From Administration To Diversification:on The Operation Of Charitable Organizations

After the Jocie-Kok event came out, the operational problems of charitable organizations have been well paid attention to and have affected its credibility for the public. The operation of charitable organizations refers to the actual operation and methods of activities under some certain conditions, including arrangement of the organizational structure as well as how to carry out their activities. This is an important way for the public to understand the charitable organizations. This thesis takes Charity H as a case to explore changes of the structure and operation in charitable organizations through studying its operation since its establishment in1999. During the operation the charitable organizations show the change from administration to diversification. The operation of charitable organizations is subject to institutional environment rather than technical environment.The thesis is divided into seven parts:Chapter One is devoted to the reason to study, significance of this thesis, literature review, core concepts, theoretical perspectives, research methods, research framework and the main content.In Chapter Two the institutional arrangement at the beginning of the charitable organizations’establishment is introduced. There are formal and informal parts in institutional arrangement. The formal refers to the specific laws and regulations and the informal refers to culture, ideology and so on. Nowadays what the institutional arrangements in charitable organizations has been facing is the government-led institutional environment. The relief charitable organizations have implemented is acturally the extension of the government’s functions.Chapter Three is about the impact the institutional environment has brought on charitable organizations’structure and operation. What charitable organizations wants is the acquisition of administrative legitimacy rather than any other legal acquisition. The government’s recognition is the core element of charitable organizations’ development. To focus on the institutional environment can make its organizational structure and organizational operation follow the requirements of institutional environment. The operation of charitable organizations is characteristic of administration.Chapter Four is about the system performance of the administrative operation in charitable organizations. The system performance is evaluated mainly from such five aspects as organizational structure, charitable fundraising, social donations, volunteerism and the charitable aid. It is the existing institutional arrangement that has resulted in the lower organizational performance.Chapter Five is about the analysis of the diversification of institutional change and organizational operation. With the adjustment of existing systems and the innovation in charitable organizations, the division of labor and constraints came to the charitable organizations’structure. The organizational operation has shown the trend of diversified development of administration, socialization and marketization, However, due to the path dependence in institutional changes, there exists the anti-popular operation while charitable organizations show its operational diversification. Charitable organizations are demonstrating the pattern of growth but without development.Chapter Six is about the historical investigation of charitable organizations’ operation and the analysis of operational experience in foreign and Hong Kong charitable organizations. The analysis mainly focuses on the historical factors that have caused some trouble for charitable organizations’operation. At the same time the development experience of charitable organizations in Hong Kong and abroad should be learned from.In Chapter Seven some suggestions of policy are presented for the development of charitable organizations such as formal institutional innovation, informal institutional innovation and organizational innovation. Institutional innovation includes the formal institutional innovation and the informal institutional innovation. Organizational innovation mainly refers to governance structure, financing capacity, capability of project management, capability of charitable marketing and the capability of management innovation of human resource.Finally, the development of charitable organizations during the transitional period are briefly discussed. The social transformation in China presents firstly economic transformation, secondly social transformation and finally political transformation. Due to the particularity of social transformation, the bottleneck problems restricting the development of Chinese society are not solved yet. The effectiveness of institutional innovation in social fields is closely related to political reform of system. Without the deepening of political reform of system, it’s difficult to have a substantive breakthrough for social reform of system. Then the current institutional innovation is only an institutional arrangement transitionally.