Academic literature on the topic 'Nonprofit organizations – Poland'

There are over 100 000 nonprofit organizations registered in Poland that constitute a growingly important actor in the economic area and for the public administration. The sector has been growing, yet there are many factors that distract nonprofit organizations from carrying out many of their missions and goals and from playing many of the important functions in a society that are or were expected from them. This paper presents the main challenges and opportunities faced by the nonprofit sector in Poland in the recent years and at the beginning of 2016 as well as both the negative and positive trends observed in its development. A stress will be put on the relations between nonprofit organizations and the government and the process of governmentalization will be described.

This study presents the determinants of trust in light of the scientific literature on trust and governance networks. The theoretical analysis focuses on differentiation of various types of trust and its determinants at both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the idea of a network is presented with the main attention given to the performance of collaborative service delivery networks. On the basis of theoretical study, a longitudinal analysis was performed at institutions providing services to the homeless people in Warsaw, Poland. During the periods of 2013 and 2017 to 2018, two cohorts of field questionnaire studies were conducted among employees of 18 social welfare centers (sample based on 18 Warsaw districts) and homeless shelters run by nonprofit organizations (samples of 19 and 22, respectively). These local government institutions and nonprofit organizations comprised the collaborative service delivery network under study. Mixed-method research was applied at welfare centers and nonprofit organizations (NGOs) where both frontline and management level employees were interviewed, and some data were statistically evaluated. The research was conducted using the same questionnaires at both points in time. The research showed that, from the perspective of social welfare centers, interorganizational trust in relation to other social welfare centers and to nonprofit organizations is positively correlated with perceived interorganizational effectiveness of other actors in the network (measured by the possibility of obtaining information, promptness, commitment, completeness and correctness of documents, and assessment of employees’ knowledge). The same results were obtained from the perspective of NGOs. In addition, these correlations remained almost unchanged over time, although the research was repeated after many years using the same variables. Finally, there is no basis to state that trust is correlated with outcome perception when considering the most difficult and complex social services.

Commercial Activity of Nonprofit OrganizationsSummaryThe issue of the economic activity of nonprofit organizations is highly controversial in Poland. Some scholars argue that this sort o f activity should not be opened for the third sector organizations at all because in practice it often dom inates over the statutory activity, constitutes the fields of abuses and casts shadow on the good reputation of the sector. The others believe that the non governmental organizations should have the possibility to engage in business activities subject to certain conditions. The second position has been accepted by the Polish legislator in the recent law on the public utility activity and voluntarism from June 23th, 2003.The law provides for a relatively detailed and interesting regulation of the economic activity of so called public utility organizations, that is the organizations which - because of their public utility character - are treated in a very favorable manner by the legislator (e.g. from the perspective of tax law). The legislator distinguishes between business activity, paid and free public utility activity (art. 6-10). The difference between a business activity and a paid public utility activity depends on the level of the fee charged for the goods or services. If the fee is not intended to generate net income but only to cover the direct costs of the goods or services provided by the organization, then in principle it is „a paid public utility activity”. This activity may constitute the statutory activity of a public utility organization. However the legislator has also decided, that „a paid public utility activity” constitutes a business activity in a case where the payment of the natural persons employed by the organization exceeds 150% of the average payment. As to the business activity, the legislator has decided that the business activity of the public utility organization has to serve its statutory goals (art. 20 p. 4). It means that this activity may only have a subsidiary character and may not constitute a main statutory activity of the organization.

The work motivation construct is central to the theory and practice of many social science disciplines. Yet, due to the novelty of validated measures appropriate for a deep cross-national comparison, studies that contrast different administrative regimes remain scarce. This study represents an initial empirical effort to validate the Public Service Motivation (PSM) instrument proposed by Kim and colleagues (2013) in a previously unstudied context. The two former communist countries analyzed in this dissertation—Belarus and Poland— followed diametrically opposite development strategies: a fully decentralized administrative regime in Poland and a highly centralized regime in Belarus. The employees (n = 677) of public and nonprofit organizations in the border regions of Podlaskie Wojewodstwo (Poland) and Hrodna Voblasc (Belarus) are the subjects of study. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed three dimensions of public service motivation in the two regions: compassion, self-sacrifice, and attraction to public service. The statistical models tested in this dissertation suggest that nonprofit sector employees exhibit higher levels of PSM than their public sector counterparts. Nonprofit sector employees also reveal a similar set of values and work attitudes across the countries. Thus, the study concludes that in terms of PSM, employees of nonprofit organizations constitute a homogenous group that exists atop the administrative regimes. However, the findings propose significant differences between public sector agencies across the two countries. Contrary to expectations, data suggest that organization centralization in Poland is equal to—or for some items even higher than—that of Belarus. We can conclude that the absence of administrative decentralization of service provision in a country does not necessarily undermine decentralized practices within organizations. Further analysis reveals strong correlations between organization centralization and PSM for the Polish sample. Meanwhile, in Belarus, correlations between organization centralization items and PSM are weak and mostly insignificant. The analysis indicates other factors beyond organization centralization that significantly impact PSM in both sectors. PSM of the employees in the studied region is highly correlated with their participation in religious practices, political parties, or labor unions as well as location of their organization in a capital and type of social service provided.

Defence date: 25 September 2013
Examining Board: Professor László Bruszt (European University Institute) (Supervisor) Professor Donatella Della Porta (European University Institute) Professor Helmut K. Anheier (Hertie School of Governance) Professor Jerzy Hausner (Cracow University of Economics).
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
In this thesis I study patterns of inter-organisational collaboration among nonprofits in Czech Republic and Poland. Point of departure constitutes puzzling divergence in patterns of collaboration between these two countries. Cluster analysis conducted on unique set of quantitative data revealed that in Czech Republic significantly more nonprofits manifest "strongly collaborative" pattern than in Poland. Those nonprofits have particularly well developed collaborative ties to the government. Interestingly, close collaboration with government do not come at the expense of local ties and accountability to the citizens. Existing regional nonprofit literature has not captured national differences in this respect. Explaining this puzzling divergence constitutes the main goal of this thesis. Building on rational choice and sociological institutionalism I assume that two actors played a central role in shaping patterns of inter-organisational collaboration of nonprofits in Central Europe, i.e. domestic government, through its "nonprofit policy", and the European Union, through its main developmental instrument, European Union Structural Funds ("EU SF"). Based on the extensive literature review, analysis of secondary data and more than 50 semi-structured interviews conducted in Poland and Czech Republic I argue that divergence in patterns of collaboration is a consequence of differences in resources and opportunities provided to the nonprofit organizations by domestic governments and EU. Strong ties to the government of the significant part of Czech nonprofit sector are a consequence of relatively generous and centralised public funding available for those organizations, institutionalized opportunities for participation in policy making and activism of the nonprofit community in the pre-accession period. Weak collaborative ties of Polish nonprofits are a result of scarcity and decentralisation of public funds, very limited opportunities for shaping public policy and general distrust towards collaboration with government among the leaders of Polish nonprofit community as well as their limited activism during pre-accession period.