IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v91y1997i02p308-323_20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Private Production of Public Goods: Organizational Maintenance, Managers' Objectives, and Collective Goals

Author

Listed:
  • Lowry, Robert C.

Abstract

I reformulate Mancur Olson's by-product theory of collective action as a theory of resource allocation by interest group managers. I then test alternative hypotheses about managers' objectives drawn from exchange theory and commitment theory. Financial data for 16 environmental citizen groups show that the production of public goods is subsidized by other activities, and revenues from member dues are not affected by spending on public goods. Spending on selective incentives and information generates revenues but also may contribute to the pursuit of collective goals. Estimated marginal revenues from fund-raising and selective incentives show that environmental citizen group managers are not preoccupied with maximizing revenues. Rather, they seek to maximize either spending on public goods or net resources available for influencing public policy and the environment, subject to a budget constraint.

Suggested Citation

  • Lowry, Robert C., 1997. "The Private Production of Public Goods: Organizational Maintenance, Managers' Objectives, and Collective Goals," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 91(2), pages 308-323, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:91:y:1997:i:02:p:308-323_20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400209982/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lowry, Robert C., 2001. "The effects of state political interests and campus outputs on public university revenues," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 105-119, April.
    2. repec:mpr:mprres:6108 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Brookes Brown, 2019. "Beyond Profit and Politics: Reciprocity and the Role of For-Profit Business," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 239-251, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:91:y:1997:i:02:p:308-323_20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.