The Nexus of Public and Nonprofit Management

The fields of public administration and nonprofit management have experienced convergence over the past decades, particularly as academic programs, conferences, and journals in public administration have increasingly embraced nonprofit management. Given the significance of this development, the lack of a formal theoretical basis for convergence is surprising and potentially problematic. This article attempts to formalize such a basis by expositing the shared constitutive features of public and nonprofit management. These features include social goods provision, outcome ambiguity, delegation, and surplus nondistribution. Analysis of these features-and consideration of alternative explanations-demonstrates that a consolidated field of "public and nonprofit management" may be warranted by definite theoretical principles. The existence of this theoretical basis may provide stakeholders with opportunities to approach and manage the process of convergence more strategically.