Emergent Organization as a Practical Strategy: Executing Trustee Functions in Alcoholics Anonymous

Abstract

Trusteeship functions in nonprofit organizations are most often analyzed by drawing on ideas from the world of proprietary firms and organizational theories that have their roots in the theory of bureaucracy. Recent theories of nonprofit organizations have explored alternative organizational visions, emphasizing that nonprofits often are embedded in larger communities and that their organizational styles are embedded in distinctive cultures of voluntarism. Such perspectives, however, suffer because they tell us little about how to understand notions such as accountability and trusteeship. This article, a case study of Alcoholics Anonymous, offers a theory of how accountability and trusteeship functions may be effectively performed in an organization that is guided by a distinctive culture and idiosyncratic organizational practices that differ sharply from the bureaucratic, corporate model of organization.