The concept of citizenship is used both as a synonym of social action when referencing to an active form of citizenship as well as to indicate a form of civic obligation (formal citizenship). According to these premises, citizenship can be formalized in a large number of activities that contribute to building it in different ways. The aim of the present work is to explore how the concepts of citizenship and being a citizen are co-built by Italian young adults. Two groups of young adults are considered (engaged vs. not engaged). Eighty-nine young adults participants aged 18–36 completed a self-administered mixed-method questionnaire. A content and thematic analysis was conducted and a composite representation of citizenship emerged. Results of the present work can clarify the concept of citizenship by exploring how it is cognitively and socially represented in young adults and how this representation changes in engaged and not engaged young adults.

Since 2011, a new mobilization strategy has emerged in the Beijing anti-domestic violence (ADV) movement: performance art public interest advocacy, consisting of live performances in public places for public audiences (A CDB special report, 2013). Drawing on the social movement literature, particularly concepts of political opportunity and mobilizing structure, framing strategy, and tactical innovation (Political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930–1970, 2nd edn, 1999; Dynamics of contention, 2001), this article investigates the following questions: What was the rationale behind the introduction of performance art advocacy into the tactical repertoire of Beijing ADV organizations, and what impact has this tactic had on the Beijing ADV movement? Based on content analysis of 14 semi-structured interviews with ADV movement activists and media reports, it will illustrate that this innovative strategy relied heavily on professional Beijing ADV organizations; performance art public interest advocacy broadened and mobilized the Beijing ADV movement to work toward improved legal protections against DV, triggered nationwide responses, and improved citizens’ awareness of DV.

In order to assess the accuracy of the figures reported in NPOs’ financial statements, I perform a digital analysis on Belgian non-profit organizations’ financial statements for accounting years 2007 up to 2012. Specifically, I compare observed frequencies for digits in the second-from-the-left position with expected frequencies based on Benford’s Law. Results based on the full sample indicate that observed frequencies strongly conform to Benford’s Law (and thus suggest a high degree of accuracy of the figures reported in NPOs’ financial statements). Nevertheless, I note statistically significant deviations from Benford’s Law (both for the entire distribution and at the individual digit level). The largest deviation is noted for zeroes in the second position (i.e., a significantly positive deviation), which can be explained based on humans’ reliance upon so-called cognitive reference points. Considering different sub-samples, I note that observed deviations from Benford’s Law are largest for the smallest non-profits and those non-profits that rely most heavily on grants and/or donations.

In recent years, social entrepreneurs in the third sector have played an increasingly important role in addressing societal problems. Despite their growing presence in civic society, little is known about how social entrepreneurs obtain the necessary skills, knowledge, and motivation to take on this role. This exploratory study empirically addresses this gap through 27 in-depth case studies of social entrepreneurial leaders of third-sector initiatives in Brazil. Findings show that the social entrepreneurs relied on a convergence of experiences including: direct experience with inequality, interaction with target populations, volunteer work, religious institutions, social activism, formal education, professional experience, reading, and intercultural interactions. The study also presents a nuanced understanding of how the interplay among life experiences and learning processes informed these third-sector leaders. Results are relevant to scholars and practitioners committed to fostering social entrepreneurship in the third sector.

The current study uses the Wukan protest as a case study to assert that the Chinese farmers involved in the incident demonstrated “instrumental civil rights consciousness” in their protest. Civil rights is a means by which farmers strive for their economic rights and not an end in itself. Without real “rights consciousness,” the Wukan protests resemble “institutionalized participation” more than “rightful resistance.” The grassroots elections and self-governance that have resulted from the protest are not so much a harbinger of the emergence of bottom-up civil society as top-down initiatives by the central government. The central government has incorporated opposing powers into the existing institution to adjust state–society relations. By using bottom-up institutionalized participation, the central government has managed to strengthen its supervision over local governments, fight corruption, and stabilize its authority.

This paper analyzes some aspects of the third sector’s involvement process in the provision of public social services. Using evidence garnered in previous research based on in-depth interviews, I offer elements toward an assessment of the consequences this process has produced not only in terms of the gains and losses it has produced for social policy, but also for the very identity and constitutive characteristics of the third sector. The evidence hereby compiled strengthens skepticism toward the hypothesis that sees a transformative potential in the role of the third sector in social policy in Latin America. This skepticism arises from issues detected by involved actors themselves and that are linked to the weakness of the sector as a whole.

