Still hold aloft the banner of social change? Nonprofit advocacy in the wave of commercialization
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852319879979 |
| Author | Chao Guo,Zhibin Zhang |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Still hold aloft the
banner of social change?
Nonprofit advocacy
in the wave of
commercialization
Zhibin Zhang
Flinders University, Australia
Chao Guo
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Nonprofit organizations worldwide are increasingly seeking commercial means of
financing. Would commercialization compromise the civic functions of nonprofit organ-
izations, especially their policy advocacy efforts for social change? In this article, we
address this profound concern by examining policy advocacy by commercialized non-
profits in Singapore. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach in
theory building, this study identifies multiple causal configurations of organizational and
environmental conditions under which nonprofit organizations can still maintain a high
level of advocacy activities in the wave of commercialization. The configurational theory
that this study develops sheds new light on our understanding of the causal complexity
underlying nonprofit advocacy and informs decision-making on how to uphold non-
profit civic functions in the commercializing context.
Points for practitioners
This study shows that the level of nonprofit participation in policy advocacy is caused by
the conjunctural effect of multiple conditions. Therefore, to maintain a high level of
civic-oriented functions in the worldwide wave of commercialization, nonprofit
Corresponding author:
Zhibin Zhang, Social Science South 328, Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Australia.
Email: zhibin.zhang@flinders.edu.au
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852319879979
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
2021, Vol. 87(4) 925–943
organizations should combine and align multiple environmental factors and organiza-
tional attributes into configurations to create the needed synergistic effects for active
engagement in advocacy. In particular, incorporating high levels of collaboration
between nonprofits, representation, board leadership, and service commitment into
these causal configurations is the key mechanism that would enable commercialized
nonprofits to still hold aloft the banner of social change through advocacy efforts.
Keywords
commercialization, configurational approach, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis,
nonprofit advocacy, Singapore
Introduction
Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) worldwide have been undergoing a remarkable
transformation of commercialization (Maier et al., 2016; Weisbrod, 1998). Facing
fiscal pressures, NPOs are increasingly seeking commercial means of financing, as
reflected in the substantial increase of program service fees and sales income as a
source of revenue. There are growing concerns about this overall trend. Some
scholars warn that commercialization might put NPOs in heightened danger of
losing touch with their citizen base (Salamon et al., 1999; Young et al., 2012).
Would commercialization compromise the civic-oriented functions of the non-
profit sector? In particular, would the increasing reliance on commercial income
undermine policy advocacy, an essential civic function of NPOs? Little scholarly
attention has been paid to answer these significant questions. This research aims to
fill this gap by examining nonprofit advocacy activities in the context of NPO
commercialization in Singapore. We follow a configurational approach in theory
building to explain how configurations of various environmental conditions and
organizational characteristics would enable NPOs to still maintain high advocacy
efforts after commercialization. The configurational approach or qualitative com-
parative analysis (QCA) is a set-theoretic method to identify causal pathways that
lead to a specific outcome (Fiss, 2007; Misangyi et al., 2017; Ragin, 2008). In this
research, we will use the QCA to capture multiple causal configurations contrib-
uting to a high level of nonprofit advocacy.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. The second section presents a
brief background description of nonprofit commercialization in Singapore. The
third section comprises a comprehensive literature review on nonprofit advocacy,
with a special focus on the impact of commercialization on nonprofit civic func-
tions, which informs our research propositions. The fourth section outlines the
research methods and describes the calibration of raw data into fuzzy sets. The
fifth section reports the results of the fuzzy-set analysis and discusses the implica-
tions. Finally, the sixth section concludes.
926 International Review of Administrative Sciences 87(4)
To continue reading
Request your trial