arnova call for papers now extended to April 1, 2013

ARNOVA (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action) has extended its submission deadline to April 1, 2013.

“ARNOVA’s 42nd Annual Conference 2013 Call for Participation

Recession, Renewal, Revolution? Nonprofit and Voluntary Action in an Age of Turbulence
Marriott Hartford Downtown ● Hartford, Connecticut ● November 21-23, 2013

Since the late 2000s, the world has become a constant changing and turbulent place. Economic crises have arisen across the globe, creating high levels of need at a time when public and philanthropic dollars are becoming scarcer. Advances in technology and communication have facilitated social movements, challenging and even bringing down governments from Wall Street to Cairo. People come together for causes across boundaries-gathering internationally and virtually to try to address wicked problems such as climate change, individual rights, and poverty. In a world that is facing constant change and weathering these turbulent forces, it is important for scholars to reflect on how have nonprofit organizations, NGOs, social movements, and other forms of voluntary action been affected by the economic and social turbulence of the past five years?

see you at ess in Boston, March 21-24, 2013

Going to Eastern Sociological Society (ESS) annual meeting in Boston on Thur., March 21 through Sun., March 24? Details about the ESS conference are available here.

Here’s a special plug for a “conversation” between senior scholars about organizations:

3:30-5pm, Fri., March 22, 2013
156.Organizations and Societal Resilience: How Organizing Practices Can Either Inhibit or Enable Sustainable Communities Conversation
Whittier Room (4th Flr)
Organizer:Katherine Chen, City University of New York
Presider: Katherine Chen, City University of New York
Discussants: George Ritzer, University of Maryland
Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis University

Here are several examples of other panels and presentations relevant to orgtheory:

arnova 2013 call for participation

Those of you who are doing research on nonprofit organizations or voluntary associations might be interested in the following conference hosted by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA).

“ARNOVA’s 42nd Annual Conference

2013 Call for Participation

Recession, Renewal, Revolution?

Nonprofit and Voluntary Action in an Age of Turbulence

Marriott Hartford Downtown ● Hartford, Connecticut ● November 21-23, 2013

Since the late 2000s, the world has become a constant changing and turbulent place. Economic crises have arisen across the globe, creating high levels of need at a time when public and philanthropic dollars are becoming scarcer. Advances in technology and communication have facilitated social movements, challenging and even bringing down governments from Wall Street to Cairo. People come together for causes across boundaries-gathering internationally and virtually to try to address wicked problems such as climate change, individual rights, and poverty. In a world that is facing constant change and weathering these turbulent forces, it is important for scholars to reflect on how have nonprofit organizations, NGOs, social movements, and other forms of voluntary action been affected by the economic and social turbulence of the past five years?

Jessica Sowa & Chao Guo

Conference Co-Chairs

Calendar of Key Dates:

PAPER SUBMISSION OPENS: February 26, 2013

PAPER SUBMISSION CLOSES: March 26, 2013 at midnight Eastern Time

NOTIFICATION OF SELECTION/REJECTION: June 1, 2013

IMPORTANT: Only current ARNOVA members can submit a paper for consideration. Please log into the ARNOVA Membership Database at www.arnova.org no later than February 18 to ensure that your membership is active and your information is up to date (especially your email address). Should you have any problems logging in, please contact your Membership Services Coordinator, Rosalind Conners at rconners [at] arnova [dot] org.”

Learn more about ARNOVA sections here.
Learn about support for emerging scholars and doctoral students, as well as awards here.

participatory democracy in the mainstream

Francesca Polletta has a really nice essay in Contemporary Sociology in which she reviews several new-ish books about participatory democracy and how its practiced in different organizational settings. One of the books she takes up in the essay is by our co-blogger Katherine Chen and another is by former guest blogger, Daniel Kreiss.  In her essay Polletta makes the point that participatory democracy as a mechanism for collective governance has gone mainstream. A variety of actors now use participatory democracy in their organizational forms, from online activism to political campaigns to for-profit business. Although the practices used to implement participatory democratic processes vary across settings, they all embrace the principle that “decisions [should be] made by the people affected by them.” It is typically associated with nonhierarchical leadership and collective deliberation.

The essay is well worth reading. One of the issues that comes up whenever we talk about participatory democracy is its sustainability as a governance mechanism. Can an organization grow and maintain its participatory processes? The political theorist Roberto Michels thought that the answer was no.  He argued that as radical political organizations grew in scale and scope they faced internal pressures toward bureaucratization and oligarchy. The inevitable outcome of the oligarchization process was that once radical organizations became captured by careerists with a more conservative agenda.  Organizational scholars have assumed that these internal pressures are overpowering.

Although Polletta doesn’t address Michel’s hypothesis directly in her essay, she suggests that some organizations are learning to deal with these internal pressures. Experience and learning from others has helped organizations develop better processes and ways of dealing with pressures to bureaucratize.

2013 Penn Summer Fellows Program (for doctoral students)

Speaking of developing professional and intellectual ties with colleagues, here’s a great opportunity for doctoral students to meet and work alongside colleagues who are working on “nonprofit organizations, voluntary action, philanthropy and international civil society.”

This summer program is led by UPenn Prof. Peter Frumkin, whose publications include On Being Nonprofit (Harvard University Press, 2002), Serving Country and Community: Who Benefits from National Service (co-authored with JoAnn Jastrzab, Harvard, 2010), The Essence of Strategic Giving: A Practical Guide for Donors and Fundraisers (University of Chicago Press, 2010), and The Strategic Management of Charter Schools (co-authored with Bruno Manno and Nell Edgington, Harvard Education Press 2011).

