Private Action & the Public Good - Hardcover

Powell, Walter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300064497 ISBN 13: 9780300064490

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Governments around the world are turning over more of their services to private or charitable organizations, as politicians and pundits celebrate participation in civic activities. But can nonprofits provide more and higher-quality services than governments or for-profit businesses? Will nonprofits really increase social connectedness and civic engagement? This book, a sequel to Walter W. Powell's widely acclaimed The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook, brings together an original collection of writings that explores the nature of the "public good" and how private nonprofit organizations relate to it. The contributors to this book-eminent sociologists, political scientists, management scholars, historians, and economists-examine the nonprofit sector through a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses. They consider the tensions between the provision of public goods and the interests of members and donors in nonprofit organizations. They contrast religious and secular nonprofits, as well as private and nonprofit provision of child care, mental health services, and health care. And they explore the growing role of nonprofits in the United States, France, Germany, and Eastern Europe, the contribution of nonprofits to economic development, and the forms and strategies of private action.

About this title

Synopsis:

Governments around the world are turning over more of their services to private or charitable organizations, but can non-profits provide more and higher-quality services than governments of for-profit businesses? This book examines the non-profit sector through a variety of theoretical lenses.

About the Author:

Walter W. Powell is professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. Elisabeth S. Clemens is associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0300064497
• ISBN 13: 9780300064490
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328