Building a Policy Fields Framework to Inform Research on Nonprofit Organizations

• Published in: Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly Vol. 38; no. 6; pp. 1054 - 1075
• Main Authors: Stone, Melissa M., Sandfort, Jodi R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-12-2009; Sage Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Nonprofit making organizations; Nonprofit organizations; Organization theory; Political science; Public administration; Public policy; Public services; Sociology; Sociology of organizations and enterprises. Bureaucracy and administration; Sociology of work and sociology of organizations; Studies; United States > US; nonprofits; structuration theory; networks; public policy; Local Policy; Nonprofit organization; Political sciences; Strategy; Research; Public policy
• ISSN: 0899-7640; 1552-7395; 0899-7640
• DOI: 10.1177/0899764008327198

Although the importance of the public policy environment for strategic action of nonprofit organizations has become increasingly clear, research on nonprofits is often divorced from their policy context. The purpose of this article is to present a theoretically informed framework for analyzing policy environments that can inform nonprofit research. Drawing on insights from political science, organization theory, public management, and nonprofit studies, the authors propose that the framework reflects a policy field that is an identifiable set of elements in a specific environment that directly shapes local public service provision. These elements include the structures created by institutions that deliver public programs and the ways in which state and local actors interact with and shape these structures as they work on public problems. Through a research example, the article presents the policy field framework’s analytic steps.