Analysis of Key Topics in the Research on Nonprofit Organizations: From Efficiency to Hybrids

Research in the nonprofit sector is a relatively young discipline. Nonetheless, a number of research schools of thought and movements have formed over several decades, several outstanding research institutions have come into existence, and many books, articles and studies dealing with the nonprofit sector have been written. The first social science to try and understand the nonprofit phenomenon through its research methods was economics. This article analyses the causes of the interest that economists started paying to the nonpro t sector and the nonprofit form of companies. It examines how the areas of interest of the research have been changing, trying to identify causes of such changes. It demonstrates that, since its very beginning, this research has been very strongly influenced by actions taken by interest groups and has been significantly interconnected with the public policy towards the nonprofit sector. Its primary objective is to demonstrate significant shifts in the research emphases and to articulate the author's view of the tendencies in the development of the area studied.