The Nexus of Public and Nonprofit Management

Abstract

The fields of public administration and nonprofit management have experienced convergence over the past decades, particularly as academic programs, conferences, and journals in public administration have increasingly embraced nonprofit management. Given the significance of this development, the lack of a formal theoretical basis for convergence is surprising and potentially problematic. This article attempts to formalize such a basis by expositing the shared constitutive features of public and nonprofit management. These features include social goods provision, outcome ambiguity, delegation, and surplus nondistribution. Analysis of these features—and consideration of alternative explanations—demonstrates that a consolidated field of “public and nonprofit management” may be warranted by definite theoretical principles. The existence of this theoretical basis may provide stakeholders with opportunities to approach and manage the process of convergence more strategically.

Keywords:

• accountability
• nonprofit management
• organizational effectiveness
• participation
• public administration

Notes

1 Under the principle of nonexcludability, once provided the good is available to everyone in society and no one can be excluded from its enjoyment. Nonrivalrous goods are distinguished by the fact that one person’s consumption of the good does not impair the ability of others to consume the good. According to Lohmann (1989, p. 374): “The economic objective of joint action in the commons is the creation of common goods, which includes such phenomena as religious worship, contemplation, scientific inquiry, helping and charity, artistic expression, play, and many other desirable projects of voluntary-action groups. These common goods are easily and readily distinguished from both market commodities and public goods. Exclusion is typically possible with common goods, and they are, therefore, unlike public goods. However, since both the costs and the benefits of common goods accrue to pluralities without division, they are not private goods either. Further, because they do not involve large numbers of buyers and sellers and any known or recognizable price mechanism, they cannot be considered market goods without resort to extraordinary theoretical devices or deus ex machina.”

2 See Benson, 2017.

3 In addition, perceptions about the nature of goods are socially constructed and traditional theories of public administration may be ill-equipped in analyzing processes that shape our understanding of goods and who provides them (Jun, 2007).

4 Thus, mutual benefit associations are excluded from analysis.

5 For example, the Preamble to the United States Constitution establishes the provision of enumerated social goods as the purpose of the government, specifically, “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue code defines the nonprofit with a similar enumeration of social goods. Nonprofits include organizations established “for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition … , or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals.” The constitutive purposes of the government and of nonprofit organizations are unambiguously tantamount to the production of social goods.

6 This may be due to philanthropic inefficiency, particularism, paternalism, and amateurism (Salamon, 1987).

7 Although public charities are technically private organizations, unlike businesses they are legally required to provide social or public benefits rather than private benefits.

8 We thank the anonymous reviewers for raising these important points.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George E. Mitchell

George E. Mitchell is an associate professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College. Before joining the Marxe School he held an appointment as an assistant professor at the Colin Powell School at the City College of New York and was a founding member of the Transnational NGO Initiative at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. His research examines topics in NGO and nonprofit management, leadership, and strategy, and appears in journals of NGO and nonprofit studies, public administration, and international relations.

Hans Peter Schmitz

Hans Peter Schmitz is an associate professor in the Department of Leadership Studies at the University of San Diego. He is the co-founder of the Transnational NGO Initiative at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. His research interests include international non-governmental organizations, rights-based approaches to development, and global efforts to address noncommunicable diseases.