@article{619d40ebe9c445ac8bf41b4070875d5f,
title = "Faithful strategies: How religion shapes nonprofit management",
abstract = "This paper studies the strategies employed by Catholic and Protestant nonprofit hospitals in Germany and traces them back to the theological foundations of those religions. Using a unique data set, we find that Catholic nonprofit hospitals follow a strategy of horizontal diversification and maximization of the number of patients treated. By contrast, Protestant hospitals pursue a strategy of horizontal specialization and focus on vertical differentiation, putting in more sophisticated inputs and producing more complex services. These effects increase if the environment of a hospital gets more competitive. We present a model that rationalizes the strategic differences as a result of the difference between Catholic and Protestant values identified in the literature. We then test alternative explanations to the observed empirical differences and show that none of them is supported by the data.",
keywords = "Catholicism, Nonprofits, Not-for-profit sector, Protestantism, Religious organizations, Religious values",
author = "Lapo Filistrucchi and Jens Pr{\"u}fer",
note = "Funding Information: The authors acknowledge financial support from a grant of the Dutch Health Care Authority (NZa) to TILEC. L. Filistrucchi acknowledges financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) [VICI Grant 453-07-003]. For helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper, the authors thank Cansu Aslan, Christophe Boone, Jan Boone, Katie Carman, Eline van der Heijden, J{\"u}rgen Maurer, Patricia Pr{\"u}fer, J{\"o}rg Spenkuch, Stefan Trautmann, Arjen van Witteloostuijn, and Xu YiLong. The authors thank Alerk Amin, Fatih Cemil Ozbugday, Pauline Affeldt, and Hana Marie Smr{\v c}kov{\'a} for great research assistance. Martin Salm deserves special thanks for collaboration on the data collection. Funding Information: History: Accepted by Olav Sorenson, organizations. Funding: The authors acknowledge financial support from a grant of the Dutch Health Care Authority (NZa) to TILEC. L. Filistrucchi acknowledges financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) [VICI Grant 453-07-003]. SupplementalMaterial: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2945. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 INFORMS",
year = "2019",
month = jan,
doi = "10.1287/MNSC.2017.2945",
language = "English",
volume = "65",
pages = "188--208",
journal = "Management Science",
issn = "0025-1909",
publisher = "INFORMS Inst.for Operations Res.and the Management Sciences",
number = "1",
}