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Mutuality, Locality And Communitarianism, Roger A. Lohmann Nov 1995

Mutuality, Locality And Communitarianism, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

What is the nature of the bonds among participants in nonprofit organizations and voluntary action, and between philanthropic givers and recipients, and how do these affect the behavior of third sector actors and those in other sectors? Mutuality accounts for the intermediary bulwark which offers a primary protection of the individual from the state. Except through Tocqueville, mutuality has had very little impact on American legal and political philosophy until quite recently. Mutuality is a principal concern of some communitarians, particularly Taylor, Sandel and Bell. Communitarianism is one of the few instances of focus on this important problem. This paper …


Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann Apr 1995

Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The third sector is the sector of commons in the same sense that the market is the sector of profit-oriented firms and the state is the sector of public bureaucracies. In its present state, nonprofit theory is largely the creation of committees of lawyers and accountants concerned only with very narrow questions. Despite its limitations, the contemporary philanthropic world has been reluctant to embrace any substitute universal summary terms to describe or characterize the ful range of concerns covered by concerns of philanthropy. Commons theory offers a possible alternative capable of dealing with the full range of philanthropic concerns.


Nonprofit Community Service And The Hidden Cost Of Information Technology, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann Apr 1995

Nonprofit Community Service And The Hidden Cost Of Information Technology, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Will the information superhighway – like its concrete counterpart, the interstate highway system – turn out to be a good idea but too expensive to maintain properly? This paper will explore issues associated with the initial and ongoing costs of adopting information technology for nonprofit community service organizations, with particular attention to access and use of the information superhighway. Several possible explanations for the lag in adoption of internet technology will be explored. One of these will be the "null hypothesis" that resources and services currently available over the internet may still be insufficient to justify the costs involved for …


Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann Apr 1995

Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In Anglo-American traditions, the concept of a commons has historically been most frequently attached to shared land in joint use by a village or community. The common theory of voluntary action presents organized collective action as consisting of shared purposes, shared resources and voluntary participation resulting in an evolving sense of mutuality, and moral order, consisting of shared norms of fairness and participation.


Hypertext And The Docuverse: A Research Memo, Roger A. Lohmann Mar 1995

Hypertext And The Docuverse: A Research Memo, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The term docuverse was first developed by Apple Computer guru Allen Kay in the late 1960’s. The underlying idea can be traced back decades earlier, to the visionary Vannevar Bush and the Memex (Bush, 1945). According to Kay, a docuverse is a set of related documents together with the linkages between them. In this paper, a docuverse is conceived as a collection of related scholarly documents together with the links, ties and bonds that can bring them together into an integrated logical and conceptual whole. Kay who also coined the term hypertext, which refers to an electronic document with existing …


Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann Jan 1995

Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Is tragedy due to over harvesting an inevitable consequence of the voluntary action of cooperation in a commons? No. Actually, commons theory resolved this question several decades ago. Such common goods are those pursued jointly by pluralities less than the dominant majority controlling the state and its unique ability to define public goods. In an era when the state has proven relatively powerless to define unambiguous public goods and public policy making is largely circumscribed in terms of a competition among interest groups, the state itself has become a major producer of common, rather than genuinely public, goods.


The Internet As Commons: A Tale Of Enclosure, Roger A. Lohmann Oct 1993

The Internet As Commons: A Tale Of Enclosure, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The original model of the internet developed as an electronic commons for scientists and academics. It will be only a matter of time before the same rich and powerful information barons who already control such "fourth estate" communication industries as newspaper, magazine and book publishing, television networks and movie production facilities establish their toll-booths on the information superhighway as well. Fortunately, within this electronic ocean of corporate and proprietary feudalism, there may also be room for an archipelago of freistaaten; "free citystates" functioning as autonomous and self-governing islands for the arts, sciences, humanities, social service and community.


