Accountability, Responsibility, and Public Trust in Non-Profit Institutions

Abstract

This chapter assumes that there is a gap between the request for non-profit sector managerialism and the need to ensure that it continues to represent the economic actor (probably the only one, in this sense) able to ensure the provision of goods and services of high social value for citizens and communities. In this perspective, we should abandon the idea that the non-profit sector can be a mere tool to “fill” the residual spaces left by the two “giants”: the market and the public administration. In this sense, the main aim of the research is to identify a possible link between accountability, responsibility, public trust, and communication in NPIs, possibly through a potential multidimensional managerial model in which these conceptual elements can be represented in a coordinated and systemic way.