What type of nonprofit organization is preferred in government contracting in China?
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852319862347 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
What type of nonprofit
organization is preferred
in government
contracting in China?
Qiang Dong
China Agricultural University, China
Jiahuan Lu
Rutgers University-Newark, USA
Abstract
Government contracting with nonprofit organizations in service delivery has become a
widespread practice in the public administration landscape. This research explores
what kinds of nonprofits are more likely to receive government funding for service
delivery. Viewing nonprofits’ pursuit of government funding as an interorganizational
effort, we examine the contextual and organizational factors that influence nonprofits’
receipt of government funding. Using the data collected from a nationwide survey of
Chinese nonprofits, we find a close contractual relationship between government and
nonprofits. Further analysis suggests that policy advocacy, board co-optation, external
competition, and organizational formalization have positive impacts on leveraging gov-
ernment funding, while interorganizational collaboration and organizational profession-
alization do not appear to play a significant role. To our knowledge, this study repre-
sents the first nationwide survey research on government–nonprofit contracting in
China. The findings expand the literature by adding new empirical evidence from an
authoritarian context.
Points for practitioners
This study examines the contextual and organizational factors affecting Chinese
nonprofit organizations’ receipt of purchase-of-service contracts from government.
Corresponding author:
Jiahuan Lu, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University-Newark,
111 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102, USA.
Email: jiahuan.lu@rutgers.edu
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2021, Vol. 87(2) 328–346
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852319862347
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
The results indicate that nonprofit organizations engaging in more policy advocacy
activities, having more people with government working experience on governing
boards, facing stronger competition in resource acquisition and ser vice delivery from
operating environments, and embracing more formal structures and procedures in
organizational operations would receive more government contracts.
Keywords
Chinese nonprofit sector, government contracting, government funding, government–
nonprofit relations
Introduction
In recent decades, third-party government has become a widespread governance
model in many countries (Salamon, 1995). Indeed, since the New Public
Management reform in the 1980s, governments have changed their approach to
public service provision (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). In many cases, instead of
providing services directly to citizens, governments employ financial mechanisms
such as contracts and grants to fund nonprofit organizations to serve citizens. As a
result, there is growing government funding of nonprofit activities in service deliv-
ery. Government thus becomes an important funder of the nonprofit sector.
According to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Haddock’s (2017) estimate, among the
41 countries in their study, government funding accounts for an average of approx-
imately 35% of nonprofit sector revenue.
This significant funding relationship between government and nonprofits has
received substantial attention. Previous studies have examined various aspects of
this contractual relationship but with a focus on how public administrators
manage the relationship in order to ensure high-quality outcomes and how non-
profits manage the relationship to advance their missions (e.g. Haque, 2004; Kettl,
1993; Lee, 2012; Lu, 2016; Mosley, 2012; Van Slyke, 2003). One question in this
strand of research that has yet to be well studied is what kinds of nonprofits are
more likely to receive government funding.
1
A small body of literature has
explored this question, identifying a number of organizational and environmental
factors such as nonprofits’ board size, bureaucratic orientations, overhead costs,
and niche location (e.g. Ashley and Van Slyke, 2012; Garrow, 2011; Lu, 2015;
Stone et al., 2001; Sua
´rez, 2011). However, the findings in the existing literature are
still inconsistent and have thus not been sufficient to provide a systematic under-
standing. Moreover, existing studies mostly focus on government–nonprofit con-
tracting in Western countries, with less attention paid to the non-Western context.
Thus, our existing knowledge might not be fully applicable to non-Western soci-
eties. It is these intellectual gaps that served as the motivation for our study.
The present study expands the existing literature by identifying the contextual
and organizational factors affecting nonprofits’ receipt of government funding in
Dong and Lu 329
To continue reading
Request your trial