Patronage Bibliography (1993), Roger A. Lohmann May 1993

Patronage Bibliography (1993), Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Patronage is one of the basic concepts in the commons theory of voluntary action; it refers to the giving or donating of resources – money, objects for collection, or repertories of knowledge, skills or ‘know-how’. Patrons – those who give – are one of the three fundamental roles in philanthropods, along with intermediaries or agents, and beneficiaries. Patronage is also a heavily studied subject, extensively written about in the humanities as the items in this bibliography attest.


Farmers And Ranchers, Roger A. Lohmann Feb 1993

Farmers And Ranchers, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This book review, part of the third/nonprofit sector literature considers a case study of informal cooperation and decision-making in Shasta County, California. In certain key respects, the case parallels issues of the research literature on commons.


Service Centers: The Neglected Role Of The Town, Roger A. Lohmann Jul 1992

Service Centers: The Neglected Role Of The Town, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The dichotomy of urban and rural areas does not fit the circumstances of contemporary social life in the United States. Although needy populations redistributed across the social landscape, almost no social service agencies serving rural populations are, or ever have been, located in either urban (city) or rural (countryside) areas. Social agencies serving rural populations are nearly always located in towns. The town is a unique and distinctive rural social, economic and political institution. An adequate approach to conceptualizing rural social work must begin with recognition of one of the fundamental insights of contemporary urban theory: the regional character of …


Special Events And Community Elites: An Exploratory Study, Roger A. Lohmann Nov 1991

Special Events And Community Elites: An Exploratory Study, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Special events are an important phenomenon in the American voluntary sector, both as a form of fundraising activity and as celebrations of the efforts of volunteers and recognition of the importance of causes and problems. This unpublished paper reports on a study of a national sample of elite special events publicized in a national circulation magazine which at the time published a regular feature in each issue highlighting charitable events. Findings profile the kinds of events and beneficiaries identified as special events during the 1980s, before an extensive amount of fundraising research had been done.


The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann Oct 1991

The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The task of identifying nonprofit organizations, voluntary action and philanthropy as the principal constituents of a single "sector" within the larger economy, society and polity has been a central challenge for the multidisciplinary paradigm which seems to be emerging in this field. The concepts of the commons and common goods are presented as concepts with important multi-disciplinary implications. The commons is characterized by uncoerced participation, shared purposes and resources, mutuality and fairness and the derivative concept of common goods, as desirable ends which are universal and indivisible within a commons but not necessarily beyond. Taken together, commons and common goods …


The Executive Director As Keeper Of The Past, Roger A. Lohmann Nov 1990

The Executive Director As Keeper Of The Past, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper outlines a rationale for the materials which ought to be preserved by executives of local agencies, identifies some of the legal issues involved in record keeping for historical issues and resources available at local and state levels and discusses access issues.


The Repertory Of Social Care Of The Elderly, Roger A. Lohmann Jul 1990

The Repertory Of Social Care Of The Elderly, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is an analysis of aspects of the emergence of a repertory of social care services for the elderly from the vantage point of the common theory of voluntary action. One facet of that theory, labeled here as endowment theory, is an emerging rational choice model of the praxeological implications of voluntary action within the pragmatic problem-solving tradition. Three terms – endowment, repertory and commons – are presented in the paper as terms whose conventional meanings contain previously undisclosed connotations relevant to a fuller understanding of voluntary action.


Treasuries, Repertories And Collections In The Production Of Common Goods, Roger A. Lohmann Sep 1989

Treasuries, Repertories And Collections In The Production Of Common Goods, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

What types of resources are involved when members of a voluntary association combine their efforts in pursuit of joint goals or common goods? This paper examines the question from the vantage point of a rational choice theory termed endowment theory. Endowment theory is concerned with the rational allocation of productive surpluses to associations and other voluntary groups in pursuit of identified common goods. At least three distinct types of resource dowries can be identified in the current world of nonprofit associations. Treasuries are endowments of money and market-priced resources. Two other categories of "priceless" resource endowments are also evident among …


Breaking Even: Preface To The Revised Edition, Roger A. Lohmann Apr 1986

Breaking Even: Preface To The Revised Edition, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Breaking Even: Financial Management in Nonprofit Human Services (Temple University Press. 1980) was the first book-length discussion of nonprofit financial management ever published in English. This preface was prepared, along with several new or rewritten chapters and additional changes for a possible revised edition of the book. The publisher decided not to do a second edition and the original first edition continued to sell in its small market niche for 25 years.


