Mapping research traditions: assessing the effectiveness of non-governmental and non-for-profit organizations

Effectiveness as a measure of organizational success has for decades attracted scholarly attention across many social science disciplines. For non-governmental and not-for-profit organizations (NGOs/NPOs) in the United States, the question of effectiveness has recently gained urgency as a growing number of rating agencies and watchdogs have gained visibility among donors and the general public. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary structured review of the literature concerned with NGO/NPO effectiveness using a new methodological approach. Based on this review, we identify a consensus that uni-dimensional measures of effectiveness are of limited use and a subsequent move towards disaggregating ‘effectiveness’ into substantive areas of (1) goal attainment, (2) resource acquisition, and (3) reputation. Additionally, we find that the literature is heavily biased towards theoretical and conceptual contributions and lacks empirical analysis. The literature is fragmented along disciplinary boundaries; this undermines the accumulation of knowledge, because scholars employ different definitions and explore the concept of ‘effectiveness’ at various levels of analysis. In order to remedy these limitations and create interdisciplinary synergies, we propose organizing the study of NGO/NPO effectiveness along four major domains: projects, internal management, external environment, and networks/partnerships. We argue that this framework will help to organize core sites of research on effectiveness questions and allow researchers to complete empirical research based on more circumscribed and well-defined propositions