ABSTRACT
One of the biggest challenges nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are confronted with is the rapidly changing environment in which they operate. As public service deliverers, NPOs are subject to a trend similar to public sectormodernization, as a result of the confrontation with more demanding customers, limited resources, technological breakthroughs, increased accountability requirements and so on. Increasingly, NPOs have to prove they work efficiently, effectively and in line with the overall mission, in order not to lose legitimacy in the eyes of their stakeholders (Verschuere andCantens, 2009).Generally, we see that classical answers and strategies often do not offer a way out to meet the challenges. As Osborne (1998b: foreword) states: ‘Across the world there are increasing pressures on voluntary organisations to improve the quality and effectiveness of public services through innovation and change’ and ‘the innovative capacity of voluntary organisations has become a touchstone for their role in providing public services’. Also Bezemer et al. (2006) see a need for strategic renewal because of an increasing environmental turbulence for NPOs. With this article we will make an attempt to answer two research questions: (1) to what extent do NPOs in Flanders (Belgium) show innovative behaviour, and (2) how can we explain why NPOs act as observed? The latter question will be addressed by testing theoretical assumptions about innovative behaviour in NPOs. In this article, we do not present results of a longitudinal research. Instead, we examine whether NPOs actually behave innovative at present, and under what conditions. In the remainder of this article, we first define our central research concept: innovative behaviour in NPOs. Second, we present our theoretical framework. Third, we discuss our research design and the operationalization and measurement of our variables. Fourth, the empirical results are presented. We conclude with a discussion of our findings.
