Managerialismus: Eine Herausforderung (nicht nur) für NPOs

Managerialism - understood as a set of normative expectations on how to run organizations on the basis of management knowledge - can be found in organizations of all societal sectors: In business organizations, tensions between managerialist rationality and rationalities of substantive professions, lifeworld values, as well as criteria of social and ecological sustainability and responsibility are not uncommon. In nonprofit organizations, such tensions are even stronger and more prevalent. This has especially emerged since the 1990s, when managerialism became common in nonprofit management practice, and also became an important research topic. Although - or perhaps because - the phenomenon remained vaguely defined in conceptual terms, it became the object of many hopes as well as fears. Optimists expected that it would make NPOs more efficient and effective, while sceptics warned of colonization by narrow-minded economic thinking. The image of managerialism in research and NPO practice has thus become polarized. In this article we aim to contribute to a more rational debate on the basis of empirical research findings. We base our discussion on an understanding of managerialism grounded in Niklas Luhmann’s (1988) organization theory and the concept of institutional logics (Friedland & Alford, 1991).