Organizational sensegiving: Indicators and nonprofit signaling

• Date: 01 December 2019
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21383

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Organizational sensegiving: Indicators

and nonprofit signaling

Jamie Levine Daniel | Adam Eckerd

O'Neill School of Public and Environmental

Affairs, Indiana University-Purdue

University Indianapolis, Indianapolis,

Indiana

Correspondence

Jamie Levine Daniel, O'Neill School of

Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana

University-Purdue University Indianapolis,

BS 4060, 801 W. Michigan St.,

Indianapolis, IN 46202.

Email: jlevined@iupui.edu

Abstract

Resource acquisition depends upon the agreement between

an organization's sense of identity and the perceptions of

organizational identity held by resource providers. To

smooth the flow of resources and buffer against potential

issues, organizations seek to manage external perceptions

and, to the extent possible, control their organizational iden-

tity. Using exploratory factor analysis, we examine the data

from 300 GuideStar profiles to develop a sense of how non-

profit organizations “give sense”to resource providers and

attempt to manage their organizational identity. We find

evidence of three sensegiving strategies. We then use a

seemingly unrelated regression model to examine the rela-

tionship between these strategies and revenue outcomes,

finding evidence that (a) nonprofit organizations demon-

strate intentional sensegiving, and (b) different sensegiving

approaches are related to different income streams.

KEYWORDS

differentiation, legitimacy, nonprofits, organizational identity,

sensegiving

1|INTRODUCTION

Nonprofit organizations have to satisfy many different stakeholders to acquire the resources they

need to deliver on their missions. Nonprofit organizations also have perceptions of their identity that

manifest in how they deliver their services, as well as the roles they play in their communities

(Levine Daniel & Moulton, 2017; Moulton & Eckerd, 2012). Successful resource acquisition

depends, at least in part, upon some level of congruence between an organization's sense of identity

and the perceptions of organizational identity held by resource providers (Voss, Cable, & Voss,

Received: 29 January 2019 Revised: 25 June 2019 Accepted: 25 June 2019

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21383

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2019;30:213–231. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 213

2006). How do nonprofit organizations manage their identity to create this congruence between their

own perceptions of organizational identity and those of their stakeholders?

We examine this question using a framework of organizational sensegiving and sensemaking, a

two-way feedback system that informs organizational identity (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). Organiza-

tions provide cues to stakeholders in an effort to convey a particular identity, while at the same time

external actors receive those cues and internalize their own distinct and diverse perception of the

organization's identity. Identity emerges through the interaction of these cues feeding back to one

another: organizations send signals about who they want external actors to perceive them to be and

external actors send back perceptions about who they actually think organizations are. Organizations

engage in sensegiving as a way of conveying “this is who we say we are.”External actors process

this through sensemaking (“this is who I perceive you to be”), and engage in sensegiving of their

own to attach their perceptions of the organization's identity back to the organization. In turn, the

organization makes sense of these external actors' perceptions as it reconsiders how it signals its

organizational identity. In this way, an organizational identity is never entirely fixed, but rather

emerges and adapts over time (Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000).

We are specifically interested in the following questions related to this process: (a) is there evidence

that organizations demonstrate different sensegiving strategies, and (b) to what extent are these different

strategies connected to (successful) resource acquisition? We contribute to the literature on nonprofit

organizational identity, and specifically sensegiving, in multiple ways. First, while organizational sen-

semaking has been widely studied, sensegiving has been less of a focus, particularly in the nonprofit set-

ting. Second, the literature on sensemaking and sensegiving tends to focus on cases where resource

providers are also the target market or recipients of the organization's goods or services (e.g., Chalmers &

Balan-Vnuk, 2012; Weick, 1995). We focus instead on how organizations manage their sensegiving

efforts when the resource providers may or may not be the target market for their services. Third, organi-

zational sensemaking and sensegiving is often linked to organizational crisis or stigma (e.g., Gilstrap,

Gilstrap, Holderby, & Valera, 2016; Meisenbach, Rick, & Brandhorst, 2019) or specific organizational

change initiatives (e.g., : Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). Here, we focus on the more day-to-day aspects of

organizational identity management as an emergent flow of information between organizations and exter-

nal actors, paying special attention to sensegiving as an intentional strategy for sustainable resource acqui-

sition. Fourth, many studies rely on qualitative approaches (interviews, artifact collection) that provide

depth about specific organizations, but not necessarily statistical generalizability. We utilize a mixed

method approach to inductively and qualitatively identify a set of organizational strategies and quantita-

tively assess the connection between these strategies and different key resource acquisition partners.

In the following section, we provide an overview of the organizational identity literature as well

as some key theories exploring organizational sensegiving within nonprofits. We then analyze

300 organizational profiles posted online at Guidestar, a charity information repository and watch-

dog, to see what patterns emerge around language usage and signaling via indicators, evaluation

practices, and results. Using these patterns, we then assess the relationship between certain

sensegiving strategies and resource acquisition (i.e., receipt of donations or government funds).

Finally, we discuss our findings, identifying trends between sensegiving strategies and receipt of

resources from individual donors.

2|BACKGROUND

Organizational identity comprises that which is central, unique, and enduring to an organization

(Albert & Whetten, 1985). An organization can demonstrate a holographic identity that is consistent

214 LEVINE DANIEL AND ECKERD