Automating The Social Work Office: Science Fictions And Practical Realities, Roger A. Lohmann Mar 1986

Automating The Social Work Office: Science Fictions And Practical Realities, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Social work was not originally an office-based profession but has become one in the past few decades. In the process, the information technology of social work practice has changed relatively little. Social work practice has yet to develop unique computer applications, comparable to developments in medicine, law, architecture, education and other fields. Most interest in computer applications in social work to date has been clerical and made use of off-the-shelf applications. The potential of currently available technology for office automation in social work offers the prospect not only for important productivity improvement, but also for a means to dealing with …


Private Human Services In Welfare Society, Roger A. Lohmann Feb 1986

Private Human Services In Welfare Society, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is an effort to propose a moderately optimistic future for the personal care sector of human services. It is proposed that the best available future scenario for personal care services between now and the year 2019 is to concentrate on privatization of service delivery on a small-scale basis. Government, in this model should be limited largely to three roles: 1) source of venture capital; 2) regulation of service delivery; and 3) income maintenance for the poorest populations. In this future, the main burden of personal care services will be carried by the private sector. Dramatic improvements in the …


Planning For Aging Services: Implications Of Recent Amendments To The Older Americans Act (With 2019 Postscript), Roger A. Lohmann Jan 1982

Planning For Aging Services: Implications Of Recent Amendments To The Older Americans Act (With 2019 Postscript), Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The 1978 Amendments to the Older Americans Act called for the establishment of social planning, greater emphasis on the needs of the frail elderly (“those in greatest social and economic need”), the establishment of community “focal points” and “comprehensive and coordinated service delivery systems” in rural and urban communities. The amendments were implemented in the 1980 guidelines to Area Agencies on Aging. In this unpublished paper portions of which were presented at several conferences, a Guttman Scaling Technique developed in rural New York state was used to examine the development of aging services in 13 counties in North Central West …


Matrix Analysis And Social Planning, Roger A. Lohmann Mar 1976

Matrix Analysis And Social Planning, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This study is a follow-up to an earlier (1971) proposal for the application of Input-output analysis to social planning in human services (Repository item #753), and predates current models of human services as part of the nonprofit, or third sector. The manuscript details a study of financial inputs and service outputs in human services in the United Way system of Knoxville TN, noting a variety of quantitative ratios and measures of the human services delivery system, and assessing some of the strengths and weaknesses of the matrix approach.


A Matrix Model Of The Public Social Welfare System For The Aged In The U.S.: A Research Proposal, Roger A. Lohmann Jan 1972

A Matrix Model Of The Public Social Welfare System For The Aged In The U.S.: A Research Proposal, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The creation or adaptation of planning tools will in all probability be an integral feature of the future development of social planning practice. One tool that offers a great deal of potential utility if it can be adapted to the constraints of the social planning milieu is matrix analysis utilizing input-output matrices. The specific focus of the proposed study is on the public welfare system of theaged in the United States. The fundamental hypothesis of the proposed matrix model proposed here is that the general overall characteristic most representative of the system of public social welfare for the aged is …


Camps: A Failed Manpower Planning Venture, Roger A. Lohmann Mar 1969

Camps: A Failed Manpower Planning Venture, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In 1967, the U.S. Labor Department and Office of Economic Opportunity and other federal agencies undertook an experiment in regional manpower planning labeled the Cooperative Area Manpower Planning System, or CAMPS. This paper, written during my graduate program in public administration, 1969-1970 reflects my experience as a rural community action program director and an ex-officio participant in the CAMPS planning process of a rural region in southern Minnesota during 1967-1968.