미국의 비영리부문에 관한 연구 - 역할과 성격의 변화

Abstract

Religion had been the major formative influence on the American nonprofit sector since the colonial times and its legal status was established in the latter half of the 19th century. Historically, nonprofit organizations have played a vanguard role in responding to ambiguous social needs. When they become clearer and so widespread that the nonprofit sector alone cannot properly manage them, government intervenes. Viewed from this perspective, volutary failure theory appears to be appropriate, which argues that the nonprofit sector is the primary mechanism for the provision of collective goods and that only when and if it cannot provide them adequately does government come into play. However, considering the explosive increase of nonprofit organizations since the Great Society programs of the 1960s and 1970s, policy orientation of utilizing them as service delivery systems is also important Accordingly, the existing explanations on their causes and effects do not take the diversity of the sector into consideration. It seems quite clear that organizations heavily depending on government subsidies and those without them behave quite differently. The former such as health care and social service organizations have been aptly criticized for commercialization, professionalization, and bureaucratization due to the fierce competition from within and without. But the latter such as religious and advocacy organizations play an important mediating role between large, bureaucratic institutions and the individuals. Thus, most of existing research at the sector level should be complemented by that at the subsector level and at the level of the individual organization.