Facing Newness and Smallness: A Multiple Case Study of Nonprofits Creating Schools

Abstract

This paper utilizes the literature on liability of newness and smallness to examine new nonprofit school venture creation and explore what challenges new school ventures face. We ask the following research questions: What challenges and obstacles do new nonprofit school ventures face? How do new nonprofit school ventures manage to maneuver, mitigate, or overcome these challenges and obstacles? To answer these questions, we conducted a comparative case study of three nonprofit organizations operating schools in Sweden. Our material consisted of semi-structured interviews and archival documents. The article illuminates two salient challenges for new school ventures: the need for legitimacy from a diverse set of stakeholders and the marshalling of sufficient resources. To cope with these challenges, the organizations combined an outward conformist strategy with an inward resource replacement strategy. Moreover, even though all ventures experienced obstacles, the character and magnitude of these obstacles differed depending on their mode of emergence.