A New Focus on Nonprofit ­Entrepreneurship Research

• Author: Fredrik O. Andersson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21271
• Date: 01 December 2017
• Published date: 01 December 2017

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N M  L, vol. 28, no. 2, Winter 2017 © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21271

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

Correspondence to: Fredrik O. Andersson, School of Public & Environmental Aff airs, Indiana University-Purdue

University Indianapolis, 801 W. Michigan St, Indianapolis, IN 46202. Email: fanders@iu.edu.

Research Note

A New Focus on Nonprofi t

Entrepreneurship Research

HIGHLIGHTING THE NEED AND RELEVANCE

OF NASCENT STAGE INQUIRY

Fredrik O. Andersson

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

One distinctive contribution nonprofit entrepreneurship research brings to the broader

domain of nonprofit studies is an explicit focus on the process of new nonprofit organiza-

tional emergence. This article asserts that in order for nonprofit entrepreneurship scholar-

ship to continue to evolve, it is necessary to focus more on what happens before a new

nonprofit is formally founded, during the so-called nascent phase. Using conceptual as well

as empirically derived arguments, this article illuminates why nascent nonprofit research is

necessary and valuable to nonprofit entrepreneurship scholarship and highlights promising

areas for future research.

Keywords: nonprofit entrepreneurship , nonprofit emergence , nascent stage , hindsight bias

NONPROFIT ENTREPRENEURSHIP is a construct with fuzzy boundaries. Some definitions

emphasize how nonprofit agents create new social or economic value, and others focus on

how entrepreneurial behavior manifests itself within existing nonprofit organizations. An addi-

tional characterization, and the perspective taken in this article, ties nonprofit entrepreneurship

closely to the creation of new nonprofit organizations (Cordes, Steuerle, and Twombly 2004 ;

Van Slyke and Lecy 2012 ). It thus focuses on the earliest stages of nonprofit organizational life

and the core question of how new nonprofits come into existence.

Scholarly attention to nonprofit entrepreneurship is far from new (Young 1983 ). Still, inter-

est in the creation of new nonprofits has grown recently, as evidenced by the increasing num-

ber of conceptual and empirical studies devoted to vital nonprofit entrepreneurship issues,

including the motivations and intentions of nonprofit entrepreneurs, decision-patterns in

nonprofit start-ups, and properties of emerging and recently founded nonprofit organiza-

tions (Carman and Nesbit 2013 ; Child, Witesman, and Braudt 2015 ; Dollhopf and Scheitle

2016 ; Haugh 2007 ; Van Slyke and Lecy 2012 ). Although scholarship has made several

important contributions to our understanding of the creation of new nonprofits, it is not

without shortcomings. The purpose of this article is to bring notice to a particular facet in

need of greater attention: nascent nonprofit entrepreneurship. Because of the relative absence