Commons New Perspectives
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The Commons New Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizations, Voluntary Action and Philanthropy Roger A. Lohmann Copyright Notice This work is a complete facsimile copy of a hardback book first published by Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco CA in 1992. Since then all rights, including all electronic rights, to the original volume have reverted to the author. It is intended for non- commercial scholarly, educational and scientific purposes and for the use and enjoyment of individual readers. This work is protected by a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit part or all of this work. However, in doing so you must attribute the work by author and title and using other standard bibliographic information (e.g., page numbers of quotations) as appropriate. You may not use this work for commercial purposes in any way. You may not alter, transform or build upon this work. Recommended citation: Roger A. Lohmann. The Commons: New Perspectives on Nonprofit Organizations, Voluntary Action and Philanthropy. Electronic Edition. 1992. (downloaded from the Digital Library of the Commons, Indiana University on [date].) ii CONTENTS Forward by Jon Van Til xi Preface xv The Author xxi Introduction: Rethinking the Nonprofit Issue 1 1. Current Approaches to Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Association 23 2. A New Approach: The Theory of the Commons 46 3. The Evolution of the Commons in Western Civilization 83 4. The Varieties of Common Action 127 5. Structures of Common Action 158 6. The Politics of the Commons 177 7. The Role of Gifts and Other Exchanges 196 8. Charity, Self-Help and Mutual Aid 215 9. Volunteer Labor and Prosocial Behavior: The Psychology of the Commons 235 10. The Values of the Commons 253 11. Summing Up 272 References 277 Name Index 327 Subject Index 337 iii FORWARD Books that shape emerging fields of scholarly endeavor are like this one by Roger A. Lohmann. Their analysis is as acute as that of policy analysts, which Lohmann was trained to be. Their purview is as broad as the interdisciplinary field of social work, the field Lohmann teaches. Their vision is that of a poet, which Lohmann proves to be with his original images of the subject of voluntary action. And their writing is as crisp and expressive as that of the social critic, which Lohmann also succeeds at being in this persuasive and original work. I first started reading the papers of Roger Lohmann some years ago and was startled by the power of the metaphors he applied to the world of voluntary action and nonprofit organization. The concept of "the commons" to take the primary example, embodied brilliantly the core value of voluntarism in society: to create a protected space for the collective expression of what people find most important in their lives. I made space for Lohmann's vision in the preface to my own book Mapping the Third Sector when I wrote: "It is within these commons--in neighborhood associations and interest groups, in houses of worship and secular places of contemplation, in nonprofit organizations and social clubs-that people communicate across the chasms between different life experiences and create meaning and value for their lives. It is in these modern commons that people learn the arduous joys of sharing what is good within the complex web of contemporary society." Roger Lohmann has written a book that is in many respects the first definitive large-scale theory of the voluntary and nonprofit sector. Up until now, theory has largely been descriptive (an example is that of Michael O'Neill) or middle-range (the largely economic theories of Henry Hansmann, Estelle James, Dennis Young; the largely sociological work of Albert Meister, David Horton Smith, David Knoke; and the largely political work of me and Jennifer Wolch). Readers, accustomed to earlier theory, should approach this book iv as though they were embarking on a voyage to a new land. Think of it this way: we divide our institutions into four major sectors to accomplish our societal tasks. Corporations and businesses (the first sector) make most of our products and hire most of our labor: they provide jobs that amount to 80 percent of the country's payrolls. Government (the second sector) provides a military capacity and a number of ancillary regulatory and welfare services: it meets about 13 percent of the national payroll. Voluntary and nonprofit organizations (the third sector) address a number of educational, charitable, and membership purposes: their payroll amounts to more than 7 percent of the national total and is supplemented by much valubale voluntary effort as well. Finally, households and informal organizations (such as neighbors, kin, and so on--the fourth sector) perform the lion's share of home management and child raising, though without the benefit of the transfer of cash. What Lohmann does is to help us look at the work of the third sector so that it becomes as familiar to us as that of business, government, and the