Governance, performance and associative theory: a conceptual reflection thanks to scenarios of evolution of the French voluntary grassroots organizations[Gouvernance, performance et théorie de l’association : une réflexion conceptuelle autour de scenarii d'évolution du monde associatif français]

Context - The reasons that lead to question grassroots volunteer organizations (GVOs) are numerous. Their place in the economy and society continues to grow, the pressures coming from the internal as from the external environment increase. Concerns about the GVOs' future are therefore legion: in financial terms, also non-financial resources, identity, governance, etc. Objectives - The proposal of this article is to return to the sources of GVOs, as a preliminary before analyzing the concerns. The purpose is defining GVOs' peculiarities to contextualize its difficulties. An analysis is proposed on the one hand of the key concepts of governance and performance and on the other hand of the current non-profit theory. Approach - The analysis of the literature dedicated to governance, performance and GVOs' theory is complemented by a study of scenarios of potential evolution of GVOs proposed by La Fonda. Results - In addition to the legal angle on non-profit, we found how difficult it was to find peculiarities that are exclusive. Because of the lack of consensus but also of the need to define them organization by organization, performance and governance are not satisfactory determinants. We also pointed out that these two concepts were linked by a third definition support that is the associative project, that we assimilate to accountability (in our case, integrated reports). That's why we had to return to the GVOs' theory. A new difficulty then arose: current theories are about Anglo-Saxion NPOs, and they are for the most part shared with other organizations. Nevertheless, we established a rough characterization of GVOs thanks to the discourse they have on the common good and impact, knowing that this discourse is driven by governance (itself shaped by perceptions) that relies on reciprocity and stakeholder engagement. Then, each of the four scenarios provided an analytical framework to understand the positioning of GVOs according to these evolutions as well as the mutations induced in terms of management. However, we don't' have to consider that only one of these scenarios will be realized. On the contrary, in GVOs diversity, everyone will be able to know and perceive the specific issues of their organization. Limitations and academic implications - This research helps to position GVOs in a multidisciplinary field, to open avenues for research thanks to our proposed framework and to release GVOs' governance and performance from an objective and quantitative framework. However, all our results need to be tested empirically. Managerial implications - The operationalization of the scenarios proposed by La Fonda allows GVOs not only to have a knowledge of their possible future but also to know the various requirements that result from it. Originality - The study conducted here seeks to get GVOs out of their non-profit. We have to study GVOs themselves and not because they are "non-profit". Our idea is also to construct a GVOs' theory that goes beyond this simple legal criterion.