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.