How salient are the needs of stakeholders in NPO Organisations?

In recent times there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of Non-profit Organisations (NPOs) providing, health, welfare and other social services. This has had a significant impact on the manner in which the Public Sector meets their obligations to provide social services and has drawn the attention of scholars concerned with issues of performance management. The multiple and complex stakeholder environment of NPOs coupled with the added complexity in public sector NPO collaborations brings particular challenges for performance management. This has led to calls for studies to deliver a greater understanding of performance management and the role of management control systems (MCS) in such settings. This research draws on stakeholder salience theory to capture managements salience perceptions of four key and relevant stakeholders as a basis of framing an understanding of MCS utility in terms of stakeholder performance objectives. Stakeholder salience is found to provide a valuable framework for developing insights into MCS and organisational performance constructs. Findings suggest that awareness of stakeholder salience can assist in understanding performance conflicts and tensions. Findings also suggest that MCS design and use reflects managements stakeholder salience perceptions and may work to maintain those conflicts and tensions.