Management Solutions in Non-Profit Organizations: Case of Slovenia

Introduction

The main purpose of this chapter is to report about examination of the utilization of management solutions in non-profit organizations in Slovenia. Management literature reported about several management solutions and their utilization in enterprises (Porter, 1996; Daft, 2000; Sutherland & Canwell, 2004; Van Assen et al., 2009; Potocan & Dabić, 2012; Dabic et al., 2013). The current discussions about enterprises’ operating are mainly focused on selection of adequate business policies and strategies and their implementation through the use of suitable management solutions (Armstrong, 2006; Ralston et al., 2011). Additionally, enterprises constantly re-think the adequacy of their chosen management solutions and possibilities for utilization of new solutions (Kumar et al., 2011; Jarzabkowski et al., 2013).

In the forefront of the present discussion in management theory there are non-profit organizations as the fastest growing group of organizations in the modern societies, whose contribution to gross domestic product is rapidly growing in societies around the world (Becchetti et al., 2013). Non-profit organization is usually defined as an organization whose purposes are other than making a profit (Zimmer & Priller, 2004; Rutzer et al., 2009). Contently, these organizations are member-serving or community-serving organizations, but the definition of non-profit organizations is not consistently differentiated across different countries and in the international society (Hansmann, 1980; Frumkin, 2005; Rutzer et al., 2009).

In the forefront of management discussion about non-profit organizations in Europe there is the development of methodological and content-related consideration of managerial improvement of their working and behavior (Rhys & Van de Walle, 2013; Schachter, 2014). The non-profit organizations are under pressure for improvement of their working and behavior for optimization of disposal of sources and achievement of the selected society’s goals (Mullins, 2010; Becchetti et al., 2013). In that framework, the management theory focused on transformation of traditional management to the “new management” of non-profit organizations (Drucker, 1989; Evers & Laville, 2004; Smith, 2014).

An important part of development of new management of non-profit organizations belongs to issues related to possibilities and results of utilization of diverse management solutions as carriers of management ideas and their appearance forms ranging from concept, methodologies, methods, techniques, instruments to tools in working of non-profit organizations (Morgan & Wang, 2010; Jarzabkowski et al., 2013). But the previous researchers of this area are linked with plenty of unsolved issues (Carter et al., 2011; Potocan et al., 2012). In management, researchers are primarily oriented on consideration of management tools, as the most recognizable and frequent appearance of management solutions and ideas behind them. In that framework we continue previous studies about importance of managerial tools’ use as selected part of management solutions’ consideration and their impacts on results of organizations (O’Hare et al., 2010b; Kumar et al., 2011; Rigby & Bilodeau, 2011). The available literature offers limited evidences about utilization of several contently different management tools in non-profit organizations (Audier et al., 2010; Schachter, 2014). Previous empirical studies also reported contradictory results about the frequency and patterns of management solutions and corresponding tools in non-profit organizations (Majduchova, 2003; Danvers & Nikolov, 2010; Adamoniene & Ciutiene, 2013), since there are no broader researches about that topic concerning different non-profit organizations and non-profit organizations in different environments (Armstrong, 2006; Certo & Certo, 2009; Mullins, 2010).