Day Conference Abstracts and Report

Abstracts

• Raymond Branton: Governance in the voluntary sector – recent MBA study findings

• Dr. James McKay: The DANGO project

• Dr. Eleanor Burt, Professor John Taylor: Revealing All? What Can  non-profits Websites Say About Democratic Engagement, Legitimacy, and Accountability? 

• Vladislav Valentinov: The market failure rationale for non–profit organisations revisited

Report from Pauline Munro, event host

I was delighted to host the VSSN day seminar on the 29th November at Glasgow Caledonian University. The range of abstracts promised a day of lively debate and certainly did not disappoint.

Our first presentation was undertaken by Raymond Branton who discussed his findings from his recently completed MBA dissertation which focused on effective governance, examining the roles of board members and volunteer trustees. This allowed several themes to be debated, such as the proposition that whilst the energy and enthusiasm of volunteer trustees is a key enabler for voluntary sector organisations it can also  paradoxically create a hindrance. This is of key importance given the key drivers of  ‘professionalisation’ and accountability which are considered to be fundamental to any voluntary sector organisations’ operational strategy.

This presentation was both interesting and informative allowing an examination of relevant issues, ensuring a wide ranging discussion.

The next presentation was made by James McKay, who introduced the audience to the DANGO project. This project is concerned with producing a database of NGOs which will be available to researchers, providing them with a central point from which to gather information. This presentation highlighted issues such as the complexities of having to categorise such a diverse range of NGOs as exist in the voluntary sector. In particular, a fundamental key issue for discussion was the difficulty encountered in attempting to provide a definitive definition of what constitutes an NGO. This is a key question which will no doubt continue for some time and provided a significant discussion point. Again, a very interesting and informative presentation.

After lunch we turned our attention to the cyberspace activities of voluntary sector organisations. The presentation by Eleanor Burt and John Taylor gave us an insight into how voluntary sector organisations use their websites to stimulate democratic engagement. Additionally, websites have been increasingly used as a method of transparency, where organisational strategy, structure and activities can be presented for public scrutiny. It was therefore surprising to hear that web activity does not often reflect this, particularly in terms of encouraging engagement. Another interesting aspect of this presentation was the opportunity to examine and discuss the authors’ conceptual framework which sets out to provide a robust instrument by which to measure the key themes of citizen engagement, legitimacy and accountability. This presentation certainly provided food for thought.

Our final presentation of the day was undertaken by Vladislav Valentinov. This presentation provided us with a re-examination of currently accepted economic theory regarding market failure and non-profits. The first major challenge centred around how non-profit organisations are often assigned to a secondary role in terms of the mechanics of market failure. This is further complicated by a lack of recognition for the organisation’s identity. These two factors were further explained with the author providing his rationale for deconstructing these concepts and formulating what was felt to be a more representative alternative. As before, this triggered an interesting discussion which produced many talking points.

Vladislav Valentinov: The market failure rationale for non–profit organisations revisited

The market failure rationalization of non-profit organisation has been confronted with two criticisms. First, it ignores the institutional identity of non-profit firms because for-profit firms also arise as reactions to market failures. Second, it assigns only a secondary role to non-profit firms compared to for-profit ones, since it defines the rationale of the former in terms of what cannot be achieved by the latter. This paper develops arguments against these criticisms. It responds to the first criticism by highlighting differences in the ways for-profit and  non-profit firms address market failures. Specifically, whereas for-profit firms address market failures based on their advantages over market organisation in processing information and aligning incentives, non-profit firms make the production of goods and services that are undersupplied due to market failures the object of  non-profit managers nonmonetary preferences. However, recognizing that market failures and the relevant nonmonetary preferences exist independently of each other implies that these preferences do not always require the occurrence of market failure in order to be gratified through  non-profit firms. This amounts to defining the rationale for some  non-profit firms independently of the performance of for-profit ones, thereby permitting to reject the second criticism as well.

About the Author 

Vladislav is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe in Halle, Germany. His main interest is the role of the third sector in rural development in Central European Countries.

Dr. James McKay: The DANGO project

This paper considers the problems researchers encounter when dealing with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), drawing on the experience of the Database of Archives of UK Non-Governmental Organisations since 1945 (DANGO www.dango.bham.ac.uk) based at the University of Birmingham.  It introduces and demonstrates the uses of the database, an AHRC funded project designed to enhance and add to the available resources for NGO researchers, which is currently under development.

The paper also explores the advantages and problems of existing concepts of NGOs, in the light of the experience of the project, and explain the project’s approach to selection and classification.

The second half of the paper surveys the existing historical and sociological literature on NGOs and social activism, identifying and offering a critique of the dominant trends, and suggest possible directions for future research. 

About the Author

James McKay completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2005, on ‘Labour party attitudes to European integration, 1945-1975’.  Since November 2005 James has been the project officer at DANGO.

Dr. Eleanor Burt, Professor John Taylor: Revealing All? What Can  non-profits Websites Say About Democratic Engagement, Legitimacy, and Accountability?

The re-positioning of non-profit organisations as democratic actors in the UK and internationally is bringing to the foreground important questions about how these organisations engage within the polity. These questions become even more significant as Internet and Web-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) bring forward opportunities for engagement that are of unprecedented scale, scope, and immediacy (Taylor and Burt, 2005; Cammaerts and Van Audenhove, 2003; Bimber, 1998; Keck and Sikkink, 1998). Our paper examines key aspects of the democratic engagement of  non-profit actors in relation to their developing Internet and Web-based capabilities. Against this backcloth we ask two key questions. Firstly, what, potentially, can  non-profit websites reveal about an organisation’s commitment to citizen engagement within the polity, its legitimacy as a democratic actor, and its accountability within the polity? Secondly, what is revealed in practice within five leading ‘campaigning’  non-profits?

Web-based capabilities are strategically significant as they afford new opportunities to  non-profits firstly for enhanced citizen-engagement and secondly for public demonstration of legitimacy and accountability. Thus, in theory, these web-based capabilities are potentially facilitative of ‘strong democracy’ based upon informed and reflective debate, affective commitment, and active engagement, within the public sphere (Barber, 2003; Dewey, 1927; Habermas, 1984, 1989). Moreover, for  non-profits seeking to enhance public perceptions of their legitimacy and accountability websites can make available to citizens a form of ‘x-ray’ vision (Taylor, 1998) into mission, values, strategy, and other organisational arrangements.

Grounded in the empirical examination of five leading UK-based campaigning  non-profit organisations we set out a multi-level conceptual framework in the form of an ‘ideal type’, that enables the systematic, comparative examination of  non-profit websites along the key democratic dimensions of citizen engagement, legitimacy and accountability.

About the Authors

Dr Eleanor Burt is senior lecturer in  non-profit policy and management, School of Management, University of St Andrews. She is a regular contributor to academic and professional journals in her field and has been invited to give evidence to independent commissions on the  non-profit sector and review bodies including the UK Government’s Regulatory Impact Unit, The Cabinet Office.

John Taylor is Professor of Government and Information Management, Caledonian Business School, Glasgow and & Research Associate, The Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He has contributed extensively to debate within forms of digital government and democracy at both academic and practitioner levels. His most recent work, funded under the auspices of the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council examines ‘identity management systems’ in forms of e-government. He is Editor in Chief of the international journal Information Polity.

Raymond Branton: Governance in the voluntary sector – recent MBA study findings

This paper explores governance within the Scottish voluntary sector and assesses the effectiveness of Boards and Trustees. It identifies that there is much debate but little empirical research, regarding voluntary sector governance responsibilities, models, Board recruitment and skills, cases of governance failures and the resultant increase in legislation and tighter regulation of the sector.

This paper shows that there is a clear interdependence of factors affecting voluntary sector governance and two thematic groupings emerged. These were the voluntary nature of Trustees within the sector and the size and corresponding capacity of organisations to govern effectively.  

The paper reaches the following conclusions:-

1.      There is a relationship between the use of volunteers as trustees and the problems evident in voluntary sector governance and that, although volunteer Trustees are essential to the ethos and structure of the sector, their lack of experience, skills and knowledge are one of the sector’s main weaknesses.

2.      Increasing professionalisation of the sector has contributed to the effectiveness of voluntary sector governance but this has been disproportionately in favour of larger organisations at the expense of small.

About the Author

Raymond Branton has worked in the voluntary sector since the age of 15 and has experienced a wide range of settings and sectors, including pre-school childcare, youth work, playschemes, residential/homelessness, streetwork, advice and counselling. Following Community Education training at Moray House in Edinburgh, Raymond worked as Assistant Director of West Lothian Youth Theatre for 7 years including spells as a freelance theatre director. Raymond is currently General Manager of Broxburn Family and Community Development Centre having spent 9 years with the organisation and is also a Trustee of a local CVS. Raymond has recently completed an MBA at Glasgow Caledonian University and is particularly interested in the areas of social enterprise and of governance.