Examining Reflexive Institutional Work in Charity Outcome Measurement Practices

Date
2016-11-25
Authors
Yang, C
Supervisor
Item type
Conference Contribution
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
New Zealand Management Accounting (NZMA)
Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the reflexive instituional work of charity actors in two New Zealand case study charities’ outcome measurement (OM) practices. The paper employs recent developments in neo-institutional sociology - institutional work, and policy-practice and means-ends decoupling - as theoretical lens to examine how charity actors develop reflexive awareness of identity accountability and cope with challenges in their OM practices. The empirical evidence includes semi-structured interviews and document analysis with twenty-three internal stakeholders (staff members, managers, and board members) of the studied charities, and seven external stakeholders (volunteers, and evaluators) who are involved in the charities’ OM practices, to understand their perceptions of experience of OM practices. The findings reveal that both charities’ actors develop reflexive awareness of identity accountability by employing a variety of OM mechanisms, and create and maintain OM norms and practices. However, they also face a number of practical challenges and struggle to balance their upward accountability to funders and identity accountability to organizational mission. Both policy-practice and means-ends decoupling are used as means to cope with these challenges, but an unintended consequence is produced from intended reflexive institutional work of one studied charity’s actors.

Description
Keywords
Outcome measurement; Charities; Institutional work; Reflexivity; Identity accountability
Source
Presented at the New Zealand Management Accounting Symposium, 24-25 November 2016, Auckland, New Zealand.
DOI
Rights statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in (see Citation). The original publication is available at (see Publisher's Version).