Date of Award

Spring 5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

School of Public Service

Program/Concentration

Public Administration and Policy

Committee Director

Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf

Committee Member

Marina Saitgalina

Committee Member

Jori S. Beck

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations have funders and clients as their stakeholders whose needs, expectations, or demands might vary. A means through which nonprofit organizations portray their accountability to these stakeholders is through performance measurement. The purpose of this research is to examine what performance metrics human services nonprofit organizations use by way of demonstrating accountability and explore the extent to which funders’ demands or clients needs and organizational missions are considered in measuring performance. In this study I sought to understand how human services nonprofits balance the stakeholders’ needs and expectations through their performance measurement. The overarching research question is: To what extent are human services nonprofit organizations responsive to funder’s demands or client’s needs/organizational mission in measuring performance? The theoretical framework employed for this research is the resource dependency theory. The research is a qualitative inquiry focusing on a multi-case study of three human services nonprofit organizations within Hampton Roads, Virginia. Participants were recruited using a purposive and convenient sampling approach. Interviews and document analyses (annual reports and performance metrics) were employed for the data collection. Human service nonprofit organizations appeared to be responsive to their funders demands especially the government funders in measuring performance. However, the funders performance demands considered clients outputs and outcome metrics. Additionally, results will inform future decisions by human services nonprofit managers concerning how to manage their resource dependency relations.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/v2h1-st54

ISBN

9798834003496

Download

Share

COinS