Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Wellens, Lore
• Jegers, Marc

Titel

Beneficiary participation as an instrument of downward accountability: A multiple case study

Ist Teil von

• European management journal, 2014-12, Vol.32 (6), p.938-949

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

PAIS Index

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Multiple case study focusing on nonprofit organizations’ governance effectiveness.•Multiple case study focusing on beneficiaries’ participation in policymaking.•The perspectives of multiple nonprofit (NPO) stakeholders are taken into account.•The value of downward accountability mechanisms should not be overrated.•Insights are offered in how to improve beneficiary participation practices of NPOs. In this study, the focus is on nonprofit organizations’ (NPOs’) beneficiary participation mechanisms, a component of downward accountability, and surprisingly seldom studied in the NPO governance literature. We address this gap in a combined stakeholder/contingency framework by investigating, with a multiple case design, the perceived quality of beneficiary participation mechanisms (8 Belgian NPOs in 4 industries, 35 semi-structured interviews, 13 focus groups, organizational documents, and 713 questionnaires). The following conclusions can be drawn. In general, beneficiaries are recognized as very important stakeholders. Several of our observations document the positive image board, (middle) management and (nonpaid) employees have of beneficiary participation mechanisms in place. Also, all board members and managers are open to the idea of beneficiaries’/representatives’ participation in policy making. Other findings however indicate that their perceived value should not be overrated, especially when taking into consideration the perceptions of the beneficiaries themselves. From a theoretical point of view, it has become clear that a stakeholder theory without acknowledging interactions between stakeholder groups and their perceptions can only be partial. From an empirical point of view, we clearly demonstrate that surveying non-beneficiaries on NPOs’ organizational performance and the quality of participation mechanisms frequently results in measurement bias.