“Apply now for the 2013 Penn Summer Fellows Program

The University of Pennsylvania’s Nonprofit Leadership (NPL) Program invites doctoral students everywhere to apply for the 2013 Penn Summer Fellowship Program.

Facilitated by Peter Frumkin, Professor of Social Policy and Director of Penn’s NPL Program, the seminar will explore emerging issues in the world of nonprofit organizations, voluntary action, philanthropy and international civil society. The program will be held June 3-28, 2013 at The University of Pennsylvania. Students are expected to submit a draft research paper that they would like to refine and prepare for publication during the program. Housing in Philadelphia near the Penn campus and $3,000 stipends are provided to all Summer Fellows.

grassroots activism and non-profits

Last week, I gave a brief talk at ARNOVA, the academic association of non-profit scholars. Our friend, Katherine Chen, asked me to speak about Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, and other recent movements.

My talk focused on a few simple points that deserve further thought:

• First, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) represents a rejection of traditional progressive organizing. Throughout the 20th century, a lot of left social movements have worked through big organizations – unions, NAACP, the National Women’s Party, etc.
• Second, the Tea Party represents the first major conservative movement in American history to happen completely within the Republican party. Tea Party sympathizers are overwhelmingly Republican, Tea Party orgs were started by GOP PACS.
• Third, the Arab Spring represents a sort of melding on for-profit and non-profit spaces. Facebook and twitter aren’t just electronic message boards. It’s a “place” where activism was planned in a space of relative safety. And remember, Facebook is a for-profit group.

Add your own view on the link between recent movements and the non-profit form in the comments.

Great books, great prices: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

non-profit research in b-schools

Question: Which b-schools are strong in scholars who study non-profits?

Adverts: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

book spotlight: philanthropy in america by olivier zunz

Students of orgtheory should like Philanthropy in America by Olivier Zunz, a well known American historian at the Unviersity of Virginia. PiA is a comprehensive overview of the non-profit sector in America. If I teach a graduate course on the non-profit sector, I’d definitely put this on the reading list. You would be hard pressed to find another  book that so deftly conveys the ups and downs of the non-profit world. It’s a nice compliment to more social science approaches like The Non-Profit Handbook that focus on questions that economists and sociologists would ask.

Much of the material will be familiar to students of the non-profit sector, especially the chapters on post-war philanthropy. We get a chapter on the 1969 tax reform act. The various approaches to philanthropy over the years get a lot of coverage (e.g., civil rights oriented charity vs. Cold War era programs of the 1950s). PiA also has some material on the most recent wave of philanthropy driven by the new superwealthy, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

What orgtheory readers will find most rewarding is the emphasis on the changing nature of the state-non-profit relationship. Zunz correctly points out that Americans have never exactly sorted out how they feel about the non-profits. Sometimes, non-profits are treated as central actors in American social policy. At other time, Americans view philanthropists as wealthy meddlers.

No where is this more apparent than in a highly instructive chapter about the 1920s. Hoover, contrary to popular wisdom, did not respond to the great depression by ignoring people and relying on the free market, though he did engage in laissez-faire rhetoric. Instead, Hoover believed in strong Federal intervention in the economy, but he wanted much of the effort channeled through philanthropic organizations. It’s a view that is not common now, but it might be called “local charities/national direction.” FDR also believed in having a strong welfare state, but his approach was to exclude private third parties and administer relief programs directly through the state.

Overall, a solid book that will lead to more insight into the evolution of the non-profit sector.

Adverts: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

conference for orgtheory in developing regions

Writing from the home office in Switzerland, Tim draws my attention to a conference for management PhD scholars interested in development. From the call for papers for the UNDP Development Academy:

The oikos UNDP Young Scholars Development Academy 2012 provides PhD students and young scholars working on poverty, sustainable development, and the informal economy from an Organisation and Management Theory perspective a platform to present and discuss their on-going research projects with fellow students and senior faculty.

Research on inclusive business models, market development and sustainability between the informal and formal economy is a promising and challenging field for young researchers and PhD students. It calls for a multitude of methods, combination of disciplines in strategy, organisation studies, sociology, anthropology and economics, and new research designs, e.g. market ethnography in organisation studies.

Great opportunity for orgtheory PhD students and tenure track/post docs. Check it out.

Adverts: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz

voluntary associations in the U.S.

With all of the talk and debate about nonprofits, it seems like an opportune time to share a book review I’ve written about Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America’s Political Past and Present by Elisabeth Clemens and Doug Guthrie.

Voluntary associations play a vital, although sometimes not very visible, role in American society as engines of innovation in political and civic life. Associations create much of the fabric that weaves social life together, whether through generating social capital by linking people to others in their community or by constructing identities around which people organize and find meaning. Yet, for all their importance, voluntary associations often receive the short end of the stick in organization theory. Perhaps because they are seen as so different from firms as to need their own theories or because organizational scholars increasingly reside in business schools where there is more interest in for-profit organizations, voluntary associations have taken a backseat to firms as the focal unit in organizational theory. A negative side effect of ignoring associations in organizational theory, of course, is that we fail to fully understand the integrative role they play in society, linking the domains of market and state and serving as key nodes in civil society. The editors of this volume, Elisabeth Clemens and Doug Guthrie, have gathered a diverse and interdisciplinary set of scholarly voices to provide a rich overview of the organized nature of American voluntarism. The contributors emphasize that voluntary associations have historically been central players in the U.S. business and political worlds, and although the nature of voluntary associations has changed in recent years, their centrality has not waned.