Business Commons^™

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

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

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

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

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 …

A Study Of The Investment Policies And Practices Of California Social Service And Advocacy Organizations, Alexis Whitney Olian

Master's Theses

This research examines the investment policies and practices of California social service and advocacy organizations by investigating the level of complexity of their investment activities and whether the mission of their organization is taken under consideration, as a social investment screen, when making investment decisions.

The nonprofit sector is an essential and influential part of our society as well as our economy. The management of this sector's growing assets is of key importance to its long-term financial stability. With the growing popularity of social investment and the increasing diversity of social investment strategies, it is also a valuable time to …

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.

Some Corporate And Securities Law Perspectives On Student-Athletes And The Ncaa, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Typology Of The Income-Generating Activities Of Nonprofit Organizations In Marin And Sonoma Counties, Carolyn Stayton

Master's Theses

This study examines the income-generating activities of nonprofit organizations. Since the early 1980s, income-generating activities have been increasing due in part to: government funding cut-backs; encouragement from government and big business; incursion into traditional nonprofit areas by for-profit business; and, more recently, economic recession. The increase in activities has apparently cut into for-profit terrain, and small businesses in particular have reacted negatively.

In the last decade the commercial income-generating activities of nonprofits have been cited by small business as a primary concern. Debates over the issue have been waged in Congress between small business advocates and nonprofit supporters. As few …

Decision Framing And Efficiency/Effectiveness Trade-Offs In Auditors' Planning Materiality Judgments, Sridhar Ramamoorti

Accounting Faculty Publications

The exercise of judgment is not only essential to the practice of disciplines such as law, medicine and accounting, but is also what distinguishes these domains as professions (Boritz, Gaber & Lemon, 1987, cited in Gibbins & Mason, 1988). Recent advances in cognitive psychology research have given an impetus to research focusing on the nature of professional judgment, expert-novice cognition, heuristics and biases in decision making as well as decision strategies, the acquisition of knowledge and the effects of experience, and the development of expert/decision support systems (Ashton, 1982a; Smith & Kida, 1991; Chi, Glaser & Farr, 1988). The central …