Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic through public-nonprofit collaborations: the role of nonprofit reputation

Resumo

Crises pose enormous challenges for public-nonprofit collaborations. Particularly in developing countries, crises might change funding flows among partners and increase the levels of uncertainty or instability that already destabilize the smooth functioning of collaborations. However, does the reputation of nonprofit partners buffer such negative effects? Considering the Covid-19 pandemic as an extreme crisis, in this paper we consider the pandemic as an exogenous shock that affects the number of contracts and government funding to nonprofit partners and observe if these relationships are moderated by nonprofits reputation. Our sample includes 60 Brazilian nonprofit hospitals that were already partners of the Brazilian Ministry of Health before the pandemic, collaborating in public health delivery between 2012 and 2019. The results suggest that nonprofit reputation matters when the Ministry of Health allocates funding and contracts to public-nonprofit collaborations. Our study contributes to research on reputation and public-nonprofit collaborations by indicating that even in contexts of extreme crisis, nonprofit reputation stands up as a valuable intangible resource that helps to maintain smooth collaborative processes – a valuable dimension of collaborative performance.