Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Because of their proximity to communities affected by various social problems (e.g., malnutrition, poverty, functional illiteracy), nonprofit organizations have significant strengths in advancing sustainable development (Desa & Koch, 2014). They often possess a deep understanding of these social issues, arguably surpassing that of public authorities, which may be more removed from the realities experienced by affected communities (Kallman & Clark, 2016; Morrar & Baba, 2022). Many nonprofits, including environmental advocacy groups and organizations advocating for citizen inclusion and diversity, also play essential roles in fostering the well-being of our communities. That said, while nonprofits have distinct advantages that allow them to contribute to sustainable development (Nordin et al., 2024), they also have specific challenges that undermine their organizational sustainability (Kouamé et al., 2022; Pache et al., 2024).

Five specific challenges are worth mentioning, some of which were aggravated or exposed during periods of crisis such as the pandemic, but not only during those times (see Altamimi & Liu, 2022; Baluch & Ridder, 2021; Mailhot et al., 2020). These challenges include securing sustainable funding, navigating a context of coopetition where collaborators are also competitors for financial resources, recruiting qualified human resources, retaining and motivating employees despite limited resources compared to other sectors, and overcoming the cycle of resource scarcity, where much of the time is spent chasing funding, leaving organizational and strategic concerns overlooked (Altamimi & Liu, 2022; Gregory & Howard, 2009).

Thus, strengthening the managerial and strategic capabilities of nonprofit organizations is essential to ensure their resilience (Herrero & Kraemer, 2022; Waerder et al., 2022). This issue focuses on enhancing the strategic capacity of these organizations, defined as an organization’s ability to strengthen its decision-making processes and strategic thinking to ultimately improve its overall performance and social impact (Gee et al., 2022). This issue is all the more relevant in the context of a “World on Fire” (Henderson, 2020) marked by a triple environmental, economic, and social crisis.   

When questioned about how a firm can grow by increasing its market share, more than half a century of strategic management research offers a plethora of answers (Pettigrew et al., 2006; Pitelis et al., 2024). The situation is somewhat different for nonprofits, whose development is not so much about increasing market share as about the scale and scope of their social impact (Kuan & Thornton, 2022; Westley et al., 2014). This sub-theme thus aims to bring together the fields of nonprofits (and, more generally, organizations striving to generate social impact) and strategic management, whose potential for cross-fertilization has largely been overlooked. More specifically, with this objective in mind, we suggest (but are not limited to) the following research questions.

Social Impact Tensions: Creating, Positioning, and Measuring

• How do nonprofit organizations position their social impact, and to what extent can collaborative strategies enhance the breadth and depth of societal change they generate?

• How can organizations design strategies that effectively combine innovation and scaling to increase the positive social impact of their interventions?

• How do nonprofits measure their social impact, and what tools or co-created approaches are most feasible given their limited financial and human resources?

Development and Scaling Tensions: How to Generate Growth and Expand Impact

• How do nonprofits navigate the strategic dilemma of whether to grow and generate increased revenue for reinvestment or remain intentionally modest in size?

• How does territorial embeddedness shape nonprofit decisions about expanding their activities and impact beyond their original local context?

• How do nonprofits define and negotiate their strategic role (between frontline action and ecosystem orchestration), and how does role migration influence their ability to generate social impact?

Resources and Governance Tensions: How to Survive and Thrive Amid Resource Scarcity

• How do nonprofits manage pressures that risk mission drift, and what practices help leaders balance external resource demands with internal mission integrity?

• How does competition for resources hinder social innovation within nonprofits, and in what ways might ecosystem-level approaches help counteract bureaucratic conformism?

• How does limited access to strategic human capital—particularly the engagement of strategic volunteers on governance bodies—shape nonprofits’ capacity for growth and impact?

• Altamimi, H., & Liu, Q. (2022). The nonprofit starvation cycle: Does overhead spending really impact program outcomes? Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 22(6), 1324–1348. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640211057404
• Baluch, A. M., & Ridder, H.-G. (2021). Mapping the research landscape of strategic human resource management in nonprofit organizations: A systematic review and avenues for future research. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 50(3), 598–625. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764020939653
• Desa, G., & Koch, J. L. (2014). Scaling social impact: Building sustainable social ventures at the base-of-the-pyramid. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 5(2), 146–174.
• Gee, I. H., Nahm, P. I., Yu, T., & Cannella, A. A. (2022). Not-for-profit organizations: A multi-disciplinary review and assessment from a strategic management perspective. Journal of Management, 49(1), 237–279. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221116581
• Gregory, A. G., & Howard, D. (2009). The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 7(4), 49–53. https://doi.org/10.48558/6K3V-0Q70
• Henderson, R. (2020). Reimagining capitalism in a world on fire. PublicAffairs.
• Herrero, M., & Kraemer, S. (2022). Beyond survival mode: Organizational resilience capabilities in nonprofit arts and culture fundraising during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 33(2), 279–295. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21524
• Kallman, M. E., & Clark, T. N. (2016). The third sector: Community organizations, NGOs, and nonprofits. University of Illinois Press.
• Kouamé, S., Hafsi, T., Oliver, D., & Langley, A. (2022). Creating and sustaining stakeholder emotional resonance with organizational identity in social mission-driven organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 65(6). https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2018.1143
• Kuan, J., & Thornton, J. (2022). Nonprofit organizations as multisided platforms. Academy of Management Review, 47(4), 600–616. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2019.0216
• Mailhot, C., Michaud, V., & Tello-Rozas, S. (2020). When the means modify the ends. (E)valuating and transforming the purpose of a nonprofit organization through impact assessment. Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.29173/cjnser.2020v11n2a351
• Morrar, R., & Baba, S. (2022). Social innovation in extreme institutional contexts: The case of Palestine. Management Decision. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-11-2020-1528
• Nordin, N., Khatibi, A., & Azam, S. M. F. (2024). Nonprofit capacity and social performance: Mapping the field and future directions. Management Review Quarterly, 74, 171–225. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-022-00297-2
• Pache, A.-C., Battilana, J., & Spencer, C. (2024). An integrative model of hybrid governance: The role of boards in helping sustain organizational hybridity. Academy of Management Journal, 67(2), 437–467. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2021.0966
• Pettigrew, A., Thomas, H., & Whittington, R. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of strategy and management. SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608313
• Pitelis, C. N., Teece, D. J., & Yang, H. (2024). Dynamic capabilities and MNE global strategy: A systematic literature review-based novel conceptual framework. Journal of Management Studies, 61(7), 3295–3326.
• Waerder, R., Thimmel, S., Englert, B., & Helmig, B. (2022). The role of nonprofit–private collaboration for nonprofits’ organizational resilience. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 33, 672–684. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00424-9
• Westley, F., Antadze, N., Riddell, D. J., Robinson, K., & Geobey, S. (2014). Five configurations for scaling up social innovation: Case examples of nonprofit organizations from Canada. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(3), 234–260.