family. He reminds us that voluntary choice is at the core of this sector, rather than the more febrile legal or economic concepts of "nondistribution constraints" and "sector failure" cited by earlier theorists. Lohmann's broad-scale theory transcends disciplines; it is original, robust, and powerful. Moreover, the theory forces those who believe they know something about this field to think about it anew. The theory of the commons forces those who have swallowed the nonprofit metaphor whole to contemplate the wisdom of their diet. It fortifies those who have seen in voluntarism the core value of the sector with the power of that vision, both in empirical reality and normative preference. And it invites those who have yet to approach the work of the third sector to do so in a clear and caring fashion. The Commons is a significant work. It has the potential of defining a field at the point of its full scholarly emergence. The author has done his work: it is now for the rest of us to read, learn, and apply. Camden, New Jersey Jon Van Til August 1992 v PREFACE Sometimes the most familiar objects can be extremely difficult to speak and think about clearly. Such is the case with the patterns of human association we ordinarily denote as “nonprofit organization” and “voluntary association.” Empirical findings and middle-range generalizations about such entities are expanding very rapidly; in the process, however, some of our cherished assumptions about the exceptional role of volunteerism in American culture and the charitable nature (or lack thereof) of nonprofit purposes are eroding or being transformed. Conventional categories, such as the distinction between “profit” and “nonprofit” motives or orientations, and broad distinctions between competition, cooperation, and conflict are no longer sufficient in a global village of pluralistic cultures, insecure families, bureaucratic states, and mixed economies. Nonprofit and voluntary action studies have a major problem of theory. For many readers, theory is an ugly, intimidating term that suggests irrelevance and impracticality. For others, theory has very exacting connotations of assumptions, precisely defined terms, and clearly states propositions. The Commons seeks to be theoretical in neither of these senses: it seeks to talk generally (and interestingly) about the social, economic, and political structures and processes of nonprofit and voluntary action and at the same time to redraw some of the major internal and external boundaries of the field. In undertaking this task, I made an effort to recondition some traditional, and even archaic, terms and to draw attention away from preoccupation with nonprofit corporations as sole representatives of the field as a whole. Nonprofit organizations, voluntary associations, and several other distinct types of related organizations are, in the theory which is offered here, subsumed within a larger category called the commons. Audience The Commons is written for all those who care deeply about the practice of social democracy and who continue to marvel at the multitude of ways in which people with similar interests seek out one another and commit themselves to shared purposes and joint vi actions of all types. In particular, the theory of the commons is addressed to investigators, students, and practitioners of the several subfields of the science of association, which de Tocqueville called “the mother science”: social workers, sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists, psychologists, lawyers, fund raisers, accountants, foundation staff members, volunteer coordinators, grant writers, and anyone else with a serious intellectual interest in this fascinating topic. Organization of the Book The introduction sets out the nature of the task undertaken in this book; it is built around and addressed to the expanding group of nonprofit organization and voluntary action researchers whose current quest is defining a commons devoted to the study and understanding of common action. Chapter One reviews the current state of nonprofit and voluntary theory. Nonprofit corporations and nonprofit organizations are considered, along with nonprofit, voluntary, third, nongovernmental, independent, and various other sector conceptions. Chapter Two sets out a basic theoretical framework called the theory of the commons. It begins with a consideration of eight alternative assumptions, and thus systematically attempts to adjust the theoretical footings of nonprofit and voluntary action theory. The chapter highlights the marginal status of nonprofit “firms” and shifts the focus to the much broader category of associations, clubs, groups, and gatherings that make up the commons. The term commons and its adjective form, common, are elaborated in terms of participation, shared objects and resources, mutuality, and fairness. Endowment is said to encompass cultural, as well as material, resources. Civilization is said to be the endowment of societies and cultures. The positive implications of patronage in terms of support and protection are emphasized.