This study explores the determinants of the low level of civic engagement in Ukraine. Applying the methodological framework of analytical sociology, we consider different social mechanisms that explain the weakness of the Ukrainian third sector. First, we discuss how the political system and economic performance of the country have shaped beliefs, values, and motives of people by creating the context for their actions. Second, we focus on different aspects of people’s experiences during the Soviet times to formulate a number of hypotheses concerning unwillingness of citizens to join CSOs. Analyzing the survey data of the years 2010 (beginning of Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency) and 2014 (survey conducted right after the “Euromaidan”), we argue that some specific features of Homo Sovieticus, such as passivity, absence of political identification, and reliance on informal networks negatively affect the propensity of people to participate in CSOs. These effects are complemented by disappointment with the post-Soviet transformation and low subjective social status. Based on the results of analyses, we formulate suggestions concerning possible ways of fostering the development of civil society in Ukraine.

Community currency systems are said to influence the revival of communities by promoting either local economic growth or social capital accumulation. However, no empirical studies have examined the multiple competing mechanisms for providing social support through transactional networks among participants. The current study connects network structural concepts to theories of social capital, transaction costs, homophily, and resource dependency at multiple levels and evaluates transactional relationships for community rebuilding and local economic development. We examine the evolutionary process of dynamic networks among local residents or organization members with network configurations in one of the largest Japanese community currency systems, “Peanuts.” Using longitudinal network data over 12 years for approximately 1400 actors, we conclude that the evolution and achievement of transactional network dynamics and partner selections differ between the two groups of participants: individual members and organization members. We also provide practical implications for sustaining participants’ transactions and commitment.

This article investigates how a start-up foundation can build its organisational social capital, meaning a network of strategic partnerships with other organisations based on trust relationships, in order to fulfil its mission. Based on a case study analysis of Fondazione Welfare Ambrosiano—an Italian foundation created in partnership with private organisations and local public institutions—we explored whether and how some characteristics of the social capital of the foundation’s members contributed to the organisational social capital. By applying Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (Acad Manag Rev 23(2):242–266, 1998) social capital framework, we discovered that the social capital configuration of the founders and staff, linked to some characteristics of the foundation, had driven the development of the organisational social capital. Our paper contributes to an understanding of what constitutes the best configuration of social capital to allow a start-up foundation to take off.

We examine the effect of participation in neighborhood association (NHA) activities on volunteering using the 2010 Japanese General Social Survey data. We find that controlling for established predictors of formal volunteering such as demographic and socioeconomic variables, NHA association participation, either operationalized as a dichotomous or interval variable, positively predicts volunteering. Moreover, some of the established predictors of volunteering (e.g., marital status and associational membership) are useful in predicting NHA participation. Our results indicate a complementary relationship between volunteering and NHA participation. We discuss implications of our study for future research on community volunteering in Japan and elsewhere.

This review surveys the state of research on nonprofit communication and collects and summarizes the resulting advice for nonprofit communication practice. The citations of research papers since 2000 were collected from standard bibliographic databases and selected bibliographies. The resulting collection of papers was summarized and synthesized into relevant themes and organized into five broad categories: (1) strategic planning, (2) management, (3) development, (4) outreach, and (5) accountability. From these broad themes, comparisons and contrasts arise between the research and current practice of nonprofit communications.

NGOs have taken up an increasing number of roles and responsibilities in Latin American societies. Based on a study of the multi-stakeholder platform, the Water Resources Forum in Ecuador, this paper shows how through the creation of a broad network of NGOs, academics, grassroots water users organizations and governmental actors; this platform has been able to contribute to the democratization of water governance. This paper analyses the international and national socio-political context in which this platform developed and traces the history and strategies that marked its development. Based on this, it argues that NGOs can play an important role in the development of more democratic and inclusive public policy making in water governance, but that the capacity of NGOs to bring about change greatly depends on the socio-political context and on the networks they are able to forge with grassroots organizations, state agencies, funders and other third sector actors.

This article tries to map the state of civic engagement in social governance at local level in China. Using case studies in Hangzhou, we find that civic engagement in China has not increased responsiveness to citizens’ appeals as predicted in democracy theories. In contrast, civic engagement degrades to a powerful tool for the government to rule the people, which we call the “alienation of civic engagement.” Institutional Isomorphism theory is evoked to explain this phenomenon. Based on the strength of regime stability and responsiveness to citizens’ appeals, civic engagement is categorized into four types: ceremonial civic engagement, substantial civic engagement, absorptive civic engagement, and propagandistic civic engagement. We show the discourses, participation behaviors, and participation outcomes of each type of civic engagement. We also demonstrate how the authoritarian government developed strategies for each type of civic engagement.

This paper examines the effects of practical and emotional social support to changes in personal and vocational wellbeing of employees and training participants of social purpose enterprises. This study finds that among participants with lower baseline optimism and self-esteem, those who found the practical social support from their organization to be more relevant to their work outcomes had significantly higher optimism and self-esteem at the time of the survey, compared to other low baseline participants who had assigned less importance to their work-centred practical support. Social support did not influence those with high baseline scores in optimism and self-esteem, or changes to self-efficacy and vocational identity. Implications on support intervention within social purpose enterprises and for the broader field of social enterprise research are discussed.

Historically Irish society has had a long tradition of grass roots voluntary community work. However, with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1990s, the Irish community and voluntary sector became increasingly subjected to government controls and restrictions. As a result, voluntary community work became more formally organised, centrally regulated and depoliticised. Such ‘organised voluntarism’ (Fye and Mulligan in Prog Hum Geogr 27:397–413, 2003) has since become part and parcel of contemporary community development initiatives in Ireland. While some UK research has explored the impact that this discursive and policy shift is having on volunteering, there is a dearth of Irish literature on this issue. This article presents an account of how and why this form of voluntarism took hold in contemporary Ireland. The establishment of Family Resource Centres in Ireland will be recalled and assessed to further illustrate the observations being made about organised voluntarism in Ireland.

In recent years, nonprofit scholars have increasingly studied the phenomenon of social enterprises which has become a generic term describing a wider reorientation among third sector organizations. The emergence of social enterprises has also led to a dynamic of hybridization and broadening in the cooperative sector, similar to an earlier dynamic of “economization”, but this time on the other end of the organizational spectrum. This paper aims at developing a fine-grained conceptual understanding of how this organizational dynamic is shaped in terms of member coordination, thus contributing to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of different organizational forms of cooperatives. Specifically, to highlight the difference to traditional member-focused cooperatives, the paper introduces the term third-party-focused cooperatives for those social enterprises which emphasize economic goals as well as control and ownership by a particular community (typically place-based). The key result of the paper is that with the shift from member- to community-focus in cooperatives, the main coordination mechanism becomes one of norm-based trust on the basis of generalized reciprocity. In contrast to traditional maxim-based trust member coordination on the basis of relation-specific reciprocity, this enables third-party-focused cooperatives to mobilize bridging and linking social capital, facilitating collective action aimed towards the community interest. The findings suggest that this identity shift requires a mutual re-positioning between the cooperative and the nonprofit sector, in terms of umbrellas as well as regulatory and legislative bodies.

This study examines the reform and development of trade associations in Shanghai, China, one of the main economic hubs of the country and marked by a substantial growth in trade associations since the reform and “opening-up” in 1978. We analyze public policies pertaining to trade associations, survey data collected from 212 local trade associations in Shanghai, and interviews of government officials and trade association leaders. The research results show that trade associations are significantly less dependent on the government and they seem to be more oriented to providing services for and representing corporate members. We trace these changes to public policy reforms and growth in private businesses. The transition reflects the dynamic and changing relationship among the government, trade associations, and business in China. We conclude with a model of these dynamics and a discussion of the implications of this study.

The proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) since the 1970s has generated a wealth of research as to the causes and implications of the rise of this sector. Public awareness of NGOs and their activities has grown as well, at least in part due to increased media coverage of the organizations and the situations to which they respond. Although NGOs are not new to global polity, media attention to them as a sector only really began to take off in the 1990s. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of two international newspapers from 1985-2010, this study explores the legitimation process of NGOs and examines the role of categorization and labeling in this process. The results show that the establishment of a distinct label in the media served to propel cognitive recognition of NGOs, and that media coverage reflects changes in cognitive legitimacy over time.

Nongovernmental organization (NGO) networks have become key instruments used by NGOs in Latin America. Because these networks have important roles to play in advocating for the sector, earning public support, and improving the provision of public goods and services, understanding these networks is important to understanding the NGO sector more broadly. The article examines how NGO networks use collective texts to diffuse and adapt managerial practices. NGO networks use elements of managerialism and their adaptations to signal quality, secure recognition in social development, identify strengths and weaknesses of the sector, and define civil society in order to garner sector legitimacy. While looking at managerialism from a critical perspective, the article finds that understanding NGOs networks and the diffusion and adaption of NGO practices can further pinpoint effective sources of sector legitimacy and help to strengthen the sector’s role in social development.

This paper emphasizes the importance of participative governance in the study of social enterprise. Furthermore, it argues that social enterprise must be analyzed through a multi-dimensional perspective. The EMES approach is based on three dimensions emphasizing the social, economic, and political dimension, while many Anglo-American definitions tend to use a one-dimensional spectrum framework. The latter often see social enterprise as a simple phenomenon that can be arranged along a continuum, ranging from economic to social, where more of one means less of the other. However, this fails to acknowledge the multi-disciplinary nature of social enterprise. Scholars inspired by the EMES approach should devote greater attention to exploring the interactive and interrelated nature of the three dimensions of social enterprise, especially the governance dimension.