Power and Time in Inter-organizational Relationships: Nonprofits and Government

• In Event: 436 - Regular Session. Non-Profit Organization: Resources, Growth, and Power

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between time and interorganizational power to advocate a more explicit temporal and political lens in nonprofit studies. Upon developing a theoretical framework through the cross-pollination of temporal and power studies in interorganizational research, we examine the interactions of time and power in government-nonprofit relationships within the empirical setting of the United States and two countries that underwent radical change in the late 1980s: Brazil and Hungary. We highlight several opportunities to advance both temporal and political studies of nonprofits and analyze the main effects of time on power and of power on time through our discussion of timing, social time, time horizons, shared history, delaying, pace, etc. For instance, we argue that clock time, in the form of time horizons and delay, influence the ability of organizations to control their resource dependencies and to accurately assess their resource environment. We show that social time(s) – subjective, socially constructed time notions – are also linked to power relationships. In turn, power shapes both the clock-time based processes of organizations (e.g. through entrainment) and the social construction of history and past events significant in government-nonprofit relationships. By proposing this new direction for research, we hope to elicit interest in research questions such as “What external pacers, other than clock time and government regulation temporally coordinate activities between public and nonprofit organizations? Who can readjust the tempo of the contracting regime?”

Authors

• Erzsebet Fazekas, University at Albany, SUNY

• Marcelo Marchesini de Costa, University at Albany