โ Scribed by Mary Ellen S. Capek
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
and Philadelphia-organizations that spanned the sectors of health, arts and culture, education, family/human services, youth/recreation, united charities, membership, and community foundations. In the first book-length analysis of findings from the project, authors Rikki Abzug and Jeffrey Simonoff have written a tour de force whose self-described goal is "to explore the institutional impact of time period, city/region, industry, faith/religion base, and organizational bureaucratic structure (board size) on trustee demographics, social, educational, and occupational eliteness, networks, and board structure."
The authors begin with a comprehensive overview of organizational research and theory, especially as it applies to boards. Then using "neo-institutional" theory, they lay out field research for each "environmental" area they are exploring for its impact on nonprofit boards. In structuring the book as they have, the authors aim, first, to provide baseline explications of their data (and the range of other research in these areas) and, second, to test applications of "information-theoretic" analyses to social sciencehoping to yield robust modeling for trustee functioning. Without taking sides in an ongoing "effectiveness" debate (do effective boards make for effective nonprofit organizations or the converseand what constitutes "effectiveness"?), the authors posit both the importance of boards in civil society and the importance of understanding how the context of selected environments impacts board functioning.
What do the authors conclude? Context matters. Noting that most generalizing trends are "hard to come by in understanding
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