Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consulting Firms in the Nonprofit Sector

在美国非营利部门，顾问的使用很普遍。 然而，人们对咨询公司的日常现实知之甚少。在非营利部门工作，或者他们的建议对非营利实践的影响。这项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、它们与客户非营利组织的关系以及与资助组织的联系来实现这一目标。 研究结果将有助于政策制定有关非营利组织和慈善基金会和非营利组织本身的利益，揭示了一些后果，有意和无意的，顾问参与非营利组织work.Situated，因为他们是在非营利组织，营利和慈善部门的联系，咨询公司为非营利组织工作的背景下，目标，测量价值的方法和问责制是不清楚的。 本论文的理论动机是组织如何在模糊性的背景下管理，以及他们的战略，以科普模糊性如何塑造他们的工作性质和他们产生的想法的问题。 为了调查这些问题，本研究将利用1）在费城，芝加哥和旧金山弗朗西斯科（n=3家公司）的咨询公司收集了15个月的人种学数据，2）超过85个与顾问和客户的访谈，3）对基金会的调查，这些基金会代理了许多咨询安排。 这项研究将是第一个调查咨询公司？该奖项反映了NSF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.