analysis of (1) rule compliance, (2) inter-organizational collaboration, (3) comparative study of institutional design, and (4) the study of institutional change. We close the paper with some reflections on where IG-based analysis is headed.

Interviewing Elite Donors: Gaining Access, Developing Rapport and Dealing with the Dazzle

Elite donors are a crucial and sought-after source of funding for many nonprofit organisations, but there is a dearth of substantive empirical studies presenting primary data on such donors’ motivations, experiences and perspectives. There are challenges for social scientists in conducting interviews with elites, notably: gaining access to elite donors; developing sufficient rapport to discuss a topic that involves money and morals; and making sense of data without being dazzled by striking surface differences between elites and non-elites. These barriers have resulted in a long-standing over-reliance on secondary sources and on interviews with proxies such as foundation staff and wealth advisers. This paper reviews the small body of work that presents findings from interviews with elite donors and draws on my experience of conducting interviews with 46 wealthy UK donors, in order to critically analyse the implementation of this research design. This paper adds to the literature by extending understanding of elite donors’ reasons for agreeing to be interviewed and contributes to advancing third sector research by highlighting strategies to overcome challenges in conducting elite interviews in order to gain a less mediated understanding of the contexts, cultures and subjectivities of their focus of study.

Ethnographies of Volunteering: Providing Nuance to the Links Between Volunteering and Development

This paper explores how ethnographic approaches to third sector and nonprofit studies allow for context-based understandings of the links between volunteering and development. Drawing from our ethnographies of volunteering in Sierra Leone, Burundi and the Philippines, we argue that ethnographic methods could tease out local ideologies and practices of volunteer work that can challenge knowledge monopolies over how volunteering is understood and, later, transcribed into development policy and practice at various levels. The contribution of ethnography as a methodology to third sector research lies not only in the in-depth data it generates but also in the kind of ethos and disposition it requires of scholars—providing attention to issues of power and voice and leaning into the unpredictability of the research process.

Taking subjectivity and reflexivity seriously: Implications of social constructionism for researching volunteer motivation

© 2016, International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University. This paper explores the contributions a social constructionist paradigm can make for researching volunteer motivation, by reflecting on an active membership study of volunteer netball coaches at a New Zealand high school. Social constructionism is based on philosophical assumptions which differ from those of positivism and post-positivism, the dominant paradigms for understanding and representing volunteer motivation. It highlights the social processes through which people give meaning to their motives and view researchers as necessarily implicated in this meaning-making process. Through a critique of the extant literature on volunteer motivation and an illustration of the insights of social constructionism from our empirical study, we consider how volunteer motivation research could be different if subjectivity and reflexivity were taken more seriously.

Taking subjectivity and reflexivity seriously: Implications of social constructionism for researching volunteer motivation

© 2016, International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University. This paper explores the contributions a social constructionist paradigm can make for researching volunteer motivation, by reflecting on an active membership study of volunteer netball coaches at a New Zealand high school. Social constructionism is based on philosophical assumptions which differ from those of positivism and post-positivism, the dominant paradigms for understanding and representing volunteer motivation. It highlights the social processes through which people give meaning to their motives and view researchers as necessarily implicated in this meaning-making process. Through a critique of the extant literature on volunteer motivation and an illustration of the insights of social constructionism from our empirical study, we consider how volunteer motivation research could be different if subjectivity and reflexivity were taken more seriously.