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ABSTRACTThe paper explores the circumstances and conditions that give rise to demand for and supply of social, nonprofit and cooperative enterprises. It examines likely future changes in the economic, social and technological environments and reflects on how these changes may affect demand for and supply of these enterprises. The paper concludes that changes in the environment are like to generate conflicting trends, although a dominant trend may emerge: an increase in the number of social, nonprofit and cooperative enterprises that are oriented towards the satisfaction of needs of specific ethno‐cultural groups. This trend may be amplified by the widespread adoption of additive manufacturing (3D printing), which will facilitate local production where consumers are located.

The nonprofit sector exists because it can solve better than for‐profit firms problems associated with the provision of products with publicness (nonrivalry or nonexcludability) attributes, or those affected by asymmetric information between providers and customers. This advantage is likely to be eroded in the future by various technological advances, particularly in the area of information transmission, analysis, storage and retrieval, and by the increase in the effective size of markets. Consequently, the demand for nonprofit organizations will possibly decline in the future. On the other hand, the operational efficiency of nonprofit organizations is likely to improve due to possibilities of stricter audit of and control over management made possible by enhanced access by nonprofit stakeholders to budgetary and operational information. This will help nonprofit organizations respond better to various failures of for‐profit firms and to the insufficiency of government correctives. It is difficult to forecast the net effect of the myriad factors that work in opposite directions on the demand for and supply of nonprofit organizations, although it appears to this author that the economic weight of nonprofit organizations and their distinctive features will wane.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the mechanisms by which decisions about others are affected by the information known about them. The authors argue that the availability of information about deep-level attributes diminishes the role of surface-level attributes in how people make decisions about others. The authors posit that individuals will make discriminatory decisions based on surface-level attributes when only this information is available; but, as predicted by the integration-and-learning perspective, the availability of information about deep-level attributes will reduce surface-level attribute discrimination. Although discrimination will not disappear completely, it will shift its focal point toward a person's deep-level attributes.Design/methodology/approach– Data were collected from subjects in two studies, with 52 subjects in Study 1 and 230 in Study 2. Paired-samplest-test and mixed effects GLS regression were used to test the hypotheses.Findings– When presented with surface-level attributes of a target person, subjects demonstrated discriminatory behaviors based on race and sex. However, when subjects were presented with surface-level attributes along with deep-level attributes about a target person, subjects made decisions based on deep-level attribute similarities and disregarded surface-level information.Research limitations/implications– The authors interpret the findings to mean that enhancing information about others shifts favoritism and discrimination based on surface-level attributes to "deeper" grounds.Originality/value– This study demonstrates how multiple identities and values that individuals possess, and of which they become aware of in others, affect decision-making behavior toward others. It elucidates the mechanisms by which providing individuals with meaningful information about others can help them overcome, or at least reduce, surface-level discriminatory decision making.

This study offers hypotheses concerning differences in organization design among for-profit (FP), nonprofit (NP), and local government (LG) organizations. We empirically examine design in a sample of 105 Minnesota nursing homes, using data from an original survey. The findings generally support our hypotheses: (a) NP and LG nursing homes delegate more decision-making authority to their nurses than their FP counterparts, (b) NP and LG nurses enjoy greater efficiency wages than their FP counterparts, (c) NP homes rely more on the social networks of their employees to recruit new employees than FP and LG homes, (d) FP tend to use more performance-based incentives than NP and LG, and (e) there is little difference in the extent to which FP, NP, and LG homes monitor their nurses. The differences that we do detect are significant but are probably tempered by regulation, market competition, and institutional pressures for similarity.

ABSTRACT**:  The article compares the allocation of decision‐making across stakeholder groups in for‐profit, nonprofit and local government personal care facilities in one state in the United States. We analyze detailed survey data on nursing homes, childcare centers and group homes. We find that in comparison to nonprofit and government organizations, for‐profit firms delegate more decision‐making power to executives and owners, and less to their employees, consumers, families, boards of directors, and community representatives. The differences, although generally small, support the hypothesis that decision‐making is allocated to different groups in accord with the broad objectives of the organization.

ABSTRACT*:  People of diverse backgrounds – most notably, diverse ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds – increasingly live in close proximity to one another. The trajectory is inexorable, and has many benefits. However, it also has had significant costs, including violent conflict between people with different identities, especially ethnic and religious identities. One important way to deal with this conflict starts with the recognition that people have multiple dimensions to their identities – in Amartya Sen's words, people's identities are 'inescapably plural'. A person's identities may change over time: various contexts, and stages of life, make different dimensions of identity more salient. Society can aim to strengthen alternative identity dimensions that would substitute for and weaken ethnic, religious, and other identity dimensions that may lead to conflict and violence, instead of complementing and strengthening them. We argue that the nonprofit sector is well situated to help in this endeavor. Nonprofit organizations may provide suitable circumstances for the encouragement of single alternative identity dimensions, such as musical and sports identities, or for the development of a set of complementary dimensions of identity that do not involve ethnicity and religion. Such organizations would engage in the provision of relational goods, thus playing on the nonprofit sector's relative advantage. The paper makes a concrete proposal for a community center model that could contribute to the reduction of negative effects of identity.