J. McNutt, C. Guo, L. Goldkind, S. An: Technology in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Voluntaristics Review
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BOOK REVIEW
J. McNutt, C. Guo, L. Goldkind, S. An: Technology in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Voluntaristics Review Brill, Leiden, 2018 Raquel Rego1
Ó International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University 2018
In its third year of activity, the Voluntaristics Review here addresses one of the most popular contemporary topics, the new information and communication technology (ICT). In practice, this review article focuses on the Internet primarily as the means for nonprofit organizations to perform their mission. The first 2018 issue of this recent journal, edited by the founder of ARNOVA and ICSER, David Horton Smith, is authored by four researchers from American universities. Most of these authors have been working on the use of technology by nonprofit organizations for years. The lead author, for example, John G. McNutt, holds 20 years of expertise in addition to being the deputy editor of the Voluntaristics Review. Through structuring very short sections into 10 chapters, this long review article provides broad, overall coverage of the theme: voluntary actions in an information society, the evolution of technology in the voluntary sector, the arsenal of nonprofit sector technology, the different technological applications and, among others, barriers of access to technology. At the beginning of the article, the authors duly draw attention to how the so-called nonprofit sector comprises of very different organizations in terms of their size, legal status, etc., thereby preventing the authors from generalizing their analytical conclusions. Indeed, the article’s major challenge arises precisely from analyzing the Book review editor: Marc Jegers. & Raquel Rego [email protected] 1
Instituto de Cieˆncias Sociais – Universidade de Lisboa (ICSULisboa), Av. Prof. Anı´bal de Bettencourt, 9, 1600-036 Lisbon, Portugal
relationships prevailing between the Internet and such a heterogeneous sector. The authors therefore distinguish between two major types of organizations in the sector: nonprofit agencies (hierarchical organizations with staff) and voluntary associations (membership based groups). The distinction serves to sustain the proposal that the nonprofit sector may become the dominant sector because voluntary associations may be empowered through the Internet and we may thus be observing a paradigm change. In this sense, the authors wonder whether Facebook groups, for instance, might constitute a form of voluntary association. Considering how the Internet enables a completely virtual existence, such as Anonymous, as well as civil actions, either without organization or self-organized, such as the Arab Spring movement, the authors conclude that the sector is currently undergoing expansion. Furthermore, the social media in particular are challenging the nonprofit agencies considering interactivity and user created content require more consistent investment in the respective ICT strategy. Although not systematically, the relationship between the traditional and the n
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