Understanding International Location Decisions of Poverty Alleviation Non-Profit Organizations

Abstract

Purpose Despite the growing numbers of internationally active nonprofit organizations (NPOs), research on various facets of NPOs’ internationalization has been limited. The current study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of target-country related factors on international market selection of NPOs. Design/methodology/approach Analysis is based on a logistic regression procedure using a self-compiled dataset of 2440 observations of de-facto entry or non-entry occurrences made by 19 large development-focused NPOs. Findings The study reveals that NPOs select target markets that are less developed, characterized by greater risk profiles, where other NPOs tend to cluster, and those that are preferred by their home-country governments. Moreover, findings suggest that with respect to institutional strength, NPOs balance mission to help strengthen institutions where needed, and avoidance of environments with extremely dysfunctional institutions, hence opting to operate in environments with medium level...