There are four broad types of formal organizations – the for-profit private sector, the public sector, the cooperatives, and the not-for-profit sector. First, organizations in the private sector have internally set goals of wealth creation for its shareholders and long-term sustenance and operate in market context. The second are the public sector organizations controlled by the state delivering goods and services that market may not deliver or market mechanisms will fail to deliver. Public sector organizations, in a democratic society, are by design not created to pursue wealth creation for its promoters or its own long term sustenance. They are created for delivering goods and services that market may not deliver or market mechanisms will fail to deliver. However, they may still need to generate resources to pursue these goals. Public goods like pollution control, ground water harvesting, education for all, peace and security in society, elimination of polio, are examples of goods that are neither divisible nor can be exclusive to individuals and groups. Another important demarcating criterion of public sector organizations is that they embody conflicting and externally generated goals because of multiplicity of external stakeholders having conflicting interest. Third, cooperative organizations, the demarcating criteria of cooperative are that they are democratically controlled (one member one vote), for-profit organizations but with limited returns on shares, and the appropriation of surplus is based on patronage and not on shareholding. Fourth, the not-for-profit sectors where the goals are not driven by wealth generation for its promoters but reaching out to population with goods and services which are not catered to either by the market, the public sector, and the cooperative sector. Management research has largely focused on the first type and has largely ignored the other three sectors. It would be interesting to understand the constructs of organizational effectiveness and performance, employee behaviour, market orientation, community orientation, strategic choices in public sector organizations, cooperatives and not-for-profit sector.

The major topics for this track include: decision making; strategy; organizational behavior and human resource management; political behavior; collaboration and conflict among public, nonprofit, and private organizations; service and community-building; organizational networks involving public and nonprofit organizations; theories of governance; public policy; and the social and ethical dimensions of public and nonprofit activity. Special attention to how distinctive qualities of the public and nonprofit sectors influence management and organizational processes.