Understanding What It Means to Be Business-Like in the Nonprofit Sector: Toward a Communicative Explanation

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations experience a significant dilemma: whether they are and/or should be business-like. Yet scholars know too little about how nonprofit practitioners themselves respond to and enact this tension. Through in-depth interviews, findings indicate that although nonprofit leaders claimed that their organizations were like businesses, they carefully constructed the meaning of “business-like” as compatible with and in service of their nonprofit mission. These findings support and extend previous ethnographic research and strengthen a communicative explanation of what it means to be business-like in nonprofit work.

Keywords::

• Business-Like
• Communicative Explanation
• Nonprofit

The authors would like to thank Dr. Matthew Koschmann and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on this manuscript.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew L. Sanders

Matthew L. Sanders (PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2008) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Utah State University, 0720 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322. E-mail: [email protected]

Lauren Harper

Lauren Harper (BA, Utah State University, 2013) was an undergraduate researcher in the Department of Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies at Utah State University. E-mail: [email protected]

Matthew Richardson

Matthew Richardson (BA, Utah State University, 2011) was an undergraduate researcher in the Department of Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies at Utah State University. E-mail: [email protected]