Throughout the book the author discusses the creation of public value, one of the primary differences between the business community and nonprofit and governmental organizations. The topic of this discussion is how nonprofit and government organizations define and measure what they are doing, that is, what they are contributing to the common good. I have included links to an earlier (2001) article, “Strategic Performance Management and Management in Nonprofit Organizations,” by Robert Kaplan whose work has directed, to a large degree, the research agenda on nonprofit performance measurement (including his own later research) and a “call for papers” on the creation of public value that gives a sense of the complexity of and unanswered questions in this area. Rather than have you get mired in the intricacies of each work, my purpose here is to provide a resource for this discussion and give you a sense of the literature on the challenges that nonprofits face in creating and measuring the value they create. “Strategic Performance Management and Management in Nonprofit Organizations” Opens in a new window “Creating Public Value in a Multi-Sector, Shared-Power World”
1. How do nonprofit organizations differ from for-profit organizations? This is deceptively simple and you may need to do a bit of research. 2. What does “public value” mean and what problems do nonprofit and/or governmental organizations face in creating and measuring it? Keep in mind that, even within the nonprofit sector, there is a wide divergence of types of organizations from major universities, hospitals and foundations that rely on multiple funding sources and have few or no volunteers to small neighborhood organizations that rely on volunteers and individual donors. Their perspectives about what constitutes public value vary greatly; yet, they all have an obligation to their constituencies that, under the law, constitutes public value.
PART 2: The following three short newspaper articles suggest that we cannot really expect too much from corporate America in solving social problems. They provide a good reality check on who will and will not solve social problems. Corporate Efforts to Address Social Problems Have Limits http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/business/economy/corporate-efforts-to-address-social-problems-have-limits.html C.E.O.s Are Qualified to Make Profits, Not Lead Society https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/business/ceos-profits-shareholders.html?searchResultPosition=1 Microsoft Cannot Solve Seattle’s Housing Crisis https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opinion/microsoft-seattle-housing.html This next article provides a new way of thinking about how the nonprofit sector might organize to solve social problems. Stecker, Michelle.”Revolutionizing the Nonprofit Sector Through Social Entrepreneurship.” Journal of Economic Issues, Jun 2014, Vol. 48 Issue 2, p349-358, 10p http://Perma Link: http://library.esc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=96328295&site=eds-live Please discuss the concept of social entrepreneurship. Will it work?
