The Operational Efficiency of Non-governmental Organisations in China: An Extended Resource-based View

Today, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are among the most important stakeholders in terms of global governance and business operations. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the external and internal influential factors of the operational efficiency of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in China. By introducing the extended resource-based view (ERBV) into the context of NGO operations, a proposed conceptual model with 14 indicators is tested. In this study, based on the panel data collected on the Chinese Research Data Services Platform (CNRDS) and ERBV, a multiple regression analysis is performed to test the 14 influential factors identified in the dataset. By adopting ERBV, it is concluded that both intra- and inter-organisational resources are interacted and make a significant and positive association with NGOs’ operational efficiency. In particular, it is found that the availability of financial resources, political connections and NGO professionalism are all crucial factors to improve NGO operational efficiency in China. In addition, this thesis also made several contributions. First, in terms of the theoretical contribution, it may be the first study introducing the ERBV into the context of NGO, which extended several concepts (e.g. professionalisation, and interactions between internal and external resources) into the NGO context; Second, this study contributes to practitioners, such as managers in NGOs and corporates (e.g. the different roles of volunteers and paid staff in fundraising); Also, this study makes social contributions, including implications for policymakers in China. By the end of this research, several limitations and research directions are presented for studies in the future.