RGK Faculty - Ji Ma

Language shapes diverse cultures and creates natural barriers between human societies. The landscape of nonprofit and philanthropic studies in non-English languages is barely charted, impeding the globalization of this research field. This project (1) describes the topics shared between English and Chinese scholarship on nonprofits and philanthropy and (2) explores why English scholarship is cited in Chinese journal articles from five aspects: rationale of scholarship, novelty, relevance, social network, and reputation. The English articles cited by Chinese scholars tend to: (1) focus on instrumentality but not expressive values, (2) develop rather than disrupt existing paradigms, and (3) be relevant to topics popular in the Chinese literature and have authors with Chinese scholarly connections. In general, Chinese scholars tend to cite English articles that are value-neutral, non-disruptive, and native. Theoretical and methodological implications for examining nonprofit studies in other languages are discussed.

This research developed a machine-learning classifier that reliably automates the coding process using the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities as a schema and remapped the U.S. nonprofit sector.

This study considers the effects of government funding to nonprofits from a network perspective. By analyzing a novel, 12-year panel dataset from the People's Republic of China, I find no evidence that government funding to a nonprofit crowds out private donations to the same organization. However, I find a substantial crosswise crowding-in effect at the ego network level: an increase of one Chinese Yuan in government funding to a nonprofit's neighbor organizations in board interlocking network can increase the private giving to the nonprofit by 0.4 Chinese Yuan.