It is in this last category, which I am interpreting here to broadly mean those individuals, groups and organizations that fund the non-profit organizations, where the complexity arises. When a nonprofit organization is funded primarily through government grants and donations they have two constituencies– the government and the donors; if they are funded primarily by private donations then it is only one constituency. However, what if they get government grants, donations, private contracts and they also charge a fee for some of their services? At this point you have four constituencies not including the employees or volunteers and some of those who are receiving the goods or services (assuming not all of the services are fee-for-service). The example of a large public research university, though not a nonprofit institution, will be useful in illustrating the issue at hand. Many of these organization receive significant amounts of funding from state governments (appropriations and financial aid), donors (additions to the endowment as well as donations to operating expenses), students and/or their parents (tuition income), the federal government (research grants and financial aid in the form of both grants and subsidized loans) and occasionally private companies (private research grants or contracts). So when you have constituencies that hold a significant amount of power within the organization but also are “external” to the organization, for example the state and federal governments and private donors, how do we define the boundaries of this organization?

Historically organizational researchers have conceptualized the wider environment as interacting with and influencing the organization at the organizations’ boundary, without really impacting its core. But in the case of the research university the only constituency that is clearly “internal” to the organization is the students (note that this does not include their parents); the others would generally be understood to be part of the environment that surrounds this institution. However these constituencies still exert a huge amount of influence on the internal workings of this organization. This can be illustrated by looking at the role of state governments during the 2009-2010 academic year. There have been numerous accounts in The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as other media outlets about layoffs, restructuring, departmental elimination, course cancelations, and imposed furlough days in response to the budget cuts enacted by state legislatures across the country. In these cases the environment, specifically the state governments, are having a significant impact on the core of these institutions.

So the question I raise is how do we as researchers deal with the fact that in the case of nonprofit organizations, or really any organization that is subject to multiple diverse constituencies, there are powerful constituencies that are in the environment (traditionally considered “external” to the organization), and yet have significant impacts on the operations of the organization? In effect how do we define the boundaries of the organization and study the role of the environment when we are dealing with organizations which are not internally independent, and instead are reflections or sub-units which have internalized key aspects and forces of their environments?

I do not currently have a clear answer for this question. Preliminary evidence from my dissertation research suggests that a more accurate picture of organizational behavior and finances can be achieved by ignoring the black and white distinction between organizational and environmental characteristics and viewing the situation as a continuum. Constituencies are either more internal or more external to the organization or constituencies have more or less influence. This is probably not that surprising; more information is generally seen as a good thing. However, how do we conceptualize the organization without clear boundaries? How do we say this piece of the federal government support is part of this university and this part is part of this university? How do we redraw the lines? Or, the larger question, are there still lines or are they something else?

Over the past 30 years or so the argument that public higher education is becoming privatized has become an accepted fact. However, less attention has been focused on how, why and to what extent these colleges and universities are actually pursuing more “private” means of sustaining themselves as various types of government support has declined. Preliminary evidence from my dissertation research indicates that though there is evidence of privatization among public colleges and universities between 1970 and 1995, however, concluding that this is occurring for the entire industry would be an oversimplification.

Using a new methodological technique I empirically derived five different organizational funding strategies that are being pursued by a sample of 164 colleges and universities from 1970-1995. These strategies range from very public funding models (no endowment income, very little if any endowment and low levels of private contributions) to funding models that closely parallel the private colleges and universities within this industry which are characterized by high levels of endowment income and wealth as well as high levels of private gifts, grants and contracts.

Overall the field is shifting towards the private end of the spectrum with increases in private and hybrid strategies over the time period, with declines in the strategies at the public end of the spectrum. This gives the picture of an industry characterized by dynamic changes over time. This shift is, primarily, being driven by the movement of a small subgroup of institutions, predominantly the branch campuses of the large state systems (University of Texas-San Antonio, University of California-Davis, and University of Wisconsin-Platteville for example) and smaller public colleges and universities that are not affiliated with the large state systems (Southwest Texas State University, Evergreen State College, and Coastal Carolina University for example). This indicates that this industry, rather than being dynamic, is actually relatively stable with significant movement by a small but important contingent of institutions. This finding is contrary to the depiction of the higher education industry in the popular press and in some academic literatures.

This evidence indicates that the privatization of higher education is not an industry-wide phenomenon but instead is occurring in a smaller subpopulation of colleges and universities within this very diverse group. The majority of institutions that are seen as pursuing privatized strategies in the literature have not drastically changed their funding strategies in the past 30 years. These larger state institutions have consistently been pursuing endowment income, donations and higher tuition levels as means for sustaining their mission. Therefore to say that privatization is occurring across the board and at much higher rates than in the past is not supported by the empirical evidence.

Why is it that organizational researchers have been lax in examining this question? (Or have I simply been looking in the wrong places?)Why is this not a question in the broader literature? Why is it restricted to the small subsection of nonprofits? If researchers are truly interested in developing theories of organizational behavior shouldn’t we take into account this fundamental aspect that creates heterogeneity within organizational fields/markets and populations?

This issue becomes increasingly interesting given the growing interest within the field in categories of organizations and organizational identities. Recent work by Greta Hsu, Michael T. Hannan, Ezra Zuckerman, and others has focused on organizations and the impacts of the different identities on an organization’s likelihood of success in a given industry or field. It seems to me that this has direct relevance for both the issue of sector differences as well as higher education, which as I mentioned is my field of interest. This is in fact one of the issues that I will be examining in my dissertation research. Hopefully I can shed some light on the role of sector differences and multiple identities on higher education institutions and organizations more generally. Bringing these two issues together will hopefully aid in bridging this gap in the organizations literature.

My academic background, like many nonprofit researchers, is also a little eclectic. My undergraduate degree is in Economics and Sociology from Baylor University and my graduate work here at the University of Arizona has focused primarily on organizations, methods, higher education, networks, and statistics.

My dissertation work is situated at the intersection of higher education, organizational strategies, governance, nonprofits, and methodology. Broadly speaking it examines the different organizational strategies that are pursued by institutions of higher education, the factors that dictate which strategies are pursued and the impacts of those strategies on the various constituencies of higher education.