A Qualitative Comparative Analysis on Chinese Non-Profit Organizations’ Rationalization

Existing researches about Chinese non-profit organizations' rationalization tended to lay particular stress on specific or "net" effects explained by a particular theoretical perspective, thereby rarely considered from the interrelation of various theoretical perspectives or from the configuration perspective and hereby summarizing the effects of different mechanisms in specific environments as well as their connections or alternatives. As an important methodology and tool which emphasizes combined action of multiple mechanisms, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) provides a possibility for the study. Through the meticulous sorting and analysis of 14 cases from three areas in Z Province of China by utilizing qualitative comparative analysis, this paper finds two important new findings. First, in terms of facilitating the rationalization of non-profit organizations, the mechanisms of competition, resource, and system are not simply replaceable by each other but complementary in many cases; especially, accordingly configurations are formed between system-related mechanism and resource mechanism and between system-related mechanism and competition mechanism, which constructs the critical path of Chinese non-profit organizations' rationalization. Second, the relationship among the different sub-mechanisms of the same theory is relatively complicated.