Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consulting Firms in the Nonprofit Sector

顾问的使用在美国非营利部门很普遍。然而，人们对咨询公司的日常情况知之甚少。在非营利部门工作，或者他们的建议对非营利实践的影响。本研究将阐明咨询公司、客户和资助者的工作和互动如何定义和实施非营利工作中的核心概念，如“社会公益”和“战略”。它将通过分析咨询公司的流程、与客户非营利组织的关系以及与资助机构的联系来实现这一目标。研究结果将有助于制定有关非营利组织的政策，并通过揭示顾问参与非营利工作的一些有意和无意的后果，使慈善基金会和非营利组织本身受益。由于咨询公司处于非营利、营利和慈善部门的结合部，为非营利组织工作的咨询公司在目标、衡量价值的方法和责任都不明确的背景下运作。本论文的理论动机是组织如何在模糊性的背景下进行管理，以及他们如何应对模糊性的策略塑造了他们的工作性质和他们产生的想法。为了调查这些问题，本研究将利用1)在费城、芝加哥和旧金山的咨询公司收集的15个月以上的人种学数据（总共3家公司），2)对顾问和客户进行超过85次访谈，以及3)对基金会的调查，这些基金会负责安排许多咨询。这项研究将是首批对咨询公司进行调查的研究之一。在关于非营利工作的断言的产生和传播中的作用，为非营利部门中未被研究的行为者类别提供重要的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The use of consultants is widespread in the U.S. nonprofit sector. Little is known, however, about the day-to-day reality of consulting firms? work in the nonprofit sector, or the influence of their recommendations on nonprofit practice. This study will illuminate how the work and interaction of consulting firms, clients, and funders define and implement core concepts in nonprofit work such as "social good" and "strategic." It will accomplish this by providing an analysis of consulting firms' processes, their relationships with client nonprofits, and links to funding organizations. Findings will contribute to policymaking concerning nonprofits and benefit philanthropic foundations and nonprofits themselves by revealing some of the consequences, intended and unintended, of consultant involvement in nonprofit work.Situated as they are at the nexus of the nonprofit, for-profit, and philanthropic sectors, consulting firms working for nonprofits operate in a context in which goals, methods of measuring value, and accountability are unclear. This dissertation is motivated theoretically by the question of how organizations manage in the context of ambiguity and how their strategies to cope with ambiguity shape the nature of their work and the ideas they produce. To investigate these questions, this study will draw on 1) ethnographic data collected over 15 months at consulting firms located in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco (n=3 total firms), 2) more than 85 interviews with consultants and clients, and 3) a survey of foundations, which broker many consulting arrangements. The study will be among the first to investigate consulting firms? role in the generation and dissemination of assertions about nonprofit work, providing important insight about an understudied category of actors in the nonprofit sector.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.