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theses

In public-nonprofit collaboration, information sharing is an essential activity that can advance a common understanding, resolve conflict, and enhance the capacity of both parties. Although previous research has well documented how the wealth of knowledge that nonprofit organizations have can facilitate problem solving and policy making in government, few studies have examined the motivational factors driving such information/knowledge sharing by nonprofit organizations. Adopting a social psychology framework of cooperation theory, this dissertation attempts to address this gap in our understanding. The dissertation views information sharing by nonprofits as a cooperative behavior composed of two dimensions - required and voluntary information sharing. Employing a mixed methods design, this dissertation first explores the concept of voluntary information sharing using a qualitative study, and then quantitatively tests the effects of instrumental and social motivational factors on predicting both types of sharing. By conducting interviews with 22 executive directors of nonprofit organizations in the State of New Jersey, the qualitative findings suggest that nonprofits engage in a variety of voluntary information sharing in collaboration with government. Specifically, three themes of information emerge: information about the organization, knowledge about the client and the community, and other specific types of information. A close examination reveals such voluntary sharing comes from instrumental and social motivational perspective. Instrumental perspective explains that nonprofit organizations voluntarily share information in order to acquire funding, resource, publicity, and reputation. On the other hand, social motivational perspective suggests that nonprofits engage in voluntary information sharing because it is consistent with the organizations’ values, image, and identity. In quantitatively testing the effects of instrumental and social motivational factors on required and voluntary information sharing, this dissertation utilizes a data set from a national survey of 424 nonprofit organizations. The results of hierarchical regression analysis indicate instrumental factors, such as government funding and formal service contract, are two major factors predicting required information sharing by nonprofit organizations. However, social motivational factors in terms of affective commitment, goal congruence, and motive-based trust are most influential in shaping voluntary information sharing. Overall, the dissertation contributes to a better understanding of the motivational factors underlying nonprofit information sharing activities, which also offers broader implications for managing public-nonprofit collaboration.

ETD_6511

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Shuyang Peng

doi:10.7282/T361